Is Total Loss Prevention Achievable?

Thank you. Hey, there's our man. Good morning. Good morning, thank you for being here. Hello. Hi sir, how are you? Hi. You are one of our delegates from USA.

Hello everyone. I am Sipal Singh, president. A very good evening, and thank you all for joining us today evening in India, of course. I extend warm and hearty welcome to everyone and to our eminent and Loveland speaker who was present in this session. National Institute of Security, Safety, Management and Applied Technology, that is NISSMAT, has been conducting, who have been, our interactive sessions and interviews for the last about two years. We have organized 137 webinars where two scholars participate at a time. Besides webinars, we have also organized interactive sessions, and this is the 18th interactive session which is addressed by one expert on the subject. We also have conducted interviews with renowned scholars on current and topical subjects.

Today's interactive session is on: is total loss prevention achievable? This session is being addressed by an eminent speaker, Mr Brett Mickelson from USA, founder and director of BM Investigation. He's a professional investigator and he's firmly based in Panama and is serving all over Latin America.

Let me introduce this within a few words. NISSMAT was established in the year 1990. It started training courses in the field of private security, safety management and applied technology. Now NISSMAT has become a think tank organization with an association of more than 85 scholars who are providing us inputs in the field of security, safety, topical subject and current subject. Now NISSMAT has established four wings: NISSMAT Forum conducts webinars, seminars, conferences; NISSMAT Academies to conduct virtual training program; NISSMAT Enterprises to undertake audits and studies and alliances in India and abroad; NISSMAT Foundation shall undertake welfare and social work for the society at large, with particular reference to security, safety and law and order.

With these words on NISSMAT, I pass on to the moderator of this session. He is a third generation officer in the army. Major General is a postgraduate in defense studies from the Madras University of India. He has been active in operations in J&K, both on the counterinsurgency as well as on the line of control. Commanded an infantry brigade during Operation Parakram and a mountain division subsequently. He raised the first Information Warfare cell in the Army as a pilot project and had instructional appointment in the premier training establishments in the Army like Army War College and the Indian Military Academy. Major General Deepak shall moderate this session.

A few words about the chairman of the group, Captain Ahluwalia, who took voluntary retirement from the Parachute Regiment of the army at a very young age and started his business, which was an unknown area for him. He is presently a businessman. I have seen him, that he is really unafraid of telling the truth. A thoughtful and inspiring leader, he is adept in creating alliances. He is past chairman and former chairman of the Council of International Investigators, USA, and is a body of Malcolm Thomson award and cutely award.

With these words, now let me introduce the subject: is total loss prevention achievable? Total loss prevention is a very difficult and, sorry, an elaborate process. The program and strategies to be introduced for loss prevention differ from business to business, from organization to organization, and from any service organization to other services. Losses and shrinkages are very complicated illness which can this be cured just by applying or giving one medicine, a superficial method. This requires expertise in the loss prevention strategies particularly, and also means to be adopted. The scope of total loss prevention encompasses a number of factors to be followed, like initial risk and vulnerability assessment. You have to have assessment of the initial assessment of vulnerability and risk involved, then planning, then designing a proper security systems, proper vendor engagements, also introduction, if required, of overt and covert investigation into the organization.

There are various reasons for losses, as we all know, like wrong calculation, accounting problems, administrative errors, inventory controls, under stocking, over stocking, incorrect listing of sales prices, bad inventory controls, and fraud, stealing, wrong stock surveys, etc. To prevent the above losses, some of the points are required to be kept in view, and will restrain address for the speaker probably. They are clear and consistent policies. First of all is the policies have to be very clear, defined and consistent. Well designed documentations, background checking, please cleaning of employees, warehouse checking, regular managing installation, inventory controls, consistent upgrading of loss potential efforts, strong physical and electronic security mail, and deployment of surveillance cameras, etc. Visible anti-theft tags on the inventory shall also deter the person who has come to steal it. Undertaking regular audits and regular evaluation of your loss prevention program is important.

Now there's a bit of difference between loss control and loss prevention. Loss control is an assessment of workplace, an assessment of the facilities available, an assessment of equipment help, an assessment of the processes and practice law. But loss prevention is a type of risk assessment with an aim to proactively address the best protection and strategies to prevent losses. Overt and covert investigation, as I mentioned earlier, may be a necessity. Though it is difficult to achieve total loss prevention, yet it may be possible to achieve near loss prevention by using well tested brands to deal with losses. The threats to the total aspiration exist both from inside and outside. Security awareness programs, continuous training of employees can help reach total loss prevention to an extent, or I will use the word may help to get very close to achieving total of our subject. With these words, I would like to pass on the session to the moderator, Deepak, to call Mata to continue. Thank you very much.

