IAPE Evidence Blog

Canaiden Online Media Net­work, connecticutplus.com
BYLINE: Conencti­cut Depart­ment of Con­sumer Pro­tec­tion
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Hart­ford, CT

HARTFORD, CT — On the heels of a suc­cess­ful pilot project, the Depart­ment of Con­sumer Protection’s Drug Con­trol Divi­sion is offer­ing help to towns wish­ing to start a drug dis­posal drop-box pro­gram to remove unwanted pre­scrip­tion and over-the-counter med­ica­tions from res­i­den­tial households.

In July, the Drug Con­trol Divi­sion helped the Lower Fair­field County Regional Action Coun­cil and four local police depart­ments to cre­ate ongo­ing, secure col­lec­tion pro­grams for unwanted med­ica­tion. Since incep­tion three months ago, these sites have col­lected more than 50 pounds of unwanted med­ica­tion, Divi­sion Direc­tor John Gadea, RPh., said today.

“After host­ing mul­ti­ple col­lec­tion days where res­i­dents turned in old pre­scrip­tions and other drugs for safe dis­posal, the towns of Green­wich, Ridge­field, Wilton, and New Canaan wanted to make the col­lec­tion process per­ma­nent,” Gadea said. “We worked with their Regional Action Coun­cil and local police depart­ments to develop a plan that pro­vides great­est access for the com­mu­nity at the most rea­son­able cost to the towns.”

“This col­lab­o­ra­tion brought about a cost-effective, work­able solu­tion for the pilot com­mu­ni­ties, and now their out­come is avail­able to any com­mu­nity that wants to move for­ward with it,” Con­sumer Pro­tec­tion Com­mis­sioner William M. Ruben­stein said. “For safety’s sake, com­mu­ni­ties need to pro­vide res­i­dents with a way to get unwanted, unused med­ica­tions out of their homes in a way that is secure and envi­ron­men­tally friendly. This option cer­tainly meets those objec­tives, in addi­tion to being effi­cient and low-cost.”

The plan involves plac­ing a locked, well marked, drop-box in local police depart­ments, where res­i­dents can dis­card their unwanted or unused med­i­cines any time the police depart­ment lobby is open. Res­i­dents need not com­plete forms nor answer ques­tions about the items they drop off; how­ever, the boxes do not accept nee­dles or liq­uid medications.

When the col­lec­tion con­tainer inside a drop-box is filled, two des­ig­nated police offi­cers or an evi­dence clerk and a police offi­cer seal the con­tainer and place it into evi­dence as aban­doned prop­erty, fol­low­ing the police department’s usual pro­ce­dures. The col­lected med­ica­tions are then peri­od­i­cally destroyed through wit­nessed incineration.

The cost to each town is min­i­mal, requir­ing only a one-time cost of $500 to $600 for the drug drop-box. Some towns found a cor­po­rate donor for the drop-box. Since the med­i­cines are “law enforce­ment aban­doned prop­erty,” towns are not charged for incineration.

Gadea says the pro­to­col has received approval from the fed­eral Drug Enforce­ment Agency as a safe and secure means of drug dis­posal at the com­mu­nity level, and hopes that more towns will adopt the strategy.

“It’s a one-time effort that pays for itself almost imme­di­ately, in terms of remov­ing unwanted drugs on an ongo­ing basis, rather than sched­ul­ing, pro­mot­ing and host­ing rou­tine drug col­lec­tion events,” he said.

The writ­ten pro­to­col for towns wish­ing to estab­lish a secure, local drug drop-box is now online at www.ct.gov/dcp on the home page. To learn more, please con­tact the Depart­ment of Con­sumer Pro­tec­tion Drug Con­trol Divi­sion at (860) 713– 6065 at drug.control@ct.gov.

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Inter­na­tional Asso­ci­a­tion for Prop­erty and Evi­dence
“Law Enforce­ment Serv­ing the Needs of Law Enforce­ment”
www.IAPE.org

Star­Tri­bune, startribune.com
BYLINE: JIM SPENCER, Star Tri­bune
Link to Article

Min­neapo­lis, MN

Fake jer­seys, pirated movies and coun­ter­feit per­fume, drugs and brand-name goods filled the evi­dence vault at the Immi­gra­tion and Cus­toms Enforce­ment office in Min­nesota after sev­eral busts in 2009.

An indus­trial spy tries to steal $20 mil­lion in trade secrets from Minnesota-based Valspar paints. A crew of coun­ter­feit­ers wants to move a mil­lion bucks worth of knock­off cell­phone equip­ment through St. Paul. In a five-day Twin Cities sweep, fed­eral agents seize 17,000 coun­ter­feit items, every­thing from faux foot­ball jer­seys to cha­rade Chanel perfume.

The theft of intel­lec­tual prop­erty has grown into an orga­nized crime wave that is cost­ing busi­nesses in Min­nesota and across the coun­try bil­lions of dol­lars in lost rev­enue and pil­fered ideas. The prob­lem extends from fake Min­nesota Twins gear to fake can­cer drugs to fake Cisco com­puter soft­ware sold to the U.S. military.

