Will the INFORM Consumers Act Take a Bite Out of Theft?
FTC: INFORM Consumers Act takes effect on June 27th. Is your business ready?
Certain businesses in the e-commerce space should mark June 27, 2023, on their calendars. That's the date a new law - the INFORM Consumers Act - takes effect. The FTC and the states share law enforcement authority and violations could result in steep civil penalties and - in cases brought by the states - "damages, restitution, or other compensation." Are you covered by the statute? And if you are, are you taking the necessary compliance steps? FTC staff just issued a to-the-point publication that merits your attention: Informing Businesses about the INFORM Consumers Act.

Congress passed the Integrity, Notification, and Fairness in Online Retail Marketplaces for Consumers Act - or the INFORM Consumers Act - to add more transparency to online transactions and to deter criminals from acquiring stolen, counterfeit, or unsafe items and selling them through online marketplaces. Don't let another day pass without considering what the new law means for your business or your clients' companies.

The INFORM Consumers Act puts new requirements in place for "online marketplaces" - defined as a person or business that operates a consumer-directed platform that allows third party sellers to engage in the "sale, purchase, payment, storage, shipping, or delivery of a consumer product in the United States." Online marketplaces covered by the law must collect and verify certain financial and identifying information from "high-volume third party sellers" - defined as a person or business that meets specific sales thresholds on that platform. What's more, online marketplaces generally must disclose on those sellers' product listing pages (or in order confirmation messages and account transaction histories) the seller's name, address, and contact information. In addition, online marketplaces must suspend high-volume third party sellers that don't provide the required information and must offer a clear way for consumers to report suspicious conduct.

You'll want to read the new business guide and the text of the law for details, but it boils down to this. Under the INFORM Consumers Act, online marketplaces must have more information about who's selling on their platform. Covered sellers must promptly comply with those requests for information or risk suspension. And consumers who buy from those sellers will have a place to report questionable activity.

Informing Businesses about the INFORM Consumers Act includes more about the law, with a particular focus on the responsibilities of online marketplaces. With the June 27th effective date approaching, it's time for online marketplaces to rev up their compliance efforts. The FTC will be watching and expects online marketplaces to have INFORM Consumers Act measures in place by the effective date. ftc.gov


New ORC Bill Becomes Law in Oregon
The law would stiffen penalties for organized theft

Oregon Gov. Kotek signs bill into law increasing penalties for organized retail theft
Oregon Governor Tina Kotek signed a bill into law Wednesday intended to crack down on retail theft across the state. Senate Bill 340 was recommended by the Oregon Organized Retail Crime Task Force, which is made up of law enforcement agencies, retail associations and district attorneys from across the state.

The bill is intended to make it easier to prosecute organized retail crimes. "This bill provides common sense tools to curb organized retail theft and hold offenders accountable," Governor Kotek said in a tweet.

Senate Bill 340 establishes a presumptive sentence of 24 months for the prison for "organized retail theft" if a person has certain previous convictions, and increases the range of what is considered organized theft.

Under ORS 164.098, a person can be charged with organized retail theft if they are working with at least one other person, they are suspected of stealing merchandise from a store and the value of the stolen merchandise is $5,000 or more. Under the current law, the dollar total amount applies to merchandise taken within a 90-day period. Under SB 340, the time is extended to 180 days.

Additionally, SB 340 allows for the degree of the theft charge to be determined by adding together the values of stolen merchandise taken over a year period. katu.com kptv.com


Backlash Grows After Retailer Fires Employees Who Confronted Thieves
Growing chorus calls for Lululemon to reinstate employees fired for trying
to stop thieves

A pair of Atlanta-area workers were sacked after they tried to defend the store amid a brazen act of theft.

A growing chorus of voices is calling for Lululemon to reinstate two Atlanta-area employees who were fired for confronting thieves at their store.

Jennifer Ferguson and Rachel Rogers last week told the Atlanta-area NBC affiliate, WXIA-TV, that they were terminated after they tried to intervene to stop a theft conducted by men in "masks and hoodies" who "swiped" what they could before leaving the athletic apparel store.

The backlash has been led in part by conservative pundit Ben Shapiro, who accused the Canadian multinational retailer of being "deeply afraid that the woke are going to come after them if they actually start prosecuting shoplifters" and that "they're afraid they're going to be accused of racial profiling."