Thank you, sir. Before I proceed, I just want to highlight certain things. Firstly, this interactive session has been sponsored by the Premiership, which deals with risk management, loss prevention and security service. Second is Premier, which is consultancy and investigation, and supported by India Skills Track Services and JMD, there's Cargo Private Limited. For this interactive session we have friends from the USA, Canada, UK, UAE and a large number from India.

A few words about the president. Mr Sipal Singh joined the Central Police Service in 1962. He underwent the initial training at the Central Police Training College at Mount Abu, which is in Rajasthan state of India. He is also an alumni of the prestigious National Police Academy of Hyderabad, where he completed the advanced police course. He has served on senior police appointments in a number of states under the government of India. He was made responsible by the government of India to raise a new police force, that's a Rapid Action Force, to deal with communal riots, and was appointed as the first chief of this elite force. In recognition of his outstanding performance during his service, he was decorated with the President's Police Medal for distinguished service, Indian Police Medal for meritorious service, Police Special Duty Medal with bar, that when he got this particular award twice, the Sena Medal, which is an army award given to a police officer, and a number of commendations, rewards. After retirement he was conferred with the prestigious award of the Security Personality of the Year with the president of India and the Global Security Conference. Presently he is the advisor, Asian Professional Security Association, India chapter, Henry Director General, Central Association of Private Security Industry, Central Association of the Private Security Industry in India, and Associate Association of the Private Detective and Investigators, India. I think here a tremendous career behind him.

We have a very distinguished speaker this evening, and there's Mr Brett Mickelson. The president has already stated a few words, but let me elaborate furthermore. He is a founder and director of the BM Investigations, and professional private investigation firm based in Panama, serving all of Latin America. He has served in the U.S. Army as an interrogator of the U.S. Intelligence Corps. He in his unit was made responsible for crime prevention of his unit. He is a polygraph examiner and human behavior specialist. Presently, as a security specialist, he advises a very major industry in Latin America, which is looking after safety of the risk of the family members of that particular organization, over 300 retail stores, 40 plus buildings and shopping centers, the insurance and banking businesses, either a large network of personnel related to loss prevention in terms of security guards, interconnected CCTV systems, anti-theft alarms, six monitoring stations for the above. I'll hand over to Mr Mickelson.

Good morning, everyone. I know it's evening by you, but it's morning here, so some of my good wishes just the same. If we would like it, I can jump right in. I have a PowerPoint presentation that I would like to show. Let's see. Oops, oops. Yeah, it was like, yeah, let's see, it's not allowing me to share. We have given you the rights. Okay, all right, let me go back. One moment please. I don't, for whatever reason I don't have the... Can you see this here? Yes. Okay, there we go, excellent.

So the question posed is total... can everyone see this first of all? Yes. Okay, so is total loss prevention achievable? I've always been a very positive person, looking to believe in others, believe in the possibilities of attaining any goal. Sometimes, however, it's out of our hands, and I do have a few elements that I'd like to speak of that lead us to what I believe to be the sole reason as to whether or not loss prevention is achievable or not.

Next slide. So of course loss prevention can be broken down into four categories, and it's a difference of theft, breakage, wastage, or anything else — almost literally, quite literally anything else in the realm of whatever it is that you're protecting, whether it's a building, whether it's a business, whether it's a group of people. I remember that when I did get into loss prevention for the very first time many years ago, something like 25, 30 years ago, my concept of loss prevention was setting up technology, setting up a group of individuals to protect or to secure an area or to secure a merchandise. And I remember one of the owners of the building approached me and said, Brett, how are we doing with the air conditioning units? And I said, I have no idea. What do I have to do with the air conditioning unit? He says, well, the expenditure, it's costing us a lot of money. The bill is coming in, the electric bill is coming in, and it's showing that it's much more than it was from the last year. And then I realized, and that was the moment when I realized, that loss prevention is much more than just security. It is quite literally anything that could be a loss to the company or the organization.

