LPRC - CrimeScience – The Weekly Review – Episode 127 with Dr. Read Hayes, Tom Meehan & Tony D’Onofrio

Episode Date: November 25, 2022

2023 LPRC IGNITE and INTEGRATE scenarios are taking shape! Happy Thanksgiving from the CrimeScience Podcast Team! In this week’s episode, our co-hosts discuss a summary of the latest consumer and technology trends, fun historical facts about Thanksgiving, the best airports in the US, Twitter reinstating previously banned accounts, and this years holiday spending predictions with low unemployment rates! Listen in to stay updated on hot topics in the industry and more!

Hi, everyone, and welcome to Crime Science. In this podcast, we explore the science of crime and the practical application of this science for loss prevention and asset protection practitioners as well as other professionals. Welcome, everybody, to another episode of Crime Science, the podcast. This is the latest in our weekly update series, and I'm joined today, as always, by our co-hosts, Tony D'Onofrio and Tom Meehan, and our producer, Diego Rodriguez, and our associate producer, Wilson Gabarino. And today we're going to talk a little bit about all things loss prevention, asset protection, retailing, security, however you want to look at it. I'm going to kind of talk initially a little bit about what we're up to at the LPRC. Again, for all of our members, and we've got closing in on 200 now

corporate members, including over 70 major retail corporations and all their banners and divisions, as well as just over 100 solution partners or SPs members, as we call them. We also got manufacturing members like Procter & Gamble, P&G, and a lot of industry associations or industry partners, we call them like Loss Prevention Magazine or LP Magazine, the LP Foundation, of course, RILA, NRF, National Association of Chained Drug Stores, National Association of Chain Drug Stores, National Association of Convenience Stores. We've got the International Council of Shopping Centers, the Food Marketing Institute or FMI, the big supermarket group, and the list goes on. So it's a large, thriving, growing community and we love each and

every one of you. If your organization is not a member, please look into that. Go to lpresearch.org. Love to get involved with you all. Our team's growing. You know, we've gone in the last, really literally in the last year from six employees to 14 team members now. And we'll continue to grow accordingly. We're trying to, of course, like everybody else, target people with character, people that are highly capable, and people that have a lot of energy and are good team members, that they're collaborative. So we've been pretty blessed so far recently to have not only our largest and most capable team, but I would argue the last seat really is a team with a lot of chemistry.

And we're getting a lot of things done and having a good time doing it. So with no further ado, let me talk a little bit about the events again. We've got six events. We've got our working groups, over half a dozen of those. Kickoff, again, as a reminder, now seating is limited. We have the Bloomingdales at their flagship store host the annual LPRC kickoff. It's a gathering of the community at the beginning of the year. It's a planning meeting. We showcase sometimes one to three technologies from our SPs, according to what we're looking into right then,

working on or planning to do going forward, in this case in 23. So January 18th, 2023, Bloomingdale's. The way to get involved is to reach out to Diego, D-I-E-G-O, Diego at LP Research dot org. If you're interested in participating in that. So the next thing to do is let us know. But the seating is limited. Our SP members are encouraged to participate with a limit of one. Pretty much the same for our retailer members, just because of the huge surge in demand.

And again, the limited seating. So, but that's the day after the NRF, National Retail Federation's big show event in New York City. So, we're all looking together, looking forward, excuse me, to getting together and celebrating the new year and planning out a great 2023 to get better and better at safeguarding vulnerable people and places. The next one, again, we talked a lot about is IGNITE, our annual Board of Advisors Winter Planning Meeting. The last few years has been, of course, hosted by the LPRC team in our facilities, our University of Florida facilities in Gainesville. And this year, again, it's February 21st and 22nd. There'll be a reception the evening of the 20th, that Monday evening in February.

And so we're looking forward to that. That's our board of advisors. That's our LPRC Innovate Advisory Panel. There may be some working group leaders in as well. So it's a leadership meeting. But we're also having this year, and I know I've mentioned this before, we're having Integrate. Integrate is going to be about pulling together a host of sensors and a host of action tools across the pathways or the journey to crime or to harm, to victimize that offenders or crews take to harm us, whether it's theft, fraud, or violence. We call it crime scripting. I'm going to talk a little bit about crime scripting in a minute, but it's something that in criminology we've used for probably well over a decade and a half now with a lot of research supporting the process, and it's been primarily adopted by criminologists working with law enforcement agencies.

