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The parent company of one of the most popular poker sites on the Internet said yesterday it has agreed to pay the U.S. government $105 million to settle charges that it illegally offered gambling to players in the U.S. PartyGaming Plc said it would pay the money over three years as part of a “Non-Prosecution Agreement” it recently reached with the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York.

The Justice position is considered controversial with gaming analysts and some members of Congress arguing it has steered U.S. players to unregulated offshore sites. “The U.S. government has now succeeded in driving out the reputable publicly-traded Internet gaming operators,” said Joseph M. Kelley, a professor of business law at the State College at Buffalo, who has also served as an expert witness for gaming and government interests. “It has not decreased online gambling, but has reduced the ability to monitor suspicious transactions.”

Excerpted from The Washington Post.

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In Security Solutions for Strip Shopping Centers, author and security expert witness Karim H. Vellani discusses risks and solutions for strip shopping center security:

Analyzing the Information

Once we have our database of actual crimes, we can analyze the specific risk at each site. There are a number of queries that will assist in creating an effective security program. The first is a property-specific analysis which helps us differentiate between crime risks when comparing sites. For resource allocation, it is imperative that the analysis is focused at the property level. Given a security budget of $1,000,000 per year, this analysis allows us to compare risks at each site and allocate accordingly.

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U.S. District Court Judge James Mahan recently postponed the criminal trial of officials who run the Truckee Carson Irrigation District until February 2010 at the request of defense lawyers who said they need more time to prepare for such an “unusual and complex case.” The officials are accused of defrauding the federal government for years so they could deliver more water from Lake Tahoe and the Truckee River to area ranchers and farmers than was rightfully theirs.

A 2008 flood triggered dozens of lawsuits from more than 100 homeowners and questions about the amount of water flowing through 370 miles of canals. Hydrology expert witnesses estimate it would cost $3.1 million to build an 11.7-mile long concrete barrier on the Truckee irrigation canal to protect against a breach such as the one in 2008. Environmentalists and others question whether taxpayers should subsidize a century-old irrigation system that uses precious water resources to grow crops in the desert.

Excerpted from SierraSun.com.

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Officials who run the Truckee Carson Irrigation District are accused of defrauding the federal government for years so they could deliver more water from Lake Tahoe and the Truckee River to area ranchers and farmers than was rightfully theirs. It is alleged that district officials trained workers how to disable some water meters and manipulate others. The investigation comes after the failure of an earthen canal in northern Nevada that sent flood waters into hundreds of homes in January 2008. The flood triggered dozens of lawsuits from more than 100 homeowners and questions about the amount of water flowing through 370 miles of canals.

Hydrology expert witnesses estimate it would cost $3.1 million to build an 11.7-mile long concrete barrier on the Truckee irrigation canal to protect against another breach. The Bureau of Reclamation estimates that system wide upgrades could cost hundreds of millions of dollars.

More to come from SierraSun.com.

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In Security Solutions for Strip Shopping Centers, author and security expert witness Karim H. Vellani discusses risks and solutions for strip shopping center security:

Using Police Data

Given that we now know that crime analysis uses actual crime data, we should define, step by step, the methodology that is proven, considered a best practice, and most important, accepted in court. The first step is to obtain the police department data for each store. This data usually comes in the form of Calls for Service (CFS), which provide a fairly accurate portrayal of criminal and other activity and consist of each call to the police to report crimes or other activity from the location. With this initial data, we can begin to build our database of crime at each store.

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Trademark expert witness William D. Neal is Senior Executive Officer at SDR Consulting and in Modeling Brand Equity, he writes on branding:

Measurement Issues

The challenge to both marketers and marketing researchers is determining how we measure and manage the intrinsic value of a brand (its equity) and how do we tie that value and our attempts to improve value to customer loyalty.

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In Security Solutions for Strip Shopping Centers, author and security expert witness Karim H. Vellani discusses risks and solutions for strip shopping center security:

Having outlined some of the concerns at strip centers, it should be noted that the focal point of this article is how to determine the true risk at these facilities, rather than the reasons for the risk. As such, we turn to the way in which risk can be determined.

Shopping center managers face a formidable challenge in determining the true risk at their properties because their addresses are often used by crime victims, witnesses, and even the police to report criminal incidences. Adding to this problem is the fact that many people without phones in their residences use the payphones at shopping centers to report crimes that happened elsewhere. Even crimes that occur on the public street can get reported using the center’s address. These issues necessitate the need to thoroughly investigate each crime of violence to determine the true location.

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Trademark expert witness William D. Neal is Senior Executive Officer at SDR Consulting and in Modeling Brand Equity, he writes on branding:

We believe the total value of a brand in a particular product/service category is composed of three parts. One part is due to the physical and readily identifiable (and replicatable) features of the brand that delivers specific, tangible benefits to the purchaser, thus impacting purchase choice. We call these the tangible product features. The second part is due to some perceived intrinsic value associated with the brand name due to such things as the image transferred to the purchaser, trust, longevity in the marketplace, social responsibility, consistent performance, and so forth (i.e. the intangibles), impacting purchase choice. We refer to this as the brand’s image, or the brand’s equity. The third component is the price of the product. Thus, the total value (or utility) of a product or service is a function of 1.) its physical, tangible, deliverable features, 2.) its brand equity, and 3.) its price.

In addition, we believe that a brand’s value is directly related to customer loyalty. That is, if a particular brand maintains a significantly higher perception of value to a consumer than any other brand in the category, that consumer will consistently purchase that brand and consistently recommend that brand to others. Conversely, as brands in a category become less differentiated in terms of both tangible and intrinsic features, price becomes the major differentiator of value, and thus, there is little loyalty.

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In Security Solutions for Strip Shopping Centers, author and security expert witness Karim H. Vellani discusses risks and solutions for strip shopping center security:

Strip shopping centers face unique threats not common to other properties. Often considered a safe haven by customers, strip centers contain various types of businesses and stores that create high traffic levels of both vehicles and pedestrians. Shopping centers often contain an anchor store which draws the bulk of the traffic, such as grocery stores and department stores. Grocery stores, in particular, face numerous crime challenges as they meet many customer needs beyond groceries.

The two biggest threats to shopping centers are victimization of employees and customers and the liability associated with such events. The inherent nature of the facility lends itself to high traffic, because diverse businesses are located within the center. This high traffic creates an abundance of targets for criminals. Other factors that can contribute to higher traffic and higher risks are external payphones, banks and automated teller machines (ATM), and the location of the center at major cross streets or near highways. These factors along with other considerations are typically what the real estate department is looking for when selecting and planning new shopping centers as the factors also contribute to marketability. Thus, a fine line exists between marketability and security.