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Alliance. “They do it on social media, on their
website, by telephone. They do it in a bunch of ways
to determine things about the company. It’s nothing
random, it’s all highly thought out.”
But it goes even further than that, notes Hendel,
warning that scammers will oftenmake several trips
to a store before an attack, posing as a customer to
gather information.
“If I present a piece of jewelry, and the customer
asks to be shown another piece behind me and I turn
around, I’m easy prey,” Hendel says. “Or if I open
a showcase and leave the keys there, even for three,
four, five seconds, I’m easy prey. If I let my client put
a bag or papers onmy counter, if I present too many
items at one time and have a messy counter, if I let
my customer get very close to me when I’m going to
openmy display, if I let my clients walk around the
store [and don’t pay] attention to where they are and
what they are doing, I’m an easy target. There are
many, many things they will do to test you.”
It’s not just a jeweler’s interactions with customers
that are under scrutiny, either.
“Criminals look to see how you open the store, if
you are aware of customers coming in and out, or if
you’re on your phone,” Hendel continues. “If you
only have two salespeople but there are 12 customers
in the store, are you aware of where all of them are at
every moment?”
Lawton corroborates this. In his time as a jewelry
thief, he says, it was these little bits of information
that helped him decide if — and how— to attack a
certain jeweler.
“When I cased stores, I could tell you every
single detail about a jewelry store you would want
to know,” he discloses. “Not only where the store is
and what it looks like, but who comes and goes, what
time, howmany employees, what shifts they work,
when the first guy comes in, what cars they drive
— there isn’t a thing that’s not known. I can even
tell you when the mailman comes, when the next-
door neighbor opens his store, and when he gets his
packages delivered.”
PLAY I NG THE GAME
There are numerous scams criminals use to take
advantage of jewelers, running the gamut from
simple bait-and-switch and distraction techniques to
playacting, long cons, credit card fraud and memo
bust-outs.
“I dealt with a case where some guys called a
jeweler and wanted to see high-end diamonds,”
recalls Winckel. “They set up an appointment,
visited the jeweler, and told him they were only the
people that check the diamonds for the buyer. They
agreed the diamonds were good, asked for them to
be wrapped in a parcel and closed and put in the safe
until they spoke with their boss, stating that they
▶
A scammer acquires the credit card of an
existing customer and places an order with
it, then calls up the store later, posing as the
customer and asking for the item’s tracking
information so they can follow its progress.
They then call the shipping company and
use the tracking number to switch the
delivery address to one of their choosing.
SOLUTION:
Designate a shipping coordinator
and stress to the shipping company that
only this coordinator may change the
address on an order. Require a password
for the change.
Memo bust-outs
take advantage of
the consignment
system. The
perpetrator — often
a fringe diamond
player who may
once have been
associated with a
known company
and claims to still
be with it — poses
as a dealer, requests
goods onmemo
from another
dealer, then simply
absconds with the
diamonds. Often,
the thief will
complete several
smaller memo deals
first to gain the
supplier’s trust.
SOLUTION:
Ask for
updated references
and ID before
giving consigners
any goods, and call
those references to
confirm there are
no problems. Make
sure wording in the
memo contracts is
appropriate, and
check the dealer’s
standing with the
Jewelers Board of
Trade (JBT).
SCAM 2
SCAM 3
don’t plan. Those are the kind of guys that are very
preventable. I’m the kind of guy that’s hard. To this
day, I could rob a jewelry store. I look at them all
the time and I think, ‘I could hit this guy, and not a
chance he would know about it.’”
Security experts agree that scammers are far from
indiscriminate in how they target stores.
“Nothing is by coincidence,” maintains Itay
Hendel, CEO of ISPS, a leading security-consulting
company for the jewelry sector. “They don’t just
go and attack stores because they are convenient,
they attack because they see weak points. They
will always try to find the easy target, and if they see
you are not an easy target, they will move on to the
next store.”
MartinWinckel, founder of Europe’s Jewelry
Alert Service, concurs. “Perpetrators seek victims,
not opponents. They don’t want to attack anyone
they perceive as too attentive. They are looking for
people they can quickly and easily fool.”
PO I NTS OF ATTACK
The ins and outs of what makes a jeweler
vulnerable are myriad, but the paramount theme
is attentiveness. Paying attention to how you open
your store, who’s in your store, where they are and
what they’re doing canmake all the difference.
“You’ve got to be conscious of what’s going on
in and around your store all the time,” declares
detective JosephMetsopulos of the NYPD’s Major
Case Squad.
That diligence is not something to take for
granted. Scammers track everything that goes on in
a store, compiling notes on factors that most would
consider minute but that are key to creating a well-
organized plan of attack.
“They do research on the target victim,” says
John Kennedy, president of Jewelers Security
SEPTEMBER 2020
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DIAMONDS.NET