So the process is going to be what we describe now, but our team is going through that. In fact, yesterday, six of us were doing what we used to call in the Army a terrain walk. And so we literally walked our four square block area that we call the University of Florida Safer Places Lab Central. University of Florida Safer Places Lab Central. And we went from where a couple of red actors will be in a vehicle posting and doing things online, as we've mentioned. But the idea yesterday with the train walk was, all right, these two offenders are going to end up affecting this place and then go somewhere else after that. But they're going to start somewhere. They're going to create the victimization, the harm. They're going to harm somebody through their crime here, but they're then going to get

away and they're going to go somewhere else. And so we would like to understand each step and stage that they're going to take to plan, to come our way, to affect us in that place, and then to escape and then to move to another place or two? What's every step and stage? What behavioral signals are they going to give off? Visual signals by their movements, their tools, and other features. There are features about them, features about their vehicle in this case, features about any tools or weapons that they might have, features about their communications and so on. So those features are what we want to look for and then later need to match or they could even trigger an alert in there. And we'll talk about that in greater depth as we move forward. So we were we start out here. They're posting on these platforms.

What are the platforms? Our team names them off because we go in there and look through platforms to get into some of these offender clusters that are out there chattering and planning and threatening online. So our SOC team is looking at our researchers there on how do we identify those, get good intelligence, actionable intelligence, either shows us how the pattern shows us how they're operating, looking for new tactics and techniques, but also maybe pending victimization coming up. Is there a way that we could pull things out that are actionable and share those with our law enforcement partners and, of course, with our practitioners, our team members in the field to take protective action. So what are all the signals? What are we looking for at this Zone 5 beyond our parking lot, five zones of influence? Zone 5 beyond the parking lot, the built and the cyber environment, social environment. Zone 4, you transition.

That's our parking area, our boundary for that property, that place, whether it's a distribution center, an office, or of course a store environment, a mall, a center, or individual standalone store. That's four. How do we affect behavior? How do we pick up on these signals? So what are the signals now that this vehicle's moving that they're giving off? Visual, What are the signals now that this vehicle's moving that they're giving off? Visual, aural, digital from the vehicle, from the individuals in the vehicle, and all the ways that they can. Okay, what sensors do we need now in five as they are stationary, as they're moving toward us?

What sensors do we need to pick these signals up? Where do we place our sensor platforms? We now have seven, hopefully more on the way, from LiveView Technologies and Ecamm Secure right now. We may have more from those, but also a potential new member, it looks like, as well, arraying these visual, aural, and digital sensors on these platforms. Where do we place them? What do they look like? What sensors do we have? How do we get those sensors via the cloud faster, lower latency, more bandwidth, push more signals and push more to the SOC, but also pull more data and things like that. So working on all that, now we're looking at approaching our south parking lot of where our hub is, where our six research labs are moving in, what they come through the entry area. Again, what visual, aural, and digital signatures are they giving off and signals?

What sensors do we need there? What angles, distance, focal points? do we need there? What angles, distance, focal points? How do we have, you know, how do we validate with double or triple data collection if we need to from different platforms and things like that? They exit the vehicle, they prepare, they do things in the parking lot. They then approach and enter the building. Now they're in zone three, the interior of the building. So it's that approach, that transition, that entry, that transition through the building, through zone three. Again, what are they now doing? What are their behaviors? What are their physical features of them, their clothing, their movement, their behaviors, the objects that they've got,

you know, the weapons or tools or other things that they're doing. Are they talking on phones? They have mobile devices. Are there signals and signatures that those are emitting? Again, that's where the digital part comes in. In addition to the aural, are they talking? Are they saying? Are they screaming? Are they banging on metal, breaking glass? The list goes on. So, we're going through as a team, going through that. They go up into the engagement lab, our simulated store environment. They're now going to be taking a team going through that they go up into the engagement lab our simulated store environment they're now going to be taking a series of products that are protected in different ways or unprotected what are some of the protective display fixtures what signals do they give off in addition to behaviors the observable behaviors and all the things we talked about

