Date: July 29th, 2025 4:38 PM
Author: Pope Leo XXX
Quite a few people in the comments are asking about crime in Brazil. Yes - it can be tough here. I have spent over 6 months in Brazil and am married to a Brazilian. My Portuguese is minimal. I am (super) white skinned and generally don't look or sound Brazilian. I work from a beach town just outside of Sao Paulo.
Most Brazilians are very careful about their phones specifically. That is the main target of crime here. If you keep it put away and don't flash cash you will probably be fine. Even better is don't speak English loudly in public.
With that said, I got robbed here - badly. I went to Eden Beach in Guaraja and parked my car with some friends. We walked down the hill and hung at the beach (speaking English and taking pics with my phone - whoops!). When we left and walked up the wooded path to the car we were robbed at gunpoint by 5 boys. There were four of us. They took 4 wedding rings, 4 cell phones, 4 wallets, and stole our car. They also broke into my phone and cleaned out my crypto wallet, which was a five-figure loss. It was really, really, shitty. It was also my fault.
I didn't read about the neighborhood beforehand. It was on the bad side of the island. I showed my phone around in public and was chatting in English loudly. It would be like walking around Chicago's southside waving money around and being surprised when you get jumped. I'm a stupid gringo.
If you stay smart and keep a low profile you'll do great here. That was the only problem I ever had.
Yeah. We were robbed at gunpoint, and the theives seemed like this wasn't their first rodeo. They pointed the pistol at us and had us supply login credentials for each phone. They did the same with my crypto wallet. They then abandoned us in a remote beach, so it took about 3-4 hours for us to get to a computer and do damage control.
Crypto lost Lots of iPhones were ordered on amazon Credit cards compromised Tax return presumably taken
I'm still working on ensuring that was it. It was not a great experience.
https://www.reddit.com/r/thepassportbros/comments/188lgk8/brazil_is_the_best/
(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5756023&forum_id=2Elisa#49140967)