LPRC - CrimeScience – The Weekly Review – Episode 55 with Dr. Read Hayes, Tom Meehan & Tony D’Onofrio

Episode Date: April 29, 2021

What Country Employees is Most Productive and Civil Unrest is Resurging! In this week’s episode, our co-hosts discuss these topics and more, including a Vaccination Global Leaderboard, Top 5 Highest Value Start Ups, Electric Car Market is Changing, Privacy Changes on IOS are Occurring, and the Largest Global Retailers are Identified. Listen in to stay updated on hot topics in the industry and more! The post CrimeScience – The Weekly Review – Episode 55 with Dr. Read Hayes, Tom Meehan & Tony D’Onofrio appeared first on Loss Prevention Research Council.

Hi everyone, welcome to Crime Science. In this podcast, we aim to explore the science of crime and the practical application of this science for loss prevention and asset protection practitioners, as well as other professionals. We would like to thank Bosch for making this episode possible. We use Bosch Camera's onboard intelligent video analytics to quickly locate important recorded incidents or events. Bosch's forensic search saves you time and money by searching through hours or days of video within minutes to find and collect video evidence. Learn more about intelligent video analytics from Bosch in zones one through four of LPRC's zones of influence by visiting Bosch online at BoschSecurity.com. Welcome everybody to another episode of Crime Science Podcast. This is our latest episode in the weekly series. Today, we're going to talk a little bit with Tony D'Onofrio and Tom Meehan,

and produced by Diego Rodriguez of LPRC. And start off a little bit about on the vaccine front, looks like some interesting, a really powerful study out indicating that those individuals within the group that have been vaccinated for COVID-19, only 0.008% got any type of discernible COVID, symptomatic or otherwise. So further good news that these vaccines look very, very safe and effective and appear to be curtailing any type of infection in so many cases. There are exceptions. We know there's been 4,000 or 5,000, and the efficacy claims have been between 65 and a little over 95%, which still means that some 5% to 20% of the people might be vulnerable to getting some kind of illness, but they seem to be almost 99% when it comes to serious disease prevention and reducing hospitalization. And you see too that

even some people that are reporting in some studies that have the long haulers of COVID-19 syndrome, as they try and tackle what that is and why it presents in so many different ways, as they try and tackle what that is and why it presents in so many different ways, that there seems to be some therapeutic benefit for some that receive the vaccines as far as curtailing that syndrome. The blood clot issue is still under study. I think it's a powerful display of their surveillance that's underway and continues to be underway as part of the vaccine program to pick up something that is so, so, so rare. You know, roughly eight known individuals out of, say driving an automobile, the risk to reward is dramatically different. So that seems to be good news that it's just so isolated. But the governmental surveillance and the outside identities and the university panels are all over this.

University panels are all over this. And so they were able to detect even that minute amount of a response, negative response. Looks like right now, we've talked about there are now 49 vaccine candidates in phase one human trials, 49 additional, 35 additional anti-COVID-19 vaccine trials in phase two trials, 35 additional candidates, 27 additional candidates are now in extensive exhaustive phase three trials. So we can see all kinds of vaccine options continuing to move in through the developmental and testing protocols is what, in addition to the five that already have emergency use authorization, including Moderna, the Pfizer, BioNTech, of course, AstraZeneca, J&J, Janssen, and some others from other parts of the world, and that there are eight that are approved. So, there are a lot of options, a lot of candidates, a lot more therapies that are continuing to emerge. And remember, we talked way back months and months and months ago that

getting people vaccinated at some point and the hope and dream of having a vaccine within a couple of years, but vaccines, having quick, even at-home tests would be critical to get everybody back to work in some semblance of normalcy and of course, better therapies. And so here we are with over 240 million Americans have now been vaccinated, closing in on 100 million totally vaccinated. These are all adults and continue to go there. I know there's some concerns with some that are not able to make it for their second, continue to go there. I know there's some concerns with some that are not able to make it for their second, unwilling to make it for their second, or when they return that they don't have the vaccine they had for the first dose. And so they're still not advising that you mix vaccines in your dosing. So that's still continuing to be worked on. But the idea that we've been vaccinating now between one and four million