Lululemon CEO Calvin McDonald has doubled down on the company's termination decision, telling CNBC last Friday that the employees "knowingly broke the policy, engaged with the thieves ... that was what resulted in the termination."

The company's policy to restrict employees from engaging with perpetrators during a crime is somewhat common in the retail industry, said Neil Saunders, managing director at GlobalData consultancy. What is different is Lululemon's willingness to stick to it in the face of both apparent common sense and the company's stated values, Saunders said.

The company's policy also raises questions about why Lululemon does not have more in-store security if it is going to have what Saunders described as a "draconian" policy with respect to ordering employees not to intervene. nbcnews.com


Home Depot Tries To Cage Up ORC In Its Stores
Bay Area Home Depot Stores Lock Up Lower-Value Items Amid Rampant Theft
Home Depot stores in the Bay Area have started to lock items behind cages due to rampant theft. Workers told The Standard that the stores locked high-value items such as power tools behind the cages starting around January, but since then, even laundry detergent has been locked up.

"It used to be big-ticket items, but now even the detergent is locked up," said one worker at the Emeryville Home Depot store, who spoke anonymously because they were not authorized to speak to the press.

The workers said the cages are an effective deterrent for most thieves, but more savvy criminals can work around the cages, especially to access more lucrative scores, like items in the power tools section.

The Home Depot stores in El Cerrito, San Leandro and Oakland stores have cages, but some Bay Area stores do not. Staff at the Oakland Home Depot on Alameda Avenue said the cages were installed in December due to spiking theft.

Scott Glenn, vice president for asset protection at Home Depot, told ABC News in a June 1 article that organized retail theft gangs were the reason the company chose to install cages on high-value items nationwide.

Glenn said Home Depot investigated more than one case of organized retail theft per day nationally in the past year as the company recorded around 400 cases of suspected organized retail theft. The thefts amount to losses of "billions of dollars a year," according to Glenn.

Home Depot tells its staff not to confront suspected shoplifters but does employ trained asset-protection guards to challenge thieves. In April, a Home Depot employee was fatally shot in a Pleasanton store after confronting shoplifters. sfstandard.com


Security Measures to Adopt as Theft Surges
How to keep your retail store safe and secure

If you want to stop your store from experiencing any unexpected losses then one thing you can do is implement various security measures.

Implement a policy for shoplifting

If you can implement a policy that will stop shoplifters in their tracks then this will help you out a lot. Your team should be trained on how to stop shoplifters and they should also be told what to do if they witness an individual taking a product. If your team make the decision to confront them then they should take a colleague with them for safety reasons.

Use customer service

Shoplifters may be put off stealing if they know that they have been spotted. One way you can stop shoplifters would be for you to approach them and ask if they need help with something, or to even direct them to a particular product.

Optimise the layout

If you can change the layout of your store then this will make it harder for people to steal and get away with it. Make sure that you put your cash register by the door so that people have to pass you when they leave. Take the time to minimise any blind spots.

Identify items at risk | Stock takes  retailtechinnovationhub.com


Homicides Are Falling in Major American Cities

Local officials say pandemic factors that drove up murder rates are receding

So far this year, killings are down 12% overall in nine of the 10 most populous cities compared with the same time frame last year, according to local government data.

Homicides are down in six of those cities, including 27% in Los Angeles, 22% in Houston, and 16% in Philadelphia. In Texas, the cities of Dallas, San Antonio and Austin reported slight upticks. San Diego didn't provide data. The 2023 data available from the cities had different end dates, ranging from April to this week.

Local officials and criminologists say conditions that drove the violence up in 2020 and 2021, such as rise in domestic disputes and a pause in gang-violence prevention programs during the pandemic, as well as a pullback in police enforcement after racial-justice protests over the murder of George Floyd, are receding

Last year, the number of killings dropped 5% in 70 of the largest U.S. cities from 2021, according to the Major Cities Chiefs Association, which represents police chiefs from large cities.

Some criminologists argue that the reduction in violence is tied most closely to the receding effects of the pandemic. Americans were disconnected from schools, churches, mentors and counseling, which resulted in more deadly conflicts. He said that any impacts on policing from the protests weren't widespread. wsj.com


Fresno Council members propose real-time video surveillance to fight retail theft
Fresno City Councilmembers Luis Chavez & Mike Karbassi announced their intention to introduce a new budget proposal to bridge the gap between Fresno's local retail businesses and the Fresno Police Department and taking direct aim at organized retail theft and other property crimes.