visual oral and digital signals in that zone three in that space. Zone two, of course, is that proximity around the target. In this case, they are targeting specific assets in there. Are the protective fixtures generating APIs and alerts? Can those go to a smart device that's there with the place manager? Go to our security operations center lab. As you all know, we have a SOC lab that's extremely capable now. What are they doing in there? What are we sensing? Who's knowing about it? Are we coordinating? This group becomes aggressive. They take merchandise. They may also take some other things that generate sensors that generate signals and they exit the building

rapidly. They do certain things in the parking lot, get in their vehicle, exit the vehicle. What all did we pick up about the vehicle? Make, model, color, customization, damage, the tag or no tag present or no readable tag, state, number, everything else that's going on. Again, all the digital and other oral and visual signals. They turn right. They start to head westbound through our four-square block area, the Safer Places Lab environment. Then they stop at an intersection. We've got simulated traffic light, for example, that could pick up. That can be collected data simulating public safety data sets that sometimes retailers can access with their law enforcement partners. They proceed westbound to another intersection, turn left, go south, go to the next intersection, turn left, go east, turn left into the next area that's simulating another store for us. turn left into the next area that's simulating another store for us. We've got all these data that came out from all the sensors from the event itself, bang, you know, there's left at and right

of bang in military or law enforcement parlance. So what all did we generate? What signals, what alerts were generated during their theft event, during their aggressive, forceful theft event, what was displayed and so on. Were there weapons, tools used, certain behaviors, certain speech, certain movements, clustering of people, angles at shelves and all these things that we're looking at with models and with partners. That all, excuse me, generates data around what happened. It's alerting certain people locally on point there, the manager, the place manager, he or she, as well as to the SOC directly, as well as the manager. Are other places being alerted with better information? Can they battle track these people as they move past the other sensors we've got arrayed throughout our four square block area, our lab area? Now they show up at the next point. Now, it's not the first time we collect data as they enter, as we collect data while they

victimize the place, harm us. But then now pulling those data, all those signals, making sense, But then now pulling those data, all those signals making sense. And then now these things can be matched up as they move into the second area to to victimize that store, that place, those people. Now we start to have alerts. Guess what? We know where they are. Do we share that with other retailer partners with a much more complete suite of information that's going to help stop this and maybe neutralize or incarcerate this team, this crew, and so on. The whole reason we're trying to do all this, and this goes on and on in our scenario, is to just better understand that what happens here doesn't necessarily start here and rarely does and probably is not going to end here and how do we get ahead of the issue before they come our way as they approach as they enter and all that before the left of bang as much as at bang how do we deter disrupt and document what they're doing throughout their journey to crime those are aiming points for our action tools making it riskier less rewarding for the offender, more difficult for the offender, and so on. In the meanwhile, we're documenting if they're not getting it or just don't care.

We're able to share, convict for longer, and so on, all doing this. Now, we understand most, if not all retailers, are not going to have all the sensors, all the action tools along every step and stage of the offender. But the idea that we're trying to do here is better understand through crime scripting, what does the individual think about? How do they acquire, prepare, coordinate, move, communicate, and so forth on foot, online, in vehicles, and so on, just understanding better, more deeply each individual crime event, as well as crime events in the aggregate, a bunch of them, to understand how to better know and do the things that we need to. That way, retailers can compare and contrast.

We want to stretch this. We actually literally want to break our sensor pattern and the common operating picture that we're trying to achieve here to create very actionable, better, earlier detection, much better to find situations than we normally do or have right now so that we can all together get better and retailers can work together, work with mall and shopping center owners, with law enforcement partners, potentially with government grants and other funding mechanisms to get the tools they

need to better deploy and execute those tools to better safeguard, trying to do things cost effectively, and so on. And I think these kinds of things go beyond a thought process to building a strategy, building the operational model, building the actual plan, and then trying to execute and improve in that continuous improvement cycle. And here, with over 70 retail corporations and just so many brilliant LP, AP practitioners, so many brilliant solution partner technicians and engineers and computer scientists, our research team of eight researchers dedicated solely to helping each and every one of our retailers and individually as well as collectively, helping our SPs get better and better providing

what's needed making what they provide much better figuring out not just what to get but how to best use it so there's a lot of method to the madness here it's very complex and it's a long explanation it's you can imagine it's even a lot deeper much deeper complex, and putting it together. We've got on our LPRC Innovate Advisory Panel, we've got eight amazing technology companies. We'll be talking more about them in the future that are engaged monthly with our team and with the innovation people from 30 major retailers, plus one, we call it now, Bunnings Group down in Australia and New Zealand, to flesh out this scenario, flesh out other scenarios. Our tech partners on the AP, you know, the advisory panel also providing more significant resources