Americans every day in the United States, starting back last year, is a real testament to amazing amount of rigorous science. So worldwide, it looks like over 1.1 billion humans have been vaccinated and closing out a quarter billion fully vaccinated around the world. So moving at light speed, we know there's some real tragedies as far as spikes going on, whether it be localized in places like Michigan or certainly in India, is right now the standout where there's just a lot of tragedy. is right now the standout where there's just a lot of tragedy. We've seen the United States, Europe, UK, and other places racing to get vaccines poured into India, as well as oxygen and oxygenation machines and ventilators and all types of

medical technology and even people going in to help them recover and re-stabilize there because it's a real tragedy what's happening in India right now. So we've got to all pull together. Continuing research on mRNA vaccines, which is the Moderna and the Pfizer, BioNTech, those both seem to still be highly effective, efficacious in this case, as well as safe. They're looking always for safety and other signals coming out of there. They also can see the mRNA messenger does not enter into the cell center, does not affect DNA. I know that there were some early kind of chatter out there in the darker parts of the internet and so forth for social media, but it's just not the case.

The mRNA is a messenger that sends a message and the body recognizes and attacks it, forms a defense. And so now our bodies are ready when the real, if and when the real coronavirus, we're exposed to that SARS-CoV-2 virus. So I think those are some of the high points there and what's going on in that front. Tom could probably touch on some of what's happening in whether it be Minneapolis or South Carolina or Ohio or the different areas and ongoing, of course, in the Portland and Seattle area that affect retailers, which is really mostly what this podcast is all about. So let me LPRC front. We've got several webinars in development. We just delivered one AI solve artificial intelligence

solve a webinar, which was second in our series. We're working on three more and then just getting ready to develop an idea with the university of Florida for yet another AI Solve webinar slash summit in that field. So that's going to be exciting stuff. We've got one webinar coming up just for solution partner members of the LPRC only to help them do a deep dive into LPRC, where we are, what all the capabilities are, what the opportunities are for any solution partner or provider to, as a member, engage fully across the LPRC ecosystem with our science team, with the retailers now closing in on 70 chains, and of course, even with each other to integrate. up on this podcast is mission critical. We've had several key retailers approach us and talk about their real concerns about, and really to put it succinctly, they're over it is what some of them are telling me. The idea of just buying all these disparate technologies that are capable of being

integrated together. Some are not, some are just more mechanical and they can't be integrated. We know that using different keys and different ways to open technologies has been a concern for everybody in retail for years. And so now the same thing with digitally coupling technologies, they really want a platform that allows them to do a lot more things simultaneously

so that they can learn to integrate, collect data across the surface area and understand better the effects, where they need to provide more focus and precision, action and things like that. So stay tuned. But integration seems to be a growing theme. We've got now starting to get some of the major retailers booking trips here into Gainesville, Florida to meet with us and brainstorm here at LPRC. Stay tuned on that right now. Most of those are, I wouldn't say confidential,

but they're proprietary visits as the, as the retailers start to gin up and come in here and inform their plans, their action plans. So that's a little bit about LPRC. Please go to the LPRC website, lpresearch.org. Diego, who's our producer here on Crime Science, is doing amazing, amazing things with that website, making it even easier to navigate, to find the most important information really very rapidly, but to create dynamic, colorful imagery that helps everybody better understand how LPRC actually works and how to leverage the community, whether you're a retailer or solution partner or other type of member. So stay tuned there.

So if I might, I'm going to go ahead and segue over to Tony D'Onofrio. Tony, can you take us around the world? Thank you very much, Reid. And just a quick update on the LPRC front in Europe. We are planning a July meeting with a group of European retailers in London. That will be a start of, again, keep going in terms of building LPRC Europe. We'll keep everybody posted through the webcast in terms of our progress in other parts of the world. But speaking to innovation, which is a key topic for the LPRC,

some of the data that I'll share this week, let's start with the top five highest value startups in the world. And it's interesting to watch how innovation really has been a key driver around the world, especially in China and the United States. So the most highest value startup is actually in China. It's a company called ByteDance. You might not know ByteDance, but I'm sure you know TikTok. And ByteDance is the parent of TikTok, and they're valued at $140 billion right now. TikTok, and they're valued at $140 billion right now. Number two is Stripe, which is a fintech startup in the US. It's valued at $95 billion. Number three is SpaceX.

All of us have heard of SpaceX, especially recently since they shuttled some more astronauts to the space station and were also awarded the lunar module, but they're valued at $74 billion. We go back to China for Didi Chuxing, and it's a transportation startup valued at $62 billion. And then number five, very popular during COVID is Instacart, which again is a US-based startup based at $39 billion. Talking to startups in electric cars, when is the right time to buy an electric car? And what is the cost difference between an electric car versus a gas powered car?