The Supply Side: Theft continues to take bite out of retail profits

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Federal Agencies Crack Down on AI Bias
Regulatory Update: Federal Agencies Warn About AI and Bias
Four major federal agencies recently announced a joint effort seeking to block potential bias and discrimination that could arise from the use of artificial intelligence (AI) by employers. One of the agencies-the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC)-was the first out of the blocks in publishing an AI guidance document for employers.

In addition to EEOC, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), Department of Justice's Civil Rights Division (DOL) and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced they will jointly work to ensure AI does not violate individual rights and regulatory compliance regarding civil rights, equal employment opportunity, fair competition and consumer protection.

AI has become a hot topic this year, with news stories proliferating about the technology's dangers to privacy and democracy. Some are enthusiastically boosting AI as a tool that can solve many problems and make different kinds of work easier and quicker to do. Others like Tesla CEO Elon Musk see AI as a threat that must be controlled before it grows out of control.

All sorts of private and public organizations use these systems to make critical decisions that impact individuals' rights and opportunities, including fair and equal access to a job, housing, credit opportunities, and other goods and services, they explained. "These automated systems are often advertised as providing insights and breakthroughs, increasing efficiencies and cost-savings, and modernizing existing practices," they added. "We take seriously our responsibility to ensure that these rapidly evolving automated systems are developed and used in a manner consistent with federal laws, and each of our agencies has previously expressed concern about potentially harmful uses of automated systems."

The officials pressed the point that many automated systems rely on enormous amounts of data to find patterns or correlations, and then apply those patterns to new data to perform tasks or make recommendations and predictions. "While these tools can be useful, they also have the potential to produce outcomes that result in unlawful discrimination." ehstoday.com


Corporate AI Framework Needed
Managing the Risks of Generative AI
Corporate leaders, academics, policymakers, and countless others are looking for ways to harness generative AI technology, which has the potential to transform the way we learn, work, and more. In business, generative AI has the potential to transform the way companies interact with customers and drive business growth. New research shows 67% of senior IT leaders are prioritizing generative AI for their business within the next 18 months, with one-third (33%) naming it as a top priority. Companies are exploring how it could impact every part of the business, including sales, customer service, marketing, commerce, IT, legal, HR, and others.

However, senior IT leaders need a trusted, data-secure way for their employees to use these technologies. Seventy-nine-percent of senior IT leaders reported concerns that these technologies bring the potential for security risks, and another 73% are concerned about biased outcomes. More broadly, organizations must recognize the need to ensure the ethical, transparent, and responsible use of these technologies.

A business using generative AI technology in an enterprise setting is different from consumers using it for private, individual use. Businesses need to adhere to regulations relevant to their respective industries (think: healthcare), and there's a minefield of legal, financial, and ethical implications if the content generated is inaccurate, inaccessible, or offensive. For example, the risk of harm when an generative AI chatbot gives incorrect steps for cooking a recipe is much lower than when giving a field service worker instructions for repairing a piece of heavy machinery. If not designed and deployed with clear ethical guidelines, generative AI can have unintended consequences and potentially cause real harm.

Organizations need a clear and actionable framework for how to use generative AI and to align their generative AI goals with their businesses' "jobs to be done," including how generative AI will impact sales, marketing, commerce, service, and IT jobs. hbr.org


Does ChatGPT 'Lower the Bar for Hackers'?
ChatGPT creates mutating malware that evades detection by EDR

Mutating, or polymorphic, malware can be built using the ChatGPT API at runtime to effect advanced attacks that can evade endpoint detections and response (EDR) applications.

A global sensation since its initial release at the end of last year, ChatGPT's popularity among consumers and IT professionals alike has stirred up cybersecurity nightmares about how it can be used to exploit system vulnerabilities. A key problem, cybersecurity experts have demonstrated, is the ability of ChatGPT and other large language models (LLMs) to generate polymorphic, or mutating, code to evade endpoint detection and response (EDR) systems.

A recent series of proof-of-concept attacks show how a benign-seeming executable file can be crafted such that at every runtime, it makes an API call to ChatGPT. Rather than just reproduce examples of already-written code snippets, ChatGPT can be prompted to generate dynamic, mutating versions of malicious code at each call, making the resulting vulnerability exploits difficult to detect by cybersecurity tools.

