Theft not unusual during Las Vegas conventions

Jen Lawson

Tuesday, Jan. 14, 2003 | 11:14 a.m.

For the past 14 years Jack Calmes has displayed his high-tech theatrical lights -- used in Rolling Stones and Britney Spears concerts -- at the Lighting Dimensions International trade show at the Las Vegas Convention Center.

Calmes showed off a new toy at last year's LDI show in October: A 560-pound, one-of-a-kind computer programmable light worth $35,000.

After LDI wrapped, Calmes arranged for the light to be shipped back to Dallas, where his company, Syncrolite, is based.

The light never arrived. Calmes thinks it was spirited away from the convention center loading dock by a competitor who wanted to copy the technology.

"I don't understand why there are no security cameras on that loading dock," Calmes said. "It's inconceivable that the Las Vegas Convention Center doesn't have this happen more, and if it does, it's being swept under the rug."

Las Vegas is the trade show capital of North America, and the Las Vegas Convention Center is the No. 1 venue drawing the likes of the International Consumer Electronics Show, which ran through last weekend with an estimated 110,000 attendees.

While thousands of people attend shows each year, millions of dollars of goods ranging from cutting-edge technology to designer clothing move through the convention center every year. Thieves have found it to be a buffet.

Metro Police records show 188 theft reports in 2000; 185 in 2001 and 161 in 2002.

But there may be more thefts than are reported. Exhibitors often don't report stolen goods. Rather than file a police report, many people make a claim with their insurance company or a trucking company if their goods are lost or stolen.

Other material is simply misplaced, officials said, as thousands of people come in and out with every show or convention.

Convention officials and police note this isn't new or unique to Las Vegas. Wherever there are large gatherings of people, thefts happen. In Las Vegas' mob era, the convention docks were known as a place to find something that fell off a truck.

Metro Detective John Gorski is one of two detectives assigned to investigate crimes at the convention center. He categorizes the number of thefts there as "excessive."

"We're fully working to cut down on thefts, but we need more help," Gorski said.

Comdex arrests

During Comdex, a large technology trade show held Nov. 18 to 22 at the convention center, Metro Police arrested two people for grand larceny, conspiracy and burglary for the theft of electronics equipment. A theft arrest was also made in July.

"We don't make an arrest at every show, because sometimes it's hard to prove where something was taken, but we do get lucky once in a while," Gorski said.

Small items, such as monitors with flat plasma screens and digital cameras, are commonly stolen at trade shows, he said.

But the goods aren't always small.

Calmes' light, known as the SX7K, was in a black case measuring about five feet by three feet. After the trade show closed, the light was held overnight on the convention center floor, and it was to be loaded onto a truck headed for Dallas the next day. He thinks a competitor stole it by having it loaded onto another truck.

The lighting industry is small, and Calmes has a few ideas as to where his light went.

"We think the light is still in Las Vegas," he said, adding that he'd think twice about showing equipment at the trade show again, especially if it's held at the convention center.

He is offering a $25,000 reward for the light and information leading to the arrest and conviction of the thieves.

Jennifer Arnold of Earth LCD in San Juan Capistrano, Calif., said she was a victim of theft while at the Comdex trade show last fall.

Earth LCD, a company that buys and resells used liquid crystal display screens, has gone to Comdex for the past nine years. The company never had a problem with theft at the convention until this year.

As do other exhibitors, Arnold kept her display booth up overnight on the convention floor. Comdex officials hired a local security company, Pro-Tect, to guard the corridors of the convention center, and exhibitors could arrange to have a Pro-Tect guard watch individual booths for $12 an hour.

Arnold didn't think it was necessary, since their display was small, a 10-foot by 10-foot booth, and their wares aren't cutting-edge.

But when she arrived at her company's display booth on the second day of the convention, she discovered that a laptop computer hidden between two boxes under a skirted table was missing.

"My reaction was disbelief," she said. "After that first night, we locked down everything. We bought a gigantic piece of plastic to cover our table. Nobody else was doing that, just us."

She reported it to a Comdex official, and Arnold said the official suggested that she file a false claim with the company that transported her display equipment to Las Vegas. A Pro-Tect official refused to take a theft report, Arnold said. She is tracking down serial numbers for the items. She said she tried to file a report with Metro Police but became frustrated after a few attempts and gave up, thinking there was nothing police could do.

No comment

Pro-Tect officials declined to comment for this story.

Another possible theft occurred, Arnold said, but there's no way of knowing when or where it happened.

At the close of the convention, Arnold arranged to have her equipment shipped to her company's headquarters in California. She packed the equipment on a pallet and shrink-wrapped it, and it sat in the convention center overnight until the freight company picked it up.

When the package arrived at her company, a large industrial plastic container containing prototypes, monitors, cables, a video splitter and other miscellaneous equipment was missing.

The laptop and the container are valued at about $5,000, Arnold said. The property was insured, Arnold said, but that's not the point.

"I'd like to see someone take responsibility for this," she said.

During a trade show, the Las Vegas Convention Center and Visitor's Authority leases space to show organizers. Exhibited goods are guarded by the center's security team, Metro Police and a private security company hired by the convention organizers. At Comdex, that company was Pro-Tect.