And there was actually some interesting information in Infographic Journal where they stated that mortgage telling predicts that 72% of all car sales will be electric by the year 2040. They also did an analysis in that infographic in terms of what it costs to have an electric car. So after a six-year run of an electric car, when you consider how long it lasts to purchase price and tax credits, costs about 71 000 nearly 72 000 actually to have an electric car an electric car is really saving money um yearly but it costs a lot more upfront and that's really the issue it's the upfront cost for gas power car the average six year cost based on longevity. Purchase price is nearly $59,000. Again, gas, gas powered cars

save you more than later years. So the key is really getting the cost, the upfront cost of electric cars down, which will happen as more competition comes into the market. Also very interesting to me this week was how productive is an hour of work in terms of contribution in GDP to the economy. And this was a study that was published in InstaDista, and it's actually from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, on what an average hour of work contributes to the most to GDP. of work contributes to the most to GDP. And the number one country, actually, that's most productive in terms of somebody working and contributing to the economy, I was surprised, again, it's Ireland. Every hour worked in Ireland contributes $102 of GDP or economic contribution. Number two is Luxembourg at $94. Norway is number three at $84. United States is number four at $72.

And France is number five. So that's how much on our world contributes to the economy when you work. And then supporting what Reid has been talking about in terms of vaccination and where we are around the world. There is a race to vaccinate. And here are the top five countries in terms of that have achieved, what percentages that they have achieved in terms of full vaccination as of April 19, which is only about a week or so ago. And so number one is Israel. They have 57% of the population fully vaccinated.

Number two is Chile at nearly 28%. Number three is Bahrain is 27%. U.S. is number four, which is a surprise again, because early on we were all worried. They're already at nearly 25%. And number five is Serbia at 18%. What's interesting is how far behind Europe is. Serbia at 18%. What's interesting is how far behind Europe is. I'll give you an example. My 91-year-old father is just getting his first shot in Italy right now, whereas in the U.S., I'm fully vaccinated. So it gives you an idea how much more work needs to be done. And finally,

one of my favorite studies that I look forward to every year is from Deloitte, which is the Global Powers of Retailing. It summarizes the state and the direction of the global top 250 largest retailers. Walmart, Amazon, Costco, Schwartz Group, which is really little, Kroger, Walgreens, Boots, Walgreens, Boots Alliance, Home Depot, Aldi, CVS, and Tesco. The top 10 are actually holding steady. The only change was Amazon, the rise of Amazon. Amazon has moved up now to be number two, pushing Costco down to number three. That's really the change. All the other retailers stayed at the same level. The top 10 retailers represented 33% of all the total retail revenue for the top 250. On average, the top 10 retailers had operation in 13 countries, although the trend has been that they're actually closing more countries and opening in recent years.

The growth rate for the global top 250 retailers has been 5%, the profit margin 2.4%, and the percentage of revenue from foreign operation about 22.5%. It was interesting to me that North America leads in terms of the global retailers. So nearly $2,285 billion in revenue is from the United States. Europe is second with $1,618 billion. Asia is third with $786 billion. Latin is fourth, and Africa Africa Middle East is fifth.

The highest retail growth is in Asia at 7.1%, followed by Latin America, 6.2%. The laggard is actually North America. They're actually last at 3.6%. And then this is one of my favorites. For the top 250 retailers, 66% of the revenue is from fast-moving consumer goods. And these are food and drug, mass merchandisers. So they dominate the revenue, the total revenue. 19% is from hotlines such as DIY and leisure goods. And only 10% is for apparel.

So we talk a lot about apparel. But in the global top 250 retailers, only 10% of the revenue is for apparel. Net profit margin for apparel was nearly 7%. For fast moving goods, it was a measly 2%. And for hard goods, it was 4.4%. In the last study, 12 new retailers joined from around the world in the top 250. Nine out of the 12 are from Asia, indicating the rise of Asia in terms of the global top to Philly. Two were from Europe and one was from the United States. And then finally, they also list the top 50 fastest growing retailers. Nine of the fastest growing top 250 retailers are from the United States. Four are from China, Mexico, France, and Russia.

Four each in terms of those countries. So summarizing this week, startups are still a vibrant part of our lives and it's great to see so much innovation even here at the LPRC. Electric cars are coming, and we're listening to observe what happens to some companies like Tesla. We have a lot we can learn from Ireland in making the economy run more efficient. The global race for vaccines is important, and we will determine how fast we get to the new normal.