Next slide. Of course my list is short. Mr Singh was very kind to give us an extreme list of actions or items that must be looked at, but it is summarized into maybe the shorter list, which is personnel, hiring, training, systems control, active and reactive monitoring, review, retraining, insurance — because even the most secure location should be backed up with some sort of insurance — and then finding a balance between cost and risk. If our loss is projected at, let's just throw out a number, 100,000 a year, you can't employ 300,000 in loss prevention. It doesn't compute. So it is important to also find that balance between one and the other.

So next slide, please. So I have a series of concepts based on experience that, for me anyways, is a better way to explain what it is that we're trying to present today. We can talk about it, experience. We can talk about systems and what needs to be deployed and the best type of camera, but until we actually see what happens when perhaps things aren't planned out as well as they should, how things can go directly wrong. So many years ago we worked with an international paint factory, without mentioning the name for obvious reasons. They decided to take on the task of security and loss prevention themselves, because it's an easy concept — I mean, there's really not much to do, is what I think they thought. They had their security people placed outside, a series of cameras located in what they considered logical locations, and for the most part they were controlling their loss issues. There was a good preventive system. However, from one day to the next, they started losing a very high dollar type of paint, which is a vehicle paint. It's a metal flake type of paint that they were losing tens of thousands of dollars a month, which made absolutely no sense, and they couldn't detect it.

And so at that point they did employ us, and we went in to see what it was, and we ended up having to infiltrate people within the company to kind of grasp the concept of what was happening. And we noted a coincidental change in procedure at the same time that they started noticing loss, and the procedure was this. As you can see on the screen, we have a few cans of paint that are filthy by the paint itself, and when this would happen to their five gallon drums of paint, they would sell it to the employees. Their idea was, we can't sell this to the public, so instead, if any employee wants to purchase this at a discount, we'll sell it to them. And everything seemed fine, and the idea was to not have loss. However, the ingeniousness of their employees was beyond comprehension, and what the employees were doing was, at first, they were purposefully dirtying the outside of the can so they could get their five gallon cans at a lesser rate. However, this doesn't explain how they're losing vehicle paint, because this was only for house paint. Further inspection revealed that these same highly intelligent individuals were taking the smaller cans of vehicle paint and placing it inside the five gallon drums of paint. So essentially they're purchasing two to three thousand dollars worth of vehicle paint for a discounted house paint of maybe twenty to thirty dollars, and so that's how they're able to whisk it up. From that point on, they of course removed the system. Inspection was done differently. They divided up the different divisions of paint, and they're able to control it better. But it just goes to show that sometimes a good intention to save money ends up making you lose money.

Next slide, please. Real estate. This is, for me, it's been one of the downsides to my psyche. It's been the stress of my day-to-day. Real estate is typically an easy concept to manage on the sales side, and it should also be the same when it comes to loss prevention. When it's a piece of land, you purchase a piece of land and then you sell it for more, and that should seemingly be a simple concept. When it comes to rental properties, there should be some very simple concepts left of this as well. But what we've noticed — and this is a different idea when it comes to loss prevention — is the control of the people that you have managing your properties. We have a series of strip malls that we take care of, and we've noticed that there was a large amount of loss in the sense that we were losing clients, meaning closing up shop, leaving, and the report back to the owners of the strip malls was: it's due to the pandemic, they don't have the money, and sadly enough they had to close their businesses. We did an inspection, however, and we noted that, on just a simple review of the clients themselves, there was any number of complaints, from not even knowing who the administrative manager was, not knowing who to report incidents to, certain things being taken care of when it comes to electrical problems, plumbing, etc. So this type of a loss prevention is actually a control of the management people themselves and ensuring that they're doing the job and actually taking care of their customers, being in this case their inventory — their inventory being whether it's properties at a strip mall or land or anything related to this. And so to keep in mind always not to take for granted that reports that are coming in are accurate. A lot of times people will report the way they want, to save their job or to make the boss happy, or I'll take care of this problem later. It's important, when it comes to real estate anyways, to actually have a hands-on approach and ensure that you are reviewing and confirming the reports that are coming in.

