RESOURCES · FIELD NOTES, GUIDES, RESEARCH
Field notes from investigative teams.
Resources for investigators, analysts, and their teams
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49 articlesThe Security Incident Is Closed. | Who Decided the Underlying Pattern Is No Longer Relevant?
Target's malware detection system flagged the intrusion twice, days apart. Each alert was evaluated as though it were …
ReadWhy Modern Investigations Need More Than a System of Record: | The Case for Deep Discovery
TD Bank recorded the same customer's cash deposits more than 500 times — over $400 million in transactions. Each report …
ReadAre You Tracking Repeat Retail Offenders — | or Repeatedly Rediscovering the Same Network?
84 fraudulent transactions. 9 debit cards. 3 retail banners. One operation. No single store's repeat-offender list ever …
ReadIf the Most Important Connection Sits Outside the Case, | Why Is the Case Still the Center of Investigation Technology?
Samuel Little confessed to 90 killings across 19 states over four decades. The FBI confirmed 61. Most of his victims had …
ReadIf the Same Counterfeit Network Reappears After Every Takedown, What Exactly Did You Disrupt?
A listing removed is not a network disrupted. When the same supplier relationship, payment rail, and product images …
ReadReality Check: How Real Investigators Really Use (and Don’t Use) AI Today
A candid Q&A with a police chief and detective on what AI actually helps with in frontline investigations—and what still …
ReadThe Human Factor: Why Investigators Still Matter When AI Signs the First Draft
"Human-in-the-loop" is a policy statement until an agency can prove, after the fact, what a reviewer actually checked. …
ReadClosing the Small-Parcel Loophole: AI at the Border
De-minimis rule changes have pushed millions of low-value parcels into real customs scrutiny. The volume is too large …
ReadThe New Counterfeit Supply Chain: Mapping Micro-Sellers with AI
Counterfeit activity has shifted from a few large hubs to swarms of micro-sellers across marketplaces and social …
ReadHuman Trafficking & Sex Trade: When the Algorithm, Not the Trafficker, Does the Hiding
This third chapter of Criminal Minds, Rewired examines why human trafficking victims stay hidden less through deliberate …
ReadDrug Trafficking: The Supply Chain Automated Before the Case File Could Catch Up
In this second part of the Criminal Minds, Rewired series, we look at why drug trafficking now runs like a logistics …
ReadAuthenticity Under Attack: When Platforms Reward Synthetic Credibility
Deepfake ads, cloned executive voices, and AI-generated brand replicas are no longer rare incidents — they are a …
ReadOrganized Retail Crime: The Crew Coordinates as One Network. The Case Files Don’t.
Three stores in three states log the same resale account, the same vehicle, and the same reseller handle as three …
ReadAI and Dupe Culture: When Brand Monitoring Was Built for the Wrong Signal
AI-assisted look-alikes now operate in phonetic, linguistic, and structural space — not just visual. Most brand …
ReadWhy the U.S. Notorious Markets List Tells Only Half the Story
A market can be named on the U.S. Notorious Markets List, sanctioned by reputation, and still reappear years later. What …
ReadHow Online Fraud Becomes Physical Theft
A $50 BOPIS order is rarely about the $50. It's a test of whether a store's pickup counter will release merchandise …
ReadThinking Like the Criminal: How LP Teams Outsmart Organized Retail Crime
Organized retail crime (ORC) is structured and repeatable, run like a business with defined roles and playbooks. The …
ReadMistaking “Hike” for “Nike”: Is AI Flooding Your Team with False Positives?
AI-driven takedown tools promised faster brand protection. For many teams, they delivered a different problem, queues …
ReadTransforming SOCMINT into Actionable Investigations
Social media monitoring teams can capture a post in seconds. Turning that capture into evidence that survives a case …
ReadWhere AI Actually Helps: Trademark Clearance, Correlation, and the Limits of Automated Enforcement
A closer look at where AI genuinely reduces friction in trademark enforcement, clearance search and cross-marketplace …
ReadCan You Enforce What You Can’t Prove You Own? AI Authorship and the Brand Enforcement Gap
Before a brand sends a takedown notice over AI-assisted creative, its legal team needs an answer to a harder question: …
ReadThree IP Verdicts, One Common Thread: The Evidence Existed Before the Lawsuit Did
Chanel, Shein, and Rhode all won or settled on terms that turned on records assembled long before anyone filed a …
ReadSmarter Policing Through Unified Data: Why the Video Wall Isn’t the Same as Unified Data
Real-time crime centers put every feed on one screen. That's not the same as connecting the records behind them. This …
ReadORC Rings Run Their Playbook on Social Media: Why the Signal Still Arrives After the Loss
The Nordstrom Topanga smash-and-grab and the arrest of a TikTok haul influencer both trace back to the same platforms. …
ReadThe Price Gap Was the Signal. Inflation Just Erased It.