Nation­ally, up to $250 bil­lion is stolen from U.S. com­pa­nies through such chi­canery. Jobs are lost, inno­va­tion is under­mined and con­sumers are left with a line of fraud­u­lent prod­ucts that range in qual­ity “from incon­ve­nient to deadly,” said Steve Tepp, direc­tor of intel­lec­tual prop­erty enforce­ment at the U.S. Cham­ber of Commerce.

The phe­nom­e­non has reached such lev­els of sophis­ti­ca­tion and vol­ume that Pres­i­dent Obama recently called for a crack­down on intel­lec­tual prop­erty theft as one of the pil­lars of a new national effort to thwart “transna­tional orga­nized crime.”

“You have very high [profit] mar­gin activ­ity accom­pa­nied by penal­ties that are rel­a­tively low if you’re caught,” said Vic­to­ria Espinel, the White House’s intel­lec­tual prop­erty enforce­ment coor­di­na­tor. “That’s a very attrac­tive com­bi­na­tion for any crim­i­nal enterprise.”

Trade secret theft in Min­nesota may run in the “hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars,” Min­neapo­lis FBI agent Chris Golomb said. He noted “a lot of activ­ity” in areas such as med­ical devices, indus­trial coat­ings and films, elec­tronic cir­cuits and advanced microprocessors.

Still, com­pa­nies are reluc­tant to dis­cuss how intel­lec­tual prop­erty crime has affected them for fear of affect­ing their stock prices, law enforce­ment offi­cials said. Indeed, half a dozen of Minnesota’s lead­ing elec­tron­ics, med­ical tech­nol­ogy and retail busi­nesses declined or didn’t respond to requests for comment.

“If the com­pany has any worry of pub­lic con­cerns [or] that their share­hold­ers might sus­pect something’s wrong with the com­pany, they are not going to par­tic­i­pate [in a pros­e­cu­tion],” said FBI agent Tamara White, who super­vises the eco­nomic espi­onage unit in the bureau’s Min­neapo­lis office.

White and Golomb, whose job is to explain eco­nomic espi­onage to pri­vate com­pa­nies, say they are mak­ing progress in their efforts to get exec­u­tives to help put away the crooks.

“If we get the com­pa­nies on board to pros­e­cute, I think we have a pretty high suc­cess rate,” Golomb said. “The big­ger hur­dle has always been and will con­tinue to be to get the com­pany to feel com­fort­able enough to come to us to pur­sue prosecution.”

Piracy and the Internet

Tech­nol­ogy adds to the crim­i­nal appeal.

The brand pro­tec­tion com­pany Mark­Mon­i­tor tracked 100 web­sites pro­vid­ing coun­ter­feit or pirated items for a year. The study revealed 53 bil­lion vis­its. Most went to ille­gal file– shar­ing web­sites that let vis­i­tors down­load music or movies for free but left con­sumers vul­ner­a­ble to com­puter viruses and iden­tity theft. Sites sell­ing poten­tially dan­ger­ous fake pre­scrip­tion drugs got 51 mil­lion vis­its a year, Mark­Mon­i­tor found. And other coun­ter­feit prod­ucts sites attracted 87 mil­lion visits.

“These find­ings are just the tip of the ice­berg,” a Mark­Mon­i­tor report con­cluded. “The true scope of the prob­lem is expo­nen­tially higher in terms of user traf­fic, lost rev­enue and risks to pub­lic health and safety.”

While the FBI works on trade secret theft, the U.S. Immi­gra­tion and Cus­toms Enforce­ment (ICE) enforces trade­mark and copy­right laws. It was ICE that in July seized $1 mil­lion worth of coun­ter­feit cell­phones, cell­phone bat­ter­ies and acces­sories in St. Paul.

China was the source of roughly 66 per­cent of coun­ter­feit goods seized by ICE in 2010. But the mer­chan­dise can — and often is — sold via web­sites and pow­ered by Inter­net providers any­where in the world, said Bill Ross, an ICE unit chief at the multi-agency National Intel­lec­tual Prop­erty Rights Coor­di­na­tion Cen­ter. Unlike on-the-ground oper­a­tions of a decade ago, Internet-driven intel­lec­tual prop­erty crime becomes an inter­na­tional maze fraught with arrest problems.

“Ten or 15 years ago when we were work­ing with these eco­nomic espi­onage cases, they were remov­ing reams of paper,” Golomb said. “Today, with the click of a but­ton, you can trans­fer data to a thumb drive [or] to an out­side Gmail or Yahoo account. It’s very fast, and it’s large amounts of data.”

Big money, lit­tle risk

The rewards for intel­lec­tual prop­erty crime far out­weigh the consequences.

David Yen Lee, a tech­ni­cal direc­tor at Valspar, got caught try­ing to steal $20 mil­lion worth of chem­i­cal for­mu­las to give to a Chi­nese com­pany in exchange for a high-ranking job. Lee got 15 months in jail.

The bust of a group led by a Min­nesotan named Charles Thomp­son led to the arrests of eight peo­ple accused of sell­ing $500,000 worth of coun­ter­feit items, said Mike Fein­berg, a Minnesota-based agent with ICE. The sus­pects pleaded guilty and got probation.

