Securing the Goods
September 06, 08
By Ronit Scheyer
As technology gets faster and criminals get smarter, it’is essential that the traveling diamond or jewelry salesperson be on top of the game in order to protect their valuable goods and their even more valuable life. Although travel can be fraught with danger, the good news is there are solutions and steps that can be taken to mitigate the high and very real risks traveling jewelry sales people face on the job day in and day out.
Crime in the world of jewelry and diamonds is no joke, a fact Elie Ribacoff, former diamantaire and founder and head of Worldwide Security Network, knows all too well. About 30 years ago, the New York native witnessed his father, also a diamond wholesaler, being brutally attacked and robbed as the family arrived one morning to open the business. The event affected him deeply and Ribacoff later founded Worldwide Security Network (WSN) to provide security solutions and consulting to the diamond and jewelry industries – to jewelers, jewelry wholesalers, their facilities and their outside, or traveling, sales reps.
In the wake of 9/11, the company expanded to service industries outside of diamonds and jewelry, including securing high-cost shipments such as designer perfume and cash vans, but jewelers and diamantaires remain their main clients. WSN’s focus is to provide clients with the necessary logistics in the design, planning and implementation of security services and systems for high-value and high-threat targets. The company’s staff includes electronics engineers; law enforcement, military and fire veterans; private investigators; factory-trained technicians and IT specialists.
In March, WSN’s Security Track division released a new line of security products for traveling jewelers, some of the most at-risk salespersons. Security Track manufactures a line of Secure Salesman’s Cases to deter theft, save lives and improve chances of recovery in the event of a loss through the use of modern tracking and location technologies.
The Secure Salesman’s Cases are just one example of the equipment the company offers as part of its hardware line. Understandably, Ribacoff is reluctant to discuss the matter too much, saying that revealing any details of the tools they use to deter threats and loss
Ribacoff explains that diamonds and jewelry carry a unique risk in their small size and ‘concealability.’ “The main risk with diamonds and jewelry is their relative portability – meaning that, because they are small and easily concealable highly concentrated forms of wealth, they are much more likely to be targeted by criminals,” he explains. One of the most serious threats facing diamond and jewelry salespeople today in the U.S. are the organized gangs of South Americans operating throughout the country. “These salesmen are being hunted down and attacked by armed gangs. This situation has intensified in the last few years,” Ribacoff says, adding that the easiest targets are foreign salesmen, who may not know the area or who stand out more–traveling, eating and staying in a hotel alone, carrying millions of dollars worth of merchandise. They’re just not sophisticated, he says, and they don’t follow the proper steps to make sure they’re not targeted, like securing their goods – not leaving them in the car or out of the safe in a hotel room – and performing evasive techniques if they become aware that someone is following them.
Among the steps necessary to prevent a robbery on the road, Ribacoff cites secrecy as being one of the most important. This means not letting anyone outside of close family members and/or the company know where and when the salesperson is going to be traveling
While a store has layers of protection in (outside) doors, windows, locks (inside), cameras, guards, bulletproof glass and (further inside) a safe, a salesperson on the road needs a different type of layered security system. WSN’s equipment is part of this system. One of the most important things about it, Ribacoff says, is that the control of the equipment and the system are not in the hands of the salesman. It is a fully automatic system that keeps the salesman from being at risk. A likely reason that traveling jewelers do not take the proper precautions to prevent robberies is economic – especially with the dismal state of the U.S. economy at present – many jewelers are looking to cut expenses, and even one personal bodyguard, the cost of which can be quite steep, may not be enough to prevent an armed gang of experienced robbers from carrying out a crime.
Interestingly enough, Ribacoff cites insurance as one of the main reasons traveling jewelers do not do everything they could to try to prevent a robbery. As he explains, it used to be that when a criminal would attempt to rob a jeweler or diamantaire (traveling or in the store), the jeweler would resist, which resulted in a lot of fatalities.
Now jewelers are learning not to resist, since they know that resisting increases their chances of being knifed or shot, and, because they figure it is better to just lose their merchandise because they’re insured. Therefore, the criminals are getting away with lots of high-value merchandise, for which the insurance companies are forced to foot the bill. However, this is a problematic situation for insurance companies, who are losing a good deal of money because of it and increasingly balking at the high compensation costs paid out to jewelry companies.
In the midst of searching for a solution, insurance firm Allianz came across ISPS Security Consulting and Solutions, a small firm founded in 2005 by ex-Secret Service agents to provide tailor-made intelligence and security solutions to the business world and specifically diamonds and jewelry. ISPS, as a security consulting service, runs week-long seminars for traveling diamond and jewelry salespeople, teaching them how to minimize their risk for being robbed on the road and prevent themselves from becoming a victim of organized criminal activity. Allianz, and a few others, immediately saw the opportunity and was impressed, says ISPS Vice President Omri Timianker, with the seminar’s success rate. Out of the hundreds of traveling jewelry salespeople that have taken ISPS’ seminar, only three have been robbed. In the same two plus year period, approximately 24 salespeople from Israel who have not taken the course have been the victims of a robbery, Timianker explains.
Today, a number of insurance companies, including Allianz, Clal and Peltours Insurance contract with ISPS, requiring all of their diamond and jewelry companies to take the seminar and subsidizing part of the cost. It’s a simple question of economics, according to Timianker and his partner, CEO Yohanan Hadari. The insurance firms were weary of paying huge loss compensation bills to diamond and jewelry salesmen, and, with ISPS’ current success rate, it is much more cost-effective for them to pay part of the cost of a seminar than to pay compensation every time a jeweler is robbed. In addition, once salespeople in a jewelry company take the course, their premiums go down.
The seminars, currently offered in Israel, the U.S. and Hong Kong, run all day Sunday and Monday through Thursday in the mornings, to accommodate the needs of business and never have more than five students in a class, to ensure personal attention. The important thing about the program, Hadari explains, is that it is completely personalized to each salesperson’s situation. The ISPS team gathers up-to-date security and crime information specific to locations throughout the U.S. and the world, with which they can advise their students traveling to these areas about the specific risks they are apt to come across.
The students are then taught how to identify a robber and what to do when the risk is identified. Although it sounds simple, Timianker insists that it is extremely complicated. Like many in the security sector, he also declines to elaborate further on their strategy. Hadari explains that it is the organized and carefully planned robbery attempts (such as the South American gangs) against which they prepare their students, because, he says, it’s next to impossible to anticipate and prevent an isolated un-organized robbery attempt.
With approximately 30 years of Secret Service experience between them, Timianker and Hadari are candid about the risks facing traveling jewelry salespeople today. “A salesman is like a jewelry store, walking down the street without protection,” Timianker says. He also points out that the situation is very much one of survival of the fittest – it is not always about being the most secure that you can possibly be; rather, it is about being more secure than the next guy. Timianker tells a story to explain his point. “Two jewelry salesmen are walking through the jungle, and they come across a tiger. As one prepares to run away, the other squats down to put on his running shoes. The first man is shocked and says to his companion, ‘You really think those running shoes will help you outrun a tiger?’ ‘No,’ his friend says, continuing to tie his laces, ‘but they will help me outrun you’.”
“We teach people how to run faster than the other guy,” he says. In the follow up to the courses, which is part of the service package, ISPS continues to provide former students with its consulting services, including location-specific crime updates, access to equipment and personalized advice. “We have 24/7 follow up available,” Timianker explains. “A former student knows he can call me anytime, anywhere, and I’ll be available.”