This line is occasionally uttered by guards when you have a high sneak skill, and it shouldn't. Sneaky though my current character may be, I have yet to steal a thing. I'm a game hunter. If this bit of dialogue is going to be triggered by any skill, it really ought to be the Pickpocket skill, not Sneak.

A minor quibble, but my law-abiding hunter character resents these accusations. My previous character, a Dark Brotherhood assassin, didn't much care to be called a thief either.

The women guards tend to tell me this because I got my hands down their pants

I called a sneak thief too and my character has absolutely nothing to do with the stealth skills.

I have 22 Sneak and all my combat skills are nearing 100.

Really? That's even stranger.

Little Beard and Dsoft, what race(s) are you?

I'm Khajiit on my current character, but this happened with my previous character -- a Nord.

My main (combat) character is a Nord.

The same thing happens to all my characters. I assume that when your sneak goes past 20, the game processes that as you focusing on sneak, so it adds that comment. That really annoys me, especially on my Imperial character (what kind of Imperial soldier goes around stealing from FELLOW IMPERIALS IN SOLITUDE).

At least worrying about you being a sneak thief is appropriate for guards. They are always advising me that I shouldn't try to barter with them like they were some common shop keeper. Why would I?

I would assume that they're afraid of acquiring possibly stolen hardware. Think about it: if you're a guard and someone pickpockets or gives you a bunch of Dwemer armor (let's say the person really needs to dump off some crap so he can run away) wouldn't that be kinda suspicious?

Actually... nevermind Bethesda just [censored] up.

They're referring to punitive measures (i.e. bounties, and talking your way out of them).