And finally, the top 250 retailers reinforce the importance of food and mass merchandise. It also reminds us about squeezing all those pennies for profitability, and LPRC is one of those great places to experiment with technology to reduce cost and to profitability. So with that, let me turn it over to Tom. Oh, thank you, Tony. Thank you, Rita. I apologize if there's background noise as I'm in transit. But I'll start off with and reach started to talk a little bit about some of the civil unrest throughout the United States. We talk about this every single podcast, the FusionNet, which is a place where retailers, law enforcement, academic folks can get together and share information, validate information about events that are occurring throughout the world. And, you know,

in one sense, I think that with some of the recent occurrence in the verdict in Minneapolis around the Chavez trial, there was less civil disturbance than some of the reports would have alluded to, which is good news, but you still have hotbeds of pockets of areas that have what I would say at this point is consistent disturbance. So the Portland market, there are some small subsets of Denver, the Philadelphia market, kind of a consistent rumbling of some sort, and then the San Francisco, Northern California market. In Elizabeth, South Carolina, there was another unfortunate event where there was an African-American shot during a search in the house and there have been protests. Well, I would say they were smaller in nature around the release of the body cam footage.

I think that's something we have to pay very close attention to because there is a fair amount of chatter throughout all of the channels around BLM and other protests about that event. panels around BLM and other protests about that event. And when an event like that occurs, how the government and police respond really do make a difference on what it is. And then the other event where there was a teenager attempting to stab another teenager and that was a fatal shot.

So there are a couple incidents that occurred in the last three weeks that still are very, very much being talked about online in the Telegram groups, on Reddit, and then the standard social media channels. And it is definitely drawing a lot of attention. And I think we need to keep very close watch and either we go through the fusion net of when and if the body camera in

carolina is released because that will impact um what occurs and as you know we tape this show on tuesday so there is a a high chance that by the time you listen to this show on thursday some things have changed so that's why it's so important to stay tuned into the fusion net uh and you know get that information when it comes available. More to come on those two. Just switching gears a little bit to some of the cyber activity that's occurring. And I think we talked a lot about the SolarWinds attack, which was a government, believed to be a Russian government-sponsored attack. And what really was very interesting about that attack is that SolarWinds is a premier cybersecurity protection intrusion based protection company and they were breached.

Just recently, there was a company that does do US business, but I think this probably would affect globally outside the US, which is a code review company who about last week released a notice that they had been breached. who about last week released a notice that they had been breached. The interesting part here is that these are companies that are by design to protect us and have a lot more access to our information. And when I say our, I mean the general population's information. So in this code review data breach, what was disclosed is that they had a breach for at least a month, if not longer, and they don't know exactly what was accessed yet. But with a company like CodeReview, one of the challenges is they review code for vulnerabilities. So they have other software's code, which again, really creates an opening here. This isn't to suggest that they did anything wrong

by any standpoint. It's just to kind of further push that these attacks are becoming more and more sophisticated. And in some cases are government sponsored, which means really the best laid defense is vulnerable. we do after the fact. The way this vulnerability or the way this breach occurred was through a document that at least believed through a document signing third-party companies. So for anybody who's ever signed a contract online, you'll get that kind of docu-sign or any number of the document signing companies. The belief here is that there was a vulnerability related to a credential and that's how the attack happened. There is a trend on more sophisticated attacks using access via third-party plugins, software, and I think we all need to stay tuned to this. And the reality here is the only advice that I can offer

is to continue to stay patched, to continue to look at whatever network monitors you have, and then be prepared to respond. I think that's one of the things that we don't talk about enough, and I know that we do with the LPRC. And this is where I think physical security and cybersecurity and all those things overlap and the lines get blurred, is if you know there's an event that could potentially occur,

do you have a plan to respond? We do a lot of times a lot to deter and to push things off but in some cases it's inevitable the things are going to occur what's our what's our plan of action when they do occur and this goes for anything that occur that happens not just a cyber event but it could be a physical security event it could be some disturbance it could be just a theft event you know how do we to it? How do we react to it? It's just as important of the methodology of preventing it and understanding what occurs. So I think that that's really, really important to talk about. The other thing is, and if you've been anywhere in the news, you probably have heard about the Facebook's new challenge they have with privacy

related to Apple's iOS upgrades. So 14.5, which is the iOS software that just was released, has some pretty significant software enhancements focused on consumer privacy. And there is a lot of, you know, chatter throughout the Silicon Valley world about how Apple is, you know, not taking a step too far. And it depends on where you sit on the fence with this, but at a very high level, the newest app really buttons down what and the newest app upgrade really buttons down what apps on the iOS platform can do from a privacy standpoint. So companies like Facebook, facebook google twitter that rely heavily on