and funding and technologies so that we can build and add to the LPRC research team. You know, it's aspirational for us to get a data scientist, somebody that can really build things in Python, can help us interface even more technically with our solution partners and the integrations. We've got a new member, Jonathan Duong, who's on our team now. He is our R&D tech. So he's the guy that really understands technologies and so on. So we do have that resource now. And Jonathan has been amazing. Stephen McKay on our team

as a research assistant has been amazing in helping us put these together. Orion San Angelo, a research scientist here, is leading the integration process itself, acquiring, looking for gaps, doing that gap analysis. What do we need? How do we get it? Who's got it? How do we get it here? Deploy it. Eli from Serverly is amazing. He's our technical advisor to help us pull everything together and create a common operating picture. We have a variety of VMSs available to us now, including Milestone, to pull each and every sensor together, identify it. We've got 389 technologies now across our six LPRC labs and then outside across the four square blocks of the Safer Places lab. So exciting. I don't want to go on for too long because we've got two other people on our team here to put out some amazing information. But just let us let us know your thoughts, your inputs, your questions around what we're trying to do with LPRC integrate and what we what will be not just demonstrating,

but doing practical applications during Ignite, integrate in February with our members. And then we will start to implement different theft scenarios, crime scripting those through this process. The same with violent crime. Think about anything from aggressive behavior, which we'll be working on in this one in the parking lots, armed robberies, active assailants, those types of things. And then think about some of the in-store fraud scenarios we'll be working on. So supply chain crime scripts in the distribution or fulfillment centers, as well as the transport during actual on the road and over the road and other transport. So we're excited about it. We think this gives us the backbone.

This has been part of the method of madness for me anyway, trying to design this over the last really decade and acquire the tools and the technologies and getting the permissions from the university where I'm a criminologist, a research scientist in the Wertheim College of Engineering. Slowly but surely pulling everything together, getting these things lined out.

And now we're starting to pull everything together and make it happen. I've got calls today with a series of retailers. There are some of their top executives that work on innovation to implement these things. We had public supermarkets, their senior strategist and Rick, who is one of their senior managers as far as solutions helping us. So we're getting a ton of input from all the right people. All right, with no further ado, and we will keep you posted, let me turn it over to Tony D'Onofrio. Tony, take it away. Thank you, Reid, for all those great updates. Let me start this week with a just published 15 annual retail study from Zebra. This year it is titled, The World Has Changed, But Have Retailers.

As they said in the study, the next normal is unified commerce. As customers return to levels of pre-pandemic shopping in stores, retailers need to accommodate rising expectations for convenience, fulfillment, frictionless experience, and price sensitivity. The key trends that were identified in the studies, number one, shoppers embrace blended channel experiences. Shoppers continue choosing online or in-store for the same reason availability selection and price they prefer retailers by 80% with easy returns that are allowed to get another to the stores quickly 76% and offer delivery to home 75% they're also

taking advantage of alternative pickups and delivery options with 34% of shoppers opting to buy online, pick up in stores, or buy in store and ship to home, and 90% saying they will continue to use these services. Number two, associates are everything. Associates are the bridge between retailers and shoppers. They will play a pivotal role in ensuring shopper expectations are met. However, retailers are struggling to hire and retain workers in a competitive hiring market. 78% of associates and 84% of decision makers believe making technology, using technology as an asset in attracting, training, and retaining extraordinary workers. Number three, investing in innovation. Retailers are doubling down on tech investments to keep pace with consumers.

82% of decision-makers surveyed said they plan to increase tech investment the next three years. They're also preparing to evolve physical store designs with 45% planning to convert more cash registers to self-checkout and 43% converting space for contactless checkout. Again, this is a great topic here for LPRC and innovation in terms of optimizing that for also loss prevention. Number four, managing market forces. From supply chain issues in the news to empty shelves in the stores, consumers are clearly aware of the challenges that retailers face. retailers face. Nevertheless, they are still frustrated when inventory and 76% of decision makers are feeling the pressure to minimize our stocks. And 82% agree they have increased focus on supply chain operations. And finally, number five, shoppers' behaviors shift to new habits and preferences. Old habits do die hard as they point out in the research,

but post pandemic, new habits have staying power. After several years of accelerated growth of e-commerce and newer technologies like Contelex Payment, shoppers now expect a seamless experience, however they shop. So these five trends are extremely important. They are something, again, to keep starting here at TLPRC. I think they are important trends in terms of where retail is going into the new year.