Comdex exhibitors are given a manual that describes how to prevent theft and how to report theft, said Doug Levinson, senior vice president of operations of Key 3 Media, which organizes Comdex.

"From an exhibitor's point of view, theft is a big deal and I would be very disturbed if something of mine was stolen," Levinson said. "But do I find it unusual? No, I don't find it unusual."

Mistakes

Some things initially reported as stolen later turn out to have been mislabeled or mishandled, especially at a trade show as big as Comdex, said Don Ahl, director of safety and security at the convention center.

"In a major trade show, it's not unprecedented for things to turn up missing. There's a lot of material that is moved in, set up, displayed and moved out in a relatively compressed time frame," Ahl said. "That's not to say theft doesn't happen. It does."

Complaints about thefts from the convention center have been around for years.

Sometimes companies steal competitors' products -- industrial espionage -- and sometimes attendees help themselves to whatever catches their eye. On occasion, thefts have been linked to convention center workers.

In the mid-1990s some of the theft was connected to organized crime, according to the FBI.

The FBI discovered in 1995 that a worker who had helped set up exhibits had been stealing from exhibitors for a long time.

According to FBI documents, the man allegedly changed shipping labels on items waiting to be shipped back to exhibitors, then paid off forklift operators to load the fraudulently labeled merchandise onto a specific truck.

The worker allegedly arranged for the thefts of 3,000 designer shirts worth about $30,000 from an exhibitor at the Men's Apparel Guild International Convention (MAGIC), then sold them to FBI agents for $1,500, FBI documents said.

A MAGIC spokeswoman wouldn't comment for this story.

In 1996, two workers were arrested and charged with possession of stolen property in connection with the theft of $35,000 worth of sewing machines. The culprits subsequently sold the sewing machines for $100 each.

Organized crime doesn't appear to be a factor in any recent trade show thefts, Gorski said.

Another significant theft happened in 1991, when $50,000 worth of authentic National Football League items were stolen from the convention center. Metro found the items for sale on the Strip and seized them.

For years, goods have been loaded and unloaded at the convention center by workers employed by the exhibition companies, Calmes sees this as a problem because it ties the hands of the exhibitors who want to keep a close eye on their property.

Advice

Chuck Schwartz, chairman of Convexx, a show management company based in Henderson, has organized trade shows in almost every major city in the country. He said he tells exhibitors to go to the loading dock to watch their belongings being loaded and unloaded to make sure everything is there.

Regarding Calmes' stolen light, Schwartz said: "He should have been out there watching it."

Thefts occur at every trade show, regardless of size, and it's usually the exhibitor's fault, Schwartz said.

"If you have a convention of 88,000 people, that's like a city of 88,000 people," he said. "If you have 10 thefts -- we don't consider that a lot. It's miniscule.

"The thefts that do take place happen because the exhibitor is careless."

Schwartz said he recently received an e-mail from an exhibitor at the Specialty Equipment Market Association trade show -- an automotive accessory convention -- saying he had some small items stolen from a cabinet in his display booth.

This is another situation that could have been prevented, Schwartz said.

Anything that can be locked up should be, and exhibitors can hire a guard to watch their booths, he said, pointing out that Samsung had 25 plasma screen monitors at the Comdex trade show, and guards were watching the booth.

Former Clark County Sheriff Jerry Keller said while still in office that more thefts happen at Las Vegas trade shows because there are simply more trade shows here.

No epidemic

"It's not an epidemic," he said. "It's nothing extreme."

Security is beefed up at trade shows that feature small, valuable items, such as the Professional Jeweler Show, held in September, and last week's International Consumer Electronics Show, known as CES.

The latest technology in electronic gaming, wireless communication and digital audio and video were on display. But theft isn't a problem at CES because security is tight, the convention's spokeswoman, Lisa Fassold, said.

Since these products might be appealing to thieves, CES officials hired two private security companies as well as a retired Dallas police officer to serve as a security consultant, she said.

"Most of the smart exhibitors have their products wired down" to the display booths so people don't walk away with them, she said.

Stickers are placed on cell phones and other electronic products that attendees bring into the trade show to distinguish them from products on display, Fassold said.

For the past two years, FBI agents have checked the list of registered CES attendees against a database to prevent incidents of terrorism. After Sept. 11, they also began inspecting bags and brought in bomb-sniffing dogs.

Likewise, Jim Reed, director of the Professional Jeweler Show, said FBI agents were on hand providing security for their show, which was held Sept. 29 to Oct. 1 at the convention center. As a result, he said, theft was prevented.

Keller said officers from Metro's SWAT team guarded jewelry, valued at millions of dollars, at a recent jewelry trade show in Las Vegas.

To cut back on theft, Metro Police are teaming up with the freight companies that transport merchandise to the convention center to offer bigger rewards for information on trade show thieves, Gorski said.

People who witness someone stealing at the convention center will be encouraged to call Metro's Secret Witness line. If callers give useful information, they may be compensated partially from a reward fund set up by the freight companies.

"I can see it helping quite a bit," he said. "The individual booths, show management and show companies are anxious to help curtail the thefts. They're really tired of all the thefts that are going on out here."

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