user data to monetize it now have an obstacle because there really is no way for them to get that data without a true opt-in through the application so um say you know some say this is a ploy for apple to control them you know control the landscape and then get the information that everybody needs um i think this is just more along the lines and then get the information that everybody needs. I think this is just more along the lines of some of the privacy things that we're going to continue to come in some European countries. They're farther ahead on the privacy state. What it means for retailers is that in some cases, retailers that used app-based collection methods will have to have a much stronger opt-in option. Most loyalty programs have a fairly open opt-in piece in their terms of services. But as we probably all know, I know

that I don't read terms of services. It's an entirety when I use an application. But this would, in some cases, may cause alarm for someone that isn't needed because there'll be a pop-up that talks about privacy. So stay tuned for that. I do think it will impact a lot more than just Facebook. And I don't necessarily think that this is negative or positive. I think it's just a change in the way things occur. And as long as the education is out there for folks that use iPhones, then I don't think it'll do any long-term damage. If anything, it'll just allow people to understand what information they're sharing and what people are doing with it in a better way.

I do actually think this will have an impact on retail or folks that use app-based marketing if there's not a really, really good messaging out there. And of course, Android, who is the competitor of iOS, has said that they're not going to follow suit and take this aggressive method, that it's an unfair practice. So stay tuned for it. I think this is the future. There'll be more privacy things that occur in the next six to 12 months as the breaches continue to happen. I think one of the things I would say is when we talk about mass fatigue, we have breach fatigue. It happens every day. If you have a credit monitoring service that you're using, you probably get a notification once a week about your information being compromised online. And we do have this breach or cyber incident fatigue because it's now part of life

and that's one of the things i would stress everybody is don't become complacent with those notifications go out look at them change your passwords do what you need to do to protect yourself because um i think it is a very challenging process when someone does um go in and take your credentials and perform what I would say is a much more modern formal identity theft has a much greater impact and then rounding out and I've read talked to it did a great job talking about the vaccinations and where we're at we are now starting to see seizures of websites and actual seizures of counterfeit vaccines occurring throughout the world. This is, it is as you probably suspected, I think Tony mentioned it too, is in Europe,

it's a heavier activity because of the vaccination rate, whether the government officials, law enforcement, and military officials are actually out seizing the counterfeit vaccines. There has been some chatter about Chinese vaccines getting out of China illegally and being sold on the black market. But I think for this group, I think there's no real reminder here. Obviously, everybody probably understands the dangers of counterfeit vaccines. But if you are in a European country and you are in a position

where you are not able to get a vaccine, however crazy this sounds, this is something that people are willing to do is buy that black market vaccine, buy that piece there. Additionally, there was someone that was sentenced six months in jail in the Bahamas who falsified

a negative test result to travel. So they're now taking the approach of, you know, if you get caught falsifying a travel document saying that you had a vaccination, there will be an action that is taken. And this is, I think, the first reported case of jail time associated with it. But I do believe we'll see more of that. There is a tremendous amount of vaccine cards being sold throughout the dark web and the open web for as little as $50 and as much as $350. So people can use these to travel as well as test results. I think that will be a continued trend until people can get vaccinated and to run through. And this person, you know, who got caught with the negative test results was what I would say a regular person.

This is not, you know, in my opinion, wouldn't be someone that we would look at as a career criminal, someone that was trying to travel and basically said, I'm not sick. So I'm going to go online. I'm going to print this document, edit it, and put my name on it. So that is occurring. It is occurring throughout the world. And I think we'll continue to see those trends. Back over to you, Reid. All right. Thank you, Tom.

And thank you, Tony, for all the updates. An incredible amount of activity going on around the world. The fraud is amazing. And we talked about earlier, you talked about arrests. We're in the Bahamas. Bahamian law enforcement arrested a Bahamian citizen for falsifying test results to get on an airplane in transit. So it's going to be interesting to see how these things are handled and tackled around the world in each and every place is so different. So stay tuned.

At Crime Science, we're going to keep you guys updated. We've got a few more podcasts coming up that are not the weekly series or in addition to the weekly series, I should say. So stay tuned for that, but always go to lpresearch.org for the latest information or send us your questions, comments, and suggestions to operations at lpresearch.org. So everybody stay safe out there. Thank you so much. Thanks for listening to the Crime Science Podcast presented by the Laws Prevention Research Council and sponsored by Bosch Security.

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. Thank you.