The top priorities in the new startup when investing in new technologies are increased automation, improved inventory management, which includes real-time visibility out of stocks, cycle counts, shrink, and fraud visibility. So it's good to see that shrink and fraud are in the top three. And then number three, become more sustainable. The top five emerging technologies identified by decision makers for the next five years are advanced order fulfillment management, employee experience technologies, prescriptive analytics, demand planning, and distributed order management. And finally, the key takeaways from the new data this year are the following.

Number one, meet the sharper expectations around availability, selection, and price. Manage supply chain and inventory. Drive tech experiences, especially for associates. Focus on the right emerging technologies in the five-year look, which today center around labor and supply chain. So a really great study. We encourage you to look at it. And since this is Thanksgiving week, let me finish with a summary of some fun facts about the USA holiday of Thanksgiving. You may not know, for example, that the day after Thanksgiving is the busiest day for plumbers. So plumbers are the busiest after the day after Thanksgiving. Americans

eat 704 million pounds of turkey every Thanksgiving. The Butterball Hotline answers 100,000 plus related turkey questions every year. I did not know that female turkeys don't gobble. The movie Frozen had its biggest Thanksgiving opening of any movie ever on Thanksgiving. Tofu is the most hated Thanksgiving dish. Jingle Bells was originally a Thanksgiving song. The first Thanksgiving that started it all actually lasted three days. The woman who got Thanksgiving reinstated as a national holiday also wrote the Mary had

a little lamb. Canada celebrates Thanksgiving also but celebrates it on a different day. The Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade balloons used to be used to actually be let go into the air after the show. About 50 million people watched the Macy's Thanksgiving Parade actually. The original TV dinner was a result of a Thanksgiving miscalculation. Swanson ordered too much turkey and they had to do something with it, so they created the TV dinner. Red wine is the most popular Thanksgiving tipple or drink. Holiday weight gain accounts for most of the thickening

associated with aging, so keep that in mind as you eat all that food. The tradition of cracking the wishbone is actually very ancient and goes back to the Etruscans, which are a pre-Roman people in Italy. So this is pre-Roman empire, a pre-Roman republic. Benjamin Franklin liked turkeys more than he liked bald eagles. And in fact, there was a devil about making the turkey

the national bird for the United States. And Thanksgiving is America's second favorite holiday behind Christmas, and it is followed by Halloween. So those are the top three. So just wanted to take a moment to wish all of you and thank you all for listening to this podcast. And we appreciate the growing popularity of it, and we are always open to ideas to improve. to ideas to improve. For all the U.S. listeners,

happy Thanksgiving, or for some of you that are listening, after a belated Thanksgiving to you and your family, we appreciate you. Thank you. Over to you, Tom. Well, thank you, Reed, and thank you, Tony,

and a lot of exciting stuff going on. Today is the Tuesday. We're taping just a couple days before Thanksgiving. So for all the listeners out there, I think you'll hear this the week of Thanksgiving or potentially the week after. So have a very happy Thanksgiving, spending the time with your family. I think one of the things that I'm grateful for is the industry and obviously being able to work with Tony and Reed and have everybody here listening. So a couple different things. I wanted to kind of mix it up a little bit, talk a little bit about some just things going on out in the world today.

The Wall Street Journal just released their top airports, and I thought this was really interesting. The Wall Street Journal just released their top airports and I thought this was really interesting. SFO was listed as the top, so San Francisco Airport in the United States. As someone that travels just a tremendous amount of time, it's always interesting to see what other folks think about airports and travel. San Francisco Airport to me, I have actually an office in Northern California, so I'm in that airport at least once a month. And I don't actually, until I read this article,

knew of some of the amenities. There's a yoga studio, a wine-tasting bar. And one of the interesting points about this is San Francisco Airport doesn't use loudspeakers everywhere. They actually limited the number of loudspeakers so that you could be more focused while you're in the airport and have a more peaceful transition. Why am I bringing this up? I thought it was an interesting article, but also as we embark on Thanksgiving, we have seen air travel return to almost pre-pandemic

levels, which is phenomenal when you think about um, where we're at and, uh, more expensive than it was before. And absolutely, um, are, are in a better position from travel than you've ever been. As far as I don't know that I've been on a flight that hasn't been full. So certainly, definitely something positive out there. The other thing, and I'm sure Tony mentioned some of this and will be a little bit repetitive here, but analysts are expecting folks to spend 7% more on holiday shopping this year than they have in past years. So even with the increase, even all those things combined,

