Nothing new under the sun, I'm afraid. I came across something similar in Madrid. It involves three women begging aggressively. Two distract attention, while the third goes for the handbag. The technique is to throw a garment such as a cardigan over the arm and handbag of the target so she can't see what is going on, while making a lot of noise and commotion, claiming to be hungry etc, and then open the handbag and tip the contents into a plastic bag.