Next slide, please. Petroleum distribution. One of the more controlled substances in the world is actually petroleum, and I say controlled because it is a contaminant, and spills or anything like this can cause major damage to the environment and to the health of the people around. We were brought in on — and this is actually, let's see, this is Terpel, which is actually a Venezuelan owned company — they're noticing a series of losses, and we reviewed. They didn't have the basics set up with their vehicle distribution. There was no GPS system, there were no cameras in the vehicles, there was no cameras at the dispatch centers, there were no cameras at the gas stations. It was just, it was a mess. So we started a system with the different controls, and we noted that the majority of their loss happened on the road, and the vehicles were stopping in mid transit, and it had a fantastic system set up where they would stop, they would discharge several gallons of fuel at a time into an alternate facility, or in just somebody else's vehicle or somebody else's truck. And once we were able to set up the system, we were able to control exactly, or stop completely, that type of a loss.

However, after a few months, they started losing again, and they couldn't figure out why. The GPS was showing that the vehicles weren't stopping; they were going directly to the locations. We checked the factory itself — the dispatch center, excuse me — itself, and inspection showed that everything was leaving as it should be. And of course, once we got to the stations themselves, we noted that it was the drivers with the station managers in cahoots. And what they would do is, instead of dispatching the entire amount, they would dispatch a lesser amount and just say that they're dispatching the full amount. And at that point the vehicle was rarely checked on its road back, because the vehicle should be returning empty. So at that point we noted that this was exactly how they were skimming thousands of gallons a year. It was pretty impressive.

Next slide, please. Banking. When we think of banking, we think of the institution itself. We think of maybe robberies, we think of certain types of fraud and scams that could be had through the checking system. Recently in Panama, interestingly enough, we actually had three bank robberies, and in every single instance you could see, because of today's technology, it's very, very complicated to do the type of things that they were doing. The types of robberies were actually internal burglaries, to say the least, and individuals were able to infiltrate the bank at off hours through either ventilation systems or through an awkward system of going through a different office, breaking through the floor of that office, and taking the time to be able to get into a bank. But at the same time, you sit, you wonder, how is it absolutely possible for somebody to be able to break through a wall, enter a bank with cameras and motion sensors and vaults and everything like this, and take away — what they've taken was approximately 500,000 in cash. And it wasn't difficult to note that it was a massive coincidence that the camera system shuts off right at the right time. The people that were supposed to be in their posts were told to leave their posts, and all of this was conducted by the chief of security himself.

We look back as to the why. Obviously the chief of security was involved; he was eventually arrested, as well as people within the CCTV system, control system. But we had to see the why — what was going on in this person's life. And a quick review was that his wife was extremely ill with cancer, and the treatments were beyond reach, and the man becomes desperate, and he's in a position to be able to get cash. And so all sense of morals, all sense of values, just go out the window. It's important to realize that our people, on a day-to-day basis, need to be — I don't know if the word is monitored — but we need to be aware of what's going on with our people as well.

There's another instance, though, when it comes to banking, that's more of an internal side. Millions and millions of dollars are transferred on a daily basis from one bank to another. It's not unusual in Latin America for monies to move between Panama and the US, between Colombia and China, and this all due to the large wholesale businesses that are in the region. So if a multi-millionaire calls his bank and says, I'll be sending you an email shortly to conduct the transfer of a certain amount of money, it's not unusual. This isn't like us, the common folk, who have to go to the bank or perhaps do a quick online transfer from one account to another. These are massive payouts, and the bad guy knows this, and they understand that there are mannerisms and systems in place.

So we had a case where the banking gal receives the call, as is normal, and receives an email requesting to send 1.2 million from their bank in Panama to a bank in Hong Kong. Nothing seemed odd, except that they never sent to that bank in Hong Kong before. The other part that was odd was that the one element that the people that were setting this up didn't know, is that to send anything over a million, it could only happen during a certain period of time. It could only happen between, let's say for example, 1 pm and 2 pm, and if it didn't happen at that time, then red flags would go off, people were contacted, and things reviewed. However, in this case, the girl looked at the clock and said, well, it's 2:30, it's not that far outside, and I really don't want to upset my client, so we're going to send the transfer anyways. Luckily, however, there was actually an error on the other side, and the transfer didn't go through.

A review of what had happened is, one of the employees at the millionaire's office, actually his secretary, had a tendency to use her Facebook very often. And through Facebook and other social media platforms, she started doing these games and whatnot, these odd things, which says, if you were a type of a potato, what type of a potato would you be? And to her this seemed comical and fun, and send it to her friends. But what she didn't realize was that in the background of all of this, her computer info was being captured, and she was being infiltrated. And once she was infiltrated, they were able to see where they actually do their banking, how they do their banking, all of their passwords, everything that they needed. And quite frankly, the only thing they didn't take into consideration was the time zone. So these are things that are almost impossible to prevent when we don't have everybody on board, I guess is what I'm trying to point out.