So even with the increase, even all those things combined. And this is on top of the inflationary demand. So this really means that people are continuing to spend. While there is some analysts that talk about wallet share being down for customers, the reality is the spend is still at a point that it's increasing. is the spend is still at a point that it's increasing. Now, that does have some relationship to cost of goods, but as we know here on the podcast, that there's still a fair amount of sales and things out there because of some of the over-inventory positions.

I think a lot of retailers are in a much better place. I've been out and about traveling and I see quite a bit of activity. This is heavily based on our employment situation here in the United States. Roughly just under 97% of Americans have a job. So that plays a big role into where that chair comes from. And the unemployment number is still at all-time lows of a little bit over three and a half percent, but you have anywhere from 96 to 97% of the population working, which allows that spend to happen. So I know we talk about all the doom and gloom and the things to come, and certainly we're aware of the potential. But I think it's important to note that we are in a position right now where there is still some positivity going on in the markets. I think there's a lot to be said about what the news says and what the analysts say versus what actually happens. And that's not a shot at the news. I think we as human beings have defied a lot of the analysts

in the past and may continue that. I also think there's no doubt that inflation is a challenge and that we are in an economic situation that eventually will probably affect all of us in some fashion. So switching gears a little bit, we've been staying on top of the whole Twitter, Elon Musk thing since the beginning, but well before the purchase, we talked about it. And I think, you know, there's been a lot of news around mass layoffs, people leaving. news around mass layoffs, people leaving. It's important, a couple important notes to say is that Twitter's monthly active users are somewhere around 200 million and they had approximately 7500 employees before Elon

Musk started. The estimates now are that they'd be around somewhere in the 1,000 to 2,000 range. It hasn't been fully disclosed. It's important to note that when Twitter, in the earlier days when it had 200 million users, that it had about 1,000 employees as well. So I think this is one of those things where when you look at the facts, Twitter actually ran for many, many years with 1,000 to 1,400 employees with the same user base, the same activity base. Why do I think that's important? I think Twitter is a very, very important tool for all of us here for a social media active listening tool for threat assessment.

So, again, there's a lot of negative news about this. Certainly, I don't want to get into the finances of Twitter, but the reality here is that the technical aspect of it doesn't change that much. Just recently this week, they've started reinstating banned accounts. Former President Trump, Jordan Peterson, Kathy Krishnan, just a whole host of accounts that were banned in the past have been put back on. There are some accounts that are still banned. And I think this is one of those things where I wrote an article about this, and I really feel pretty strongly about big tech censoring becomes a very gray area. Because it's big tech and it's not governmental, it's a private company. They have the right to censor whatever they want, right? It's their platform.

If you read the terms of services, if you ever really wanted to get into the weeds of that, you'd understand that legally they can censor you. The thought is, okay, so where does that start and where does that stop? And how do you manage misinformation, hate speech, and incitement of violence? And I think this is one of those things that is keeping Twitter in the news. And I think this is one of those things that will continue to be a challenge for all social media platforms is what is the balance of doing the right thing without censoring someone? So I think there's a lot to be said there, and I think we need to keep an eye on it. On the flip side, just recently there was, in the New York City area,

there was an active threat on synagogues where an individual on Twitter actually said, on multiple social media platforms, but Twitter is one of them, that he was going to shoot up a synagogue. And he said, this time I'm serious type of comment. That was actually what was said, almost this time I'm really going to do it. And because of some active monitoring protocols that are being used, this individual was identified. There was another individual with him. There was an arrest made. and that was based on using social media for active intelligence gathering. And there's a whole bunch of things that come out of that. But the point is that Twitter is still a very valuable tool, certainly

for weather events, certainly for information out there. So I certainly hope that the next few months there is improvement. And I think Elon Musk is kind of a larger than life character. And one of the things that I shouldn't say character, but that's what came out. I think one of the things that you see is that this is part of his niche that he goes in and he's very disruptive and kind of breaks things. And we'll, we'll continue to see that happening.

