Originally Posted by serpens

Ignorant and infrequent flyer here. I'm having trouble visualizing the risk. If I'm the bad guy, do I grab someone's bag, turn, and leave? Do I grab someone's bag, search it, remove a perceived valuable item, stow it in my bag, return the original bag, and put my bag on the conveyor? I understand the TSA employees probably do not watch the passengers fiddling with their bags carefully, but it seems like either scenario has a high chance of getting caught and a low probability of reward. What am I missing? I would think it would be much more important to be waiting for the bag when it comes out. Thanks for insight.

Originally Posted by onlyairfare

I try to watch both when my bag goes into the scanner and be waiting on the other side when it comes out. I’ve had more trouble with TSA than other pax:

1. I have been in situations where the TSA “officer” tried to steal items from my carry on when they were out of my sight, such as “removed for inspection”
2. The TSA clerk was working in cahoots with a fake passenger who tried to steal my laptop computer bag while the TSA clerk tried to get me to move out of sight of my bag to check me for an alleged security alarm.