Next slide, please. Retail stores. As mentioned, we monitor hundreds of retail stores simultaneously. It's nearly impossible to be able to set up a robust loss prevention system, to do active monitoring of the stores. And so one of the things that we do is we try to find the absolute best people to do these jobs. We set up the immediate alarm systems, whether it's clothing alarm systems, whether it's theft prevention, or when the store's closed. The CCTV systems are mostly for passive control, meaning that if something is stolen, we can revert back to the cameras and we can see exactly what has happened. And more cases than not, we'll see that it's always the same shoplifters, so that's not so much of an issue. We're trying to stop the internal theft, because that's always going to be by far the larger risk of it all.

So in one store we had everything set up, the systems are perfect, and — I'm trying to remember — the alarm system was actually controlled by an external company, and the contract read that in the event of an alarm, it needed to be reported back to the central system within minutes. The problem is, the term "within minutes" was relative and dependent upon its interpretations. We received an alarm, we received a call saying that the alarm had gone off and that it was a certain Nike store located on the outside of the city. The cameras were deployed, and upon an immediate review, we'd noticed that whoever did whatever they did had luckily broken in, stolen an entire truckload of merchandise, and had left the properties. A review showed that their "minutes" concept allowed 15 minutes of time once the alarm went off. And so we watched in frustration as a team of people showed up to the store, looked inside, brought a vehicle around, broke into the store — three or four people grabbed as much merchandise as they possibly could, alarms were sounding off — stuck everything into the vehicle and left. And I would be willing to bet that that was only four or five minutes. The other 10 minutes took them time to get home, sit down, have their meal, and that's when we were able to note that something had actually happened, because of the concept of "minutes" within the contract. Since then, the new systems have a literal immediate response, and cameras are deployed automatically. So it's just minor tweaks, but something that was important.

In yet another store, we had, once again, everything in place. Everything was perfect, the procedures were ideal. The only thing we were missing was a loss prevention individual that we could actually trust, because the one that we had wasn't quite up to speed. So we headhunted probably the most renowned mall cop, to put it that way. He knew every single shoplifter by first and last name. He had arrested each one of them at least twice, personally. And so having him within our store system was a dream come true. So we brought him in, and after, I believe, six months, we noted that we were having, instead of a shoplifting issue, we're having massive internal retail issues, where inventory, boxes at a time — and we're talking high dollar Nike items and Under Armour, things like this. Sadly enough, our superhero that we had employed was in on it, but not only him, but unintentionally the manager was also in on it. One of the main procedures that we had upon receiving merchandise was to open up the back doors: the manager had to be on site, two of the store employees needed to be on site, the loss prevention person needed to be on site, and the merchandise was then received, and it was sent to inventory immediately, which was in a completely different location within the store itself — but let's call it the basement. A quick review, however, of just a few incidents noted that the manager instead would just pass over the key to the back door. The loss prevention individual was essentially on his own to receive the merchandise, relocate the merchandise. Nobody was there to help him, so he had an open opportunity to take whatever he wanted, and he was literally taking four boxes of merchandise every single delivery.

So this all said — and I believe that's the last slide — we come up to our next slide, please. I think we can conclude that total loss prevention is not possible. It really, truly, it doesn't matter what we're trying to prevent and what type of an atmosphere. It could be banking, it could be petroleum, it could be real estate, retail, any type of business concept. But there's always going to be one major factor, and this is my personal concept of this. Because we have predictability to a certain extent: with CCTV, we know that things go bad, we know things go down. We have a daily review from our locations to ensure that everything is recording properly, to ensure that all cameras that could possibly go down, that go black or blue or whatever the case may be, are brought back up as soon as possible, whether it's a reboot, whether it's an on-site inspection. All of this can be mitigated. Our alarm systems, even if we have a third party alarm "minutes to react" concept, these can be altered, these can be changed, these can be fixed. But if we come to our next slide, I'll show you our main issue, and it's this guy right here. It's homo sapiens. This is the only unpredictable, number one issue that we will always have within loss prevention, that will take any perfect system and throw it to the trash. So that's my presentation for the day. Happy to field all questions from the 51 participants.