“The profit mar­gin is almost as good as sell­ing drugs,” Fein­berg said.

The penal­ties for get­ting caught don’t come close to those for deal­ing dope.

At the White House, Espinel said the Obama admin­is­tra­tion has asked Con­gress to pass laws that increase penal­ties for orga­nized intel­lec­tual prop­erty crime in hopes of keep­ing more orga­nized crim­i­nals and ter­ror­ists from get­ting involved. The gov­ern­ment is try­ing to tweak its pur­chas­ing rules to keep coun­ter­feit items out of its sup­ply chain.

Fed­eral author­i­ties also have started tak­ing over web­sites that mar­ket coun­ter­feit items, par­tic­u­larly fake pre­scrip­tion drugs. Author­i­ties say they have seized 141 sites since June 2010. The sites now carry fed­eral warn­ings about intel­lec­tual prop­erty crime. Mean­while, author­i­ties are work­ing with major credit card com­pa­nies to stop pro­cess­ing pay­ments for all sorts of coun­ter­feit prod­ucts and phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals, Espinel said.

What no one can con­trol is the public’s search for a deal, which dri­ves the demand for such piracy.

“Ten years ago, if you bought a knock­off, you knew it,” Ross said. “What we see now is high-enough qual­ity that the buyer doesn’t know.”

Jim Spencer • 202 – 408-2752

“Most peo­ple are not in the U.S., or they are hid­ing behind screen names,” Ross said.

Trade-secret theft is even more confounding.

“The major­ity of com­pa­nies are pretty savvy when it comes to coun­ter­feit­ing,” Golomb said. Still, com­pa­nies often don’t under­stand what their trade secrets are or how to pro­tect them. Golomb coun­sels com­pa­nies to limit com­puter gear employ­ees carry when trav­el­ing and to be aware of solic­i­ta­tions for information.

In the end, the biggest obsta­cle may be the ease with which sci­en­tific and engi­neer­ing details can now be trans­ferred out of a company.

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Inter­na­tional Asso­ci­a­tion for Prop­erty and Evi­dence
“Law Enforce­ment Serv­ing the Needs of Law Enforce­ment”
www.IAPE.org

Car­roll County Times, carrollcountytimes.com
BYLINE: Car­rie Ann Knauer, Times Staff Writer
Link to Article

West­min­ster, MD

A strange sur­prise: About 20 stolen lawn orna­ments were placed in Rebecca Hale’s West­min­ster yard overnight Sat­ur­day. SUBMITTED PHOTO

Rebecca Hale wants her neigh­bors to know she didn’t steal their lawn orna­ments, even if they did end up in her yard Sun­day morning.

Hale, who lives in the 200 block of Jan­ice Way in West­min­ster, said she and her boyfriend Jonathan Chell left the house at 10 p.m. Sat­ur­day to go to a friend’s house and play cards. When they returned home at 5 a.m. Sun­day, she almost couldn’t believe that she had pulled up to the right house.

“My dri­ve­way was lined with about 20 stolen lawn orna­ments,” the 36-year-old said. “I thought to myself ‘It looks like some­body is about to have a yard sale.’”

There was a black wooden dog on a bench on her front porch, and a metal swan block­ing the door. At the bot­tom of her steps were a fam­ily of bun­nies to the right, she said, and to the left some angels and gar­den gnomes. One of the more sig­nif­i­cant pieces was a small cow statue that she esti­mated weighed more than 100 pounds.

“It was crazy,” she said. “I had a mil­lion thoughts going through my mind.”

Think­ing it was pos­si­ble that the lawn dis­play could have been a prank by a friend, she waited for some­one to speak up and take credit for it. When no one came for­ward, she called the West­min­ster police at 3 p.m. to report the dis­play, which she assumed was of stolen goods.

A police offi­cer came to check it out Sun­day, she said, and on Mon­day, they sent a city dump truck to col­lect the goods and take them to the police department.

West­min­ster police Lt. Dou­glas John­ston said it appears most of the lawn dec­o­ra­tions were stolen from the sur­round­ing neigh­bor­hood. Eight of the objects have already been reclaimed by the own­ers, who had reported them as stolen, he said.

John­ston said the items are all intact, and have been placed in the department’s prop­erty room. Some peo­ple may not have noticed that they were stolen yet, he said, or may have noticed and not thought about report­ing the theft.

Any­one in West­min­ster who had a lawn dec­o­ra­tion stolen this week­end should con­tact the West­min­ster police at 410 – 848-4646 and ask for the prop­erty clerk, he said.

“We don’t get this occur­ring that often,” John­ston said. “More than likely, it was juveniles.”

Hale said she took lots of pho­tos of the lawn dis­play with her cell­phone, and said she won’t soon for­get the episode.

“It would be cool if every­one got their stuff back,” she said.

Reach staff writer Car­rie Ann Knauer at 410 – 857-7874 or carrie.knauer@carrollcountytimes.com.

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Inter­na­tional Asso­ci­a­tion for Prop­erty and Evi­dence
“Law Enforce­ment Serv­ing the Needs of Law Enforce­ment”
www.IAPE.org