So switching gears just a little to risk, we are in full swing of holiday scams. So what my advice to you is to pay very, very close attention to emails and text messages at this point. This is the time when people send mass, mass information, gathering type phishing or malware attempts where you really are trying to they really are trying to get that information so how many people have made an online order how easy would it be if a really good email comes out

there and I think that that is the thing to look out for those. Your FedEx package is delayed emails, the Amazon order email, the PayPal notifications. I was actually at a conference, a banking financial conference in San Diego last week and someone showed me a couple PayPal emails. Actually, my good friend Brad Moody, who's a risk guy in the risk space. He actually showed me one that he said he would use for a presentation. It was a really poorly written email. It wasn't really good. But the interesting part here is this is a different, it was a different attempt. And what, and I know we spoke about this before, but this wasn't trying to engage you in the email. It was telling you, hey, give this 800 number a call so we can validate information.

And they're almost psychologically playing on, we don't want you to click on anything. We want you to have that verbal conversation, which we all know does have a psychological impact. It is harder to assess when you're talking to someone what it is that's going on. So I think keep an eye out for those. There is just a tremendous amount that are being taken advantage of. Black Friday and retail season,

you know, emails, PayPal money request scams, click on the link to reset your password type scam. So you see a lot of these spoofing emails that are coming that look really, really good. It says, hey, we just want to let you know we locked your account. When do you have time? Go in here. And a lot of times there's this different approach of non-urgency.

So, you know, we used to do this urgency, right? Like do this now. And now we have these slow and low attacks where people are going, this is an urgent, hey, if you haven't used your account, don't worry. But when you get a chance, take a look. And the idea is there were the bad actors or the bot that the bad actors are using are playing on the psychological piece of it. There has been a tremendous amount of PayPal money scams where so-and-so sent you money and they're looking for you to add. A lot of times, again, that phone number is the one that you have to keep aware of. This camera adds a contact phone number. They add a number and say, hey, if you want to cancel,

let's just call this number. Call PayPal. Call Amazon. Look at that. And then also the play on automated messages, a message that's an automated sound that when we're talking about it here, we go like, well, obviously that's a scam. But the reality is when you get that automated message about an order that sounds like an order you just placed, we're playing on that psychologically. So when in doubt, take the extra few minutes. Don't click it. Don't call a phone number if you don't have an order out there don't worry about it you know that was my kind of big thing I would tell people is if you're not expecting something don't don't don't fall into the privy of this looks really good be even invoice attachments we've seen really good invoice attachments and folks will say,

but look, there's an invoice here and this looks really, really good. So I think that that's a really important one to keep in mind before you do it. Then two factor authentication scams. So phishing scams that trick you into using a real password or around, have been around forever where someone's sending in phishing scams to get you to give your password. That's been around. The big thing now is two-factor authentication. Everybody kind of almost in some design is using it.

Your banks in most cases force you to use it. So you don't even have the ability to not use two-factor authentication. And what two-factor authentication is, is exactly what it sounds like. When you log into something, there is a second form factor of authentication required. Now, what I would say to that is that, you know, a lot of us use SMS and some of us use app-based two-factor authentication. SMS and some of us use app-based to factor authentication. I'm a proponent and I always advise to use app-based, which allows you to go to an app that's on your device. And that's a much more difficult one to defeat for the bad guys. They can, but what ends up happening is you have someone go to log in and they need that secondary number,

whether it be through app-based or text-based. And what is happening is you have scammers that know this, so they're really taking a lot to aim at almost creating websites or creating ways to make it look like it's it's something so you know sending you a message that your account is in violation of Facebook terms for instance and then get in touch with us this is only valid for 24 hours you click on that that message then brings you to log in, and then it will immediately ask you for a password. You go to that password, and then it's going to ask you for a two-factor authentication

code, just like it always would. And then at the exact same time, the bad actors will be using that code. So this is a little bit more sophisticated, but the key here is do not click on links and emails or text messages. Go to, if you believe that you have a locked account, if you believe that there's a challenge, go to the actual website itself on your own and look at it don't resist the urge to be curious the other thing about clicking links is as these attacks are more sophisticated sometimes they'll be malicious code that's executed so the the good rule of thumb is don't click