Thanks. A very good exposition of yours. I have one question to ask, please. Yes, sir. What are the major difference to implement loss prevention strategies for a manufacturing group and a service group?

So even within each type of a group, there's going to be differences depending on location, depending on — let me write that down before I lose my services and manufacture. With something like a manufacturing, you're going to have hazmat issues to deal with, and every country is going to have their health ministry requirements. So there's going to be, I think, more of a robust requirement, and there's, I think, more of a responsibility when it comes to ensuring that health and safety is adhered to, because loss of life is absolutely the worst thing that we could ever have, and I think that's important when you look at this. When it comes to service oriented — and that could be, just to define, talk about real estate, we're talking about investigation, security, those are all types of services — I think we need to look at, what's the word I'm looking for, know your client, know your customer, is a major focus for us anyways. Because sometimes the loss is due to good faith, or due to — I think I would still call it good faith. We want to do good for our customers, we want to do good for our providers, and sometimes we rush to make that match happen, but we don't look at the underlying factor of who these people are and where they're coming from, if they have the financial backing to produce. So it's important, I think, to look a little bit more in depth at the people that you're doing business with when it comes to services.

Going on in the media with regards to hacking. I didn't catch the question. Yeah, sorry — you hacked your adversary's website to get the data, the ways of functioning, the client details. How can you prevent that?

We actually had a situation where, during the pandemic, one of the — it was actually a real retail store — and once again, they want to have ease of use to be more important than the actual security itself. And really, I'm not an expert when it comes to countermeasures for this type of thing, but I do know it is important to have your firewall set up. It is important to ensure that checks are made within the individual systems of your employees, because the majority of these hacks are going to be an email sent out that somebody is naive and clicks on the emails for whatever reason. And I think we get this all the time, where we're going to get: your bank account is going to be closed, you must click on this link immediately, otherwise we're going to close your bank account. And so somebody who's uninitiated to this type of a fraud, who hasn't received the training within — so that's, I guess, probably the answer, is training. They're going to click on it, because they don't want to lose their money, they don't want to lose their livelihood. And then the people are in. They send in their, you know, their Trojan horses and their viruses and their whatnot, start capturing your information.

You had a question to ask, please. No, it's not a question, I just wanted to make a comment. In the manufacturing factory, on the losses that you may incur at a later point of time, it's just a process, the hobby in which you have on whether goods are going to come in, where are they going to be weighed, how they're going to be taken in and accounted for. There's a lot of, especially in the construction industry, a lot of theft takes place. Goods don't arrive, but they are accounted by the managers and then they report it as stolen. So you know, there are different forms of theft at every place, and total loss prevention. Packing material — there was a certain amount of waste which was supposed to be recycled, or, you know, once it comes out, it's got to be sold and scrapped. It wasn't. It was getting recycled and sold in the black market as alternate pouches, or the good material — you couldn't even make that out. We had a Procter and Gamble case once, where powder — I think it was diesel powder — where the dye had been made, and the dye had been rejected by the principals as not good, but it was nearly perfect. It wasn't 100 accurate, but it was 99 okay. The Procter and Gamble people rejected that, did not pay for the dye, and so the manufacturer, he sold it to somebody else who started producing diesel powder and putting it in the market. Oh well, you know, there are any number of situations that occur, and even a small breach of process by any employee of the company can really sort of cause it.

Now, one of the things that is happening now is employee theft in terms of time. We never sort of spoke of time theft earlier, but now it's becoming a critical issue, because wages are high, and if employees don't work all the time, you have employee theft of time. And whether it is theft of time or it is loss, it is a loss that is being incurred on to the organization. So time is also — yeah, absolutely — your organization. Yeah, so, well, you know, the manufacturing or service, people lock in at different times, they don't come into the office but log in as being present. It's money of the organization that is getting lost, and ultimately who brings them not as the CEO who cannot meet his toggles. Yeah.

Well, making a point on manufacturing and the actual construction of the location itself, one of the things that just drives me crazy is they come to talk to the security people after the building has already been constructed, to say, now we want you to secure it as it is. But when you look at the structure, you say, well, the fencing is too close to the building for starters. You need, you know, by code, you need to have the fencing system set up at least, I think it's 25 meters, that's per CPP, and the height and the type of wire that's used at the top, and the lighting and the direction. And everything is already completely wrong. And so, like you say, security is dire, there's no doubt. It is absolutely by far the beginning of loss prevention. If we don't have proper security setup, it's, you're already losing out. And so that's an actual — it's a fantastic point.

