How do the two ideas in this sentence come together? I have this sentence as part of a question in my JLPT practise book: > {}{}{}{}{}{}{} Part of the sentence means, "the pickpocket group steals money from the passengers from the signal given by the boss," and part of the sentence means "being face to face is scary." I presume it's the boss's eyes that are scary, but I can't make this sentence come together. What would be the best translation for this sentence? What is the underlying structure that binds it together?

The sentence has the following structure

X

Which translates literally as

I saw X and I was scared.

The X in your example sentence is what is called a noun phrase. The sentence translates as

I saw how a group of pickpockets stole money from a passenger at the sign of their boss and I was scared.