Meeting Notes for October 3

CROW’S CALL – October 3, 2019

By: Dr. Bill

 

Do you remember that 2015 movie The Revenant with Leonardo DiCaprio getting mauled by a grizzly bear and almost losing his life?  Today’s Rotary meeting opened a lot like that, with President Colette Lay playing the grumpy predator and Greeter Vera Packard as the aggrieved Leo.  Colette evoked the RI President, Mark Daniel Maloney, from the town of Decatur, Alabama.  President Mark’s motto of “Rotary connects the world” was certainly borne out by our attendees today. Vera offered the Thought for the Day from the romance novel Take a Chance: “Who we are makes a difference; our decisions define that difference,” or words to that effect.  Vera, who became a citizen in 2008, led the Salute to the Flag with special dedication.  Her husband, Mark, is working in the City and her son and daughter-in-law are in Italy. The songbird Hermann Welm led us in a patriotic song about here.  Colette, as part of a hazing ritual, made Vera do the Four-Way Test again.  She even offered to do it in Portuguese one more time, and backwards!  Vera introduced her guest today, her friend Thais Ouzana, a lawyer from Brazil who has donated two paintings for our auction. Another guest checking out the club was Deema Eid, a doctor from Dubai.

Presentation:

President Lay gave District Service awards to four hard-working Rotarians: Chris Gayler, Patti Hennigan, Dennis Harvey and Gary Sloan. They each had contributed at least 100 hours of service to the club, and we owe them our thanks for making the club successful.  Chris Gayler observed that the pen he received looked a lot like a sheriff’s badge, a similarity that says something about Gayler’s familiarity with symbols of law enforcement.

Announcements:

 

Program:

 

Marv Remmich introduced our speaker, Nick Montano, who heads up international investigations for  major firms facing cases of intellectual property theft and counterfeit products.  Nick began by asking us to consider our own reactions to crimes like shoplifting or buying knock-off sneakers.  Most of us would consider these minor violations; law enforcement officials certainly do.  And yet this black or gray market, stealing $1.7 trillion each year, has been implicated in funding terrorism, drug trafficking and organized crime.  Its products can be dangerous to our health and destructive of the reputations of established brands.  For example, the man who funded the attack on the French magazine, Charlie Hebdo, in 2015, made his money selling fake Nike shoes.  Montano identifies such crimes and works for businesses to remediate them.  He was accompanied by his partner, his daughter.

 

Nick and his daughter showed a short video which mentioned some of the companies which have been targeted: Loreal, Hershey, Gillette, Proctor and Gamble, and See’s Candies.  BMW unwittingly used counterfeit bolts in its cars; Pond’s found a counterfeit cream had used toxic chemicals.  The problem of illegal products has been vastly compounded by internet sales.  Expired merchandise is often sold on Amazon.  Big retailers like Costco simply don’t care where they get their supplies.  If they are called out on a particular violation, they simply promise not to sell that product any more. Enforcement is spotty, a lot like Whack-a-Mole, according to Montano.

 

In conclusion, Nick’s daughter recommended buying groceries at Costco but avoiding things like batteries, beauty products and drugs.  For something like Amazon, the challenge is not to try and shut them down but to chip away at their lax enforcement process.  The Montanos urged that we buy from authorized suppliers only.  Meanwhile their company will continue to try and control the traffic of illicit sales by aggressive tactics of identification and targeted legal action.

Raffle:

Brent Tucker graciously accepted his $20 Greeter’s gift.  Chris Gallagher disappointed his many fans by drawing blue for $10.  Both should remember to report these winnings to the IRS.