In manufacturing industry, you see in all industries or offices, there is nothing that equipment goes bad and you send it out for repairs. If it is not recorded properly, it goes out of the factory. Yeah. So, you know, different ways and means. Good material is often put into the scrap yard, that scrap sold into the scrap market, and then retrieved again and put into the shops as good material.

Yeah, the Procter and Gamble comment reminded me of a job we did in Ecuador with Levi Strauss. And Levi was having a huge problem with their product being counterfeited, and it was flooding the market. They're selling probably three times the amount, or four times the amount, of counterfeit to their one brand, and so much cheaper. And when we actually conducted the investigation on this, we come to learn that the exact same factory would produce the real Levi's in the day, and they would produce four times that amount at night, on a new shift. They would produce the fake brand at night, and the only difference was a button, and that's how they could tell. Because the material was the same, the ink was the same, everything was exactly the same, the stitching, everything. The only difference was they didn't have access to the button, because they were given a button count during the day. So they would find their own Levi buttons, and that's how they were copying it. But it's fantastic how things like, you know, using these service providers — because that's what it was, it was not actually a Levi plant per se, but it was somebody that was subcontracted, and they didn't really even know where the plant was located at to begin with.

Yes, you see, in China, majority of the factories, they produce legitimate stuff during the day hours, and they produce fake stuff during the night hours. And you go to the shelter market and you can sort of buy a golf set for about 200, which would retail for about four thousand dollars otherwise. You know, that's the scale of counterfeiting, and you know, it's not even competing. It is taking the actual product, actual material, as consumption of actual material, but being sold for a song outside. So who suffers the loss? The cost of production goes up on the other side, and whether this coming, the people make, they make cash out of it. Yeah.

But I'd like to share one case study with you and also ask you the question. There's a factory which was producing plastic sheets. The granules were coming from outside India. The granules were coming to the factory, they were melted in heaters. After melting, the material was taken out and made into plastic sheets. Lo and behold, they discovered that the sheets, identical sheets with the same brand name, are being sold at much cheaper rates at the same place, close to the factory, and a few of three miles away or four miles away. At the same time, material was absolutely all right, production or not. How it comes that material has gone there and been sold? So the loss prevention method was used by, right as I told you, from A to B, A to Z, as to how the process coming, how the organisms are coming. And I'll come to short: we could not get anything anywhere. I mean, right from the start till the end, from one melting pot to the other melting point, or the record clicker coming out, and the lacquer painted sheets, the number of sheets being produced, and also the waste is usually being considered — everything was perfect. It's impossible to find others to hope.

Now here I am telling you the most important strategy is to rope in some, therefore, the efforts of the honest employees by somehow, and get a clue as to what is happening. That is the best way of a loss prevention strategy: to rope in the efforts of the employees who are on a surprise, and they should be constantly used by the employer to give them the clue. It was told to us that the girls were going out as such, not there is something wrong, and affected by the credit unions as such are going out hollow. And behold, we try to find out, starting from the platform where the granules were landing, up to the factory: the number of sacks which were coming, the number of bells, which is equivalent to the balance which are being produced, except that there were the losses sit somewhere — a percentage of losses is permitted. It's very interesting phenomena. Sacks were being brought from the platform to a particular place, stalking the granules in the sacks. The sacks were being punched with some piercing instrument, and the granules were falling down on the ground of that particular service number. In the morning, they were swept, and that news accidents were handed over to one party, who was in turn giving to some other duplicate manufacturer, in a number of. Now imagine, nobody could think that right from the railway station coming to where they had done some piercing into the sacks. So when the sacks were downloaded on the platform, into their number of granules will fall down here and there. The morning, they take out the sacks, put it in a melting pot and go ahead. But the granules which had fallen home had percept away, and those granules were in turn being recycled and made. So we had to open the efforts of the honest employees and then find out as to what is the reason. They said there's something, the grains are leaking out. So we said, forget about the melting, for what road the manifesting, let us concentrate only on the granules. So that's what I'm saying, that rope in the efforts of the employees is very important. What is your experience? What do you say? How to open the affairs of the honest employees? What could be the method, and how it can help us?