As tariff-driven price increases push genuine goods toward counterfeit price points, the anomaly thresholds brand …
ReadThe Counterfeit Packaging Crisis No One’s Talking About
Brands have spent a decade adding holograms, QR codes, and tamper seals to packaging. Counterfeiters have spent that …
ReadEmpowering Investigations: Who Answers for the Algorithm’s Flag
ALPR and predictive analytics have spread through law enforcement faster than the governance built to explain them. This …
ReadWhen the Shrink Number Stops at the Door: Rethinking ORC Analytics
Store-level shrink metrics were built to explain a single location's losses. Organized retail crime rings don't stay …
ReadMore Detection Layers, Same Bottleneck: What IoT and Blockchain Don’t Fix in Counterfeit Enforcement
RFID tags, blockchain certificates, and AI image scanners have each made a real technical problem easier to solve. None …
ReadSame Platforms, New Twists: How Modern Counterfeiters Are Using Technology to Sell fakes
For years, brand protection leaned on consumer complaints as an early warning signal. That signal is drying up as more …
ReadData on Trial: A Police Chief’s Perspective on the Challenges of Modern Drug Investigations in Brazil
In this interview, we speak with a senior Police Chief (Delegado de Polícia) from Brazil’s Civil Police, who has …
ReadInterview with a Brazilian Detective: Uncovering the Challenges of Drug Investigations
In a recent interview, a Brazilian detective shared insights into the complex challenges faced during drug-related …
ReadConnecting the Dots: Why the RMS Was Never Built to See the Network
The bottleneck in drug and narcotics investigations usually isn't data volume, it's where that data lives. This article …
ReadHow Bad Actors Exploit Chatbots for Counterfeiting: Same Trust Signal, Opposite Intent
Brands spent years training customers to trust bot-mediated conversations. Counterfeiters are now the ones cashing in on …
ReadAmazon Haul Stopped Being an Experiment: What That Means for Brand Protection
Amazon Haul launched as a discount side project and has since expanded to more than 25 markets, dropped its beta label, …
ReadPreserving Timeless Elegance with Tech: Why Authenticating an Item Isn’t the Same as Finding the Network Selling Fakes
NFC tags and blockchain ledgers can prove a single handbag is genuine. They do nothing to reveal the sellers, listings, …
ReadHuman + AI Investigations: The Work Didn’t Disappear, It Moved to Verification
AI-driven tip prioritization is credited with helping investigators handle a backlog of millions of cyber tips. What …
ReadTemu’s Counterfeit Problem Outlived the Loophole Everyone Blamed for It
The de minimis exemption that let low-value China-origin parcels skip tariffs and customs scrutiny closed in 2025. …
ReadRemoving Counterfeits on TikTok: Why Reporting Isn’t the Same as Enforcement
A practical guide to reporting counterfeits on TikTok, and why the reporting form is only the first step in a workflow …
ReadNavigating Brand Infringement on TikTok’s Counterfeit Playground
TikTok's counterfeit problem isn't one network to shut down. It's thousands of teenage drop-shippers, rep agents, and …
ReadWhen the Case Closes, the Counterfeit Network Doesn’t
Enforcement keeps dismantling counterfeit drug operations one raid at a time, but the recurring names across DEA, …
ReadAI in IP and Brand Protection — Where It Actually Changes the Work
AI is reshaping specific tasks in IP and brand protection investigations. Not all of them, and not in the ways the …
ReadThe Multichannel Scam Problem Isn’t the Channels: It’s the Case File
Scammers now move a single operation across email, voice, video, and marketplace listings without missing a beat. Brand …
ReadWhich AI-Triggered Infringement Defenses Actually Hold Up Under Volume
Two-factor authentication and awareness training won't stop a synthetic listing that never existed an hour ago. Here's …
ReadCombating Superfakes: Why Individual Takedowns Aren’t Enough to Stop the Network
Superfake enforcement stalls when every listing is treated as its own case. The pattern that matters is the one that …
ReadBeyond Takedowns: Why the Listing Is Not the Problem
Most brand protection teams measure success in takedown counts. The sellers generating those listings keep reappearing. …
ReadWhen Every Fake Is Unique: What Generative AI Actually Broke in Brand Protection
Security researchers have tied generative AI tools to roughly 100,000 websites impersonating brands. The bigger problem …
ReadAmazon’s Counterfeit Notices Fell 35%: The Data Didn’t Grow, It Got Connected
A drop in enforcement notices usually means brands are finding less infringement, or giving up on reporting it. Amazon's …
ReadGray Market or Counterfeit? The Same Seller, Two Investigative Files
A genuine watch sold outside its authorized channel and a counterfeit sold by the same marketplace account can look …
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