"ChatGPT lowers the bar for hackers, malicious actors that use AI models can be considered the modern 'Script Kiddies'," said Mackenzie Jackson, developer advocate at cybersecurity company GitGuardian. "The malware ChatGPT can be tricked into producing is far from ground-breaking but as the models get better, consume more sample data and different products come onto the market, AI may end up creating malware that can only be detected by other AI systems for defense. What side will win at this game is anyone's guess."

There have been various proof of concepts that showcase the tool's potential to exploit its capabilities in developing advanced and polymorphic malware. csoonline.com


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Gainesville, FL: Pair arrested with 1,764 fraudulent gift cards, may be part of organized ring
Jiaxin Jiang, 24, of Fresh Meadows, New York, and Cheng Li, 25, of Monterey Park, California, were arrested yesterday and charged with possession of more than 50 counterfeit gift cards, intent to defraud over $50,000, and 1,764 counts of possession of stolen gift cards. At about 9:20 a.m. yesterday, an Alachua County Sheriff's Deputy along with a detective assigned to the ASO ACTION Unit conducted a traffic stop on a 2023 Chevrolet Malibu with a New Jersey tag for following too closely. Li was the driver of the car, and Jiang was the passenger; the car was rented in Jiang's name. The two occupants of the car reportedly said they were traveling from New York to Orlando to see "a crocodile" but later said they were traveling from Atlanta to Orlando. A narcotics-certified K-9 team was deployed and alerted to narcotics in the car, leading to a probable-cause search of the car. A plain odor of marijuana was reportedly present inside the car, and a large number of gift cards were also found in boxes and other containers; one of the boxes had a shipping label to Cheng Li in Brooklyn, NY. A query of law enforcement databases also showed that address associated with Jiang in recent months. The GPS in the vehicle reportedly showed a destination of a Target store in Ocala.  alachuachronicle.com

Mesa, AZ: Man accused of stealing $100K in fragrances from east Valley stores
A man is in custody after allegedly stealing over $100,000 of perfumes from multiple fragrance stores in Gilbert, Chandler, Queen Creek, and Phoenix. The thefts started in June 2022 when 37-year-old Jose Luis Acosta walked into an Ulta Beauty store near Baseline and Copper roads, filled a pillowcase with $2959 worth of fragrances, and left the store without paying, court documents say. According to police, from Aug. 2022 - May 30, 2023, Acosta went to 10 more Ulta Beauty stores throughout the east Valley, where he shoved perfumes into duffle bags and pillowcases before fleeing the store. His thefts during these months totaled $39,740.98. Police say Acosta was in and out of the store within a minute during these crimes. Investigators are looking into other retail thefts he might be connected to. Ulta Beauty believes he is responsible for over $100,000 in stolen fragrances. Acosta was arrested Monday and booked into jail on ten counts of retail theft. He was previously arrested for theft, shoplifting, discharging a firearm, and assault.  azfamily.com


Redwood City, CA: Family-owned Bike shop has $50K in inventory stolen
A small, family-owned Redwood City business lost $50,000 worth of inventory after an early morning break-in. Video from early Thursday morning shows several men walking up to Chain Reaction Bicycles, located at 1680 El Camino Real, and using a crowbar to break open the front door. "It was just absolutely crazy. We've never seen anything like this, and we've been in business for 40 years," said Becky Jacoubowsky. Becky and Kevin Jacoubowsky are sales managers at the shop that is owned by their father and uncle. They say they grew up in the store and they call the place their home.  kron4.com


Las Vegas, NV: Police seeking 5 females for theft of merchandise from Sephora

Napa, CA: Two arrested following Police chase of Sunglass Hut thieves

Roma, GA: Man found with stolen $35,000 Home Depot Excavator

Nassau County, NY: $3,000 Boutique Burglary: Trio Swipes Cash, Clothing From Westbury Shop

Bergen County, NJ: Paramus Mall $1,000 Shoplifting Becomes Robbery When Female Neiman Marcus Employee Is Thrown To Floor

St Mary's, PA: Man accused of stealing nearly $600 in items from Walmart

Auburn, MA: Man suspected of stealing $400 worth of Pokémon cards from BJ's

Lyndhurst, NJ: Converging Lyndhurst Police Collar Shoplifting Crew From Queens