So everybody is driven by a set of values, and I think at the very beginning of employment of any individual, this should be determined, and it could be just by a basic conversation. How are you brought up? Where did you come from? Give them scenarios: what would you do in this type of a case? And then ask them straight out: what values do you live by? And then test the individual over a period of time. I think, as an interrogator and as an investigator, this is something we do to bring in new sources, new contacts and whatnot. And as a leader within an organization, we try to set up these types of systems where we're doing recognition. As well, as time progresses, we have a bonus program where the individual is recognized, and it's maybe not a lot of money — maybe it's 25, maybe it's fifty dollars — but it's something that they go, they noticed me, they care, you know. And showing that, I think, is important. A lot of people within the organization, if you talk to them, they will answer. If you ask them the question, they'll tell you what's going on. And it also helps to avoid low morale, because when somebody is trying to do a good job and they see somebody that is not doing a good job in any aspect of that, it's demoralizing. People start showing up late for work, and not even talking about internal theft issues. So I think it's important to have constant communication, constant contact with the individuals, and that will help to have a good team of people, not just to help prevent them, in the event of a family emergency, to where they're going to go and do something that they wouldn't normally do, but also to keep that line of communication.

Thank you very much. Before I ask the president to conclude the session, I just want to make a point to all the friends who are on the net, that this interactive setup that we have provides a platform for anyone who wants to sponsor their wave at a very reasonable cost, and like I told you, we have sponsors which I gave it in the beginning. So anyone who wants to sponsor himself or the company, please get in touch with us. But request the president to please sum up.

People say, your turn now. Okay, I was observed in your sponsorship program, because I'm very keen to get there anyway. So my thanks, Brett Mickelson. He has described vividly various organization in various sectors, where from practice about pets, and then he said about the real estate, he mentioned about the banking system, he referred to the retail stores and all that, in a very vivid, lucid and intelligent manner. We are thankful to him. Very, very intelligent in the sense that the entire thing was conceived and conveyed to us in a manner which understood by the people. Even a layman could understand what is the security risk, what is the loss control, and how is to. We are indeed thankful to Brett Mickelson.

I like to say a few words in my concluding remarks, that is making proactive efforts. Making proactive efforts to prevent losses can show both to the employees and the customer that your business group is having a proper loss prevention strategy and program. This is a proactive effort which should show to the people, to the customer as well as to the employees, that you mean business, and you are having it consistent and regular enforcement and deterrent on the loss prevention can also help with this. Loss prevention is of course an organized effort, and an organized effort need to be made in an organized manner. Type of losses, motives of the people, opportunities available for people, are a number of plus and minus points, permutation and combination. So whatever strategy you propose, or whatever sets you are supposed to draw out for loss prevention, keep in view some of the methods which have been used by these people earlier, and also have the imagination as to what other methods can be used. It is often said that knowledge is power. Complete knowledge of your group, your organization, introduction of well-oriented strategy in your organization can help in getting that knowledge and achieving near total loss prevention in any business school. However, I must add, the loss prevention strategies are open to change every time and in every organization. Some of the strategies may contribute, others you may have to say. Keeping in view these points, I hope that delegates will carry home some of the lessons which can be drawn from the presentation of the eminent speaker. I'm thankful to the delegates as well as to our eminent speaker who have make themselves available today for this interactive session.

Our next webinar is: good society essential for maintenance of peace and order. Is it a little other way around? They say peace and order, law and order is essential to produce a good society. In a little other way around, good society is also essential for maintenance of peace and order. This is being organized on 3rd of December, again 7 pm to 8:30 pm, and I'll request the delegates present here, as well as some of the other people who have just joined this late, that they may like to attend this webinar on 3rd December, 7 pm. Thank you very much. Thanks indeed, everyone. Good, thanks. Thanks very much. A very good exposition. Thank you, sir.

Thank you for the opportunity to speak on this subject. This is something that has the entire world frustrated at all points. Loss prevention is not easy. It's very volatile. There is most certainly a spontaneous and unexpected failings at all moments, so it's great to hear the stories from others. The solutions, of course, are also extremely important, and I'm glad that I had the opportunity to share a few of my own frustrations over the years, and a few solutions. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you, Brett. Next webinar, I'm going to ask you to sponsor, be a sponsor on the thing. Just two hundred dollars. Sorry. Thanks, buddy. Only 200? Are you sure? For five minutes.