that link unless you know it's a legitimate link and you have to really really think through that another one is credit monitoring alert scams so you get an alert that looks like there's an account hack or you know you get your any of the credit monitoring companies alerting you via text message to check this out be very aware of what it looks like. The great thing about saved passwords is most autofill passwords, not all, will not autofill. So if you go to a website that's not the same, it's not going to allow you to put that password and it's going to remind you in some cases. So I think as we continue to evolve here, there is, and this is a great thing,

there is a better mousetrap, if you will, for some of this, but it's still the human arm piece really comes in. Just be very, very aware of what could happen. This week, if you have a new iPhone and you were on iOS 16, you would have seen an update go through. This was a critical update for a security flaw. Update your phones. You know, I know I say that every single podcast, it's that important that I say it every single podcast,

that that is the way. And I mean it, that is the way that, you know, the easiest way for all of us to protect ourselves is by simply just doing um that update and then i'm gonna close out with ftx crypto um news and i spoke a little bit about this on the last podcast with the you know the one of the larger crypto exchanges going under. We talked about crypto when they were going to a crypto avalanche. But in a new bankruptcy filing, the value of FTX's crypto was just $659,000. Yet, just a few weeks prior, the CEO CEO said it was five point five billion So huge huge huge difference right six hundred fifty nine thousand versus a five billion dollar holding this is a major major challenge for crypto because

What this does is really kind of? Exasperates the calling for regulation. I believe there needs to be regulation with crypto. I believe crypto will be here to stay. But I also, this is not the first run of crypto exchanges that have gone and filed for bankruptcy. Celsius is another one. The thing about FTX that's so challenging is that it really flushes out one of the challenges with crypto and I think Jamie Dimon and a few other people had said this in the past that it's a modern-day Ponzi scheme You know you're you're putting money into it as long as there's money still going in the money grows The second that money starts Stops going in the bottom falls out the lower people on the pole

Have their money and but some in the top don't or vice versa. The bottom fell out here in the crypto market. And one of the things is that the assets of September 30th totaled $2.2 billion. So the challenge here is you had an $8 billion to a $5 billion to a $2 billion to a $659,000 challenge here. And there isn't necessarily nefarious actors here. This isn't necessarily their CEO, Sam Baikman. This isn't necessarily that there was any nefarious action. This was you have a tremendous amount of money put into this and the interest that's that's growing on this and the way it's moving is based on that

that crypto that it keeps it keeps growing and replicating but again that Ponzi scheme pieces that when there's nothing at the bottom of the bottom falls out there's no money to fund the money and with crypto it isn't as simple as that right you are buying this this cryptocurrency but the reality is that it's a pretty pretty wild ride for anybody that's involved and I think just for Sam Bankman, the CEO who was ousted, he had $16 billion that in reality, not in theory, in less than a week was evaporated, gone. And at one point, the digital assets that he had peaked at $26 billion. Just think of those are massive, massive numbers.

And there is a, I believe, around $3 billion out that's owed to customers right now. I think it'll be higher than that. And this is one of the risks with crypto. So we're gonna continue to watch this cause I think this will affect the overall crypto market and how, what the future will be. But for everybody here, it's just like any other investment, be diversified,

understand what you're getting involved in. You know, I'm not anti-crypto at all. I just think it's a part of the payment cycle. It's not the, it's not a big part of the payment cycle. It's not a big part of the payment cycle. And this is going to force regulation that wasn't there before. And with that, I will turn it back over to Tony and Reid. All right. Thank you both so much for everything, Tom and Tony. Amazing information. And we love working with you all. And thank you to Diego for all your production and all

your hard work and all the planning as we're moving forward we'll start having some special guests and thank you Wilson for helping us also pull things together and mostly thank you to you all always listening tuning in we want to hear from you what do we do what should we do to improve here at lpresearch.org and we'll be at here at lpresearch.org? And we'll be at operations at lpresearch.org. Everybody have a great and safe day. Thanks for listening to the Crime Science Podcast presented by the Loss Prevention Research Council. If you enjoyed today's episode, you can find more crime science episodes and valuable information at lpresearch.org. The content provided in the Crime Science Podcast

is for informational purposes only and is not a substitute for legal, financial, or other advice. Views expressed by guests of the Crime Science Podcast are those of the authors and do not reflect the opinions or positions of the Loss Prevention Research Council.