KGuard, part of Taiwanese KWorld group, aids German police department identifying an organized crime gang. Next to the KGuard security booth you had Anytone, a professional in the development of portable power stations for smartphones including serveral other accessories for phones and tablets. The booth had iPads and Samsung tablets on display to present their product lineup. Unfortunately these demo devices caught the eye of a group of seemingly West European men with their targets set to steal these expensive units.

Stupid as it may seem to steal expensive tablets next to the KGuard booth, which featured the latest state of the art products in home security. These thieves has no impression that the cameras were actually all fully operational over the course of the event. Police asked KGuard for a copy of the recorded material to identify the gang, and they successfully did with the material provided. No better product advertisement for a professional security camera manufacturer than this type of events to occur.

The crime group, in all stupidity of robbing the booth next to surveillance specialist KGuard, had a pattern of working. They had no scruples, came over the next day visiting the exact same booth in all inconspicuousness to detect if there were new high price tag presentation tablets present.

Although KGuard was the miraculous problem solver of their Chinese neighbours, CEBIT has been under fire on the subject of crime. With the fair attracting more individuals or small groups of people out for “recouping their 40 Euro tickets” to something bigger. Last year we personally witnessed a culprit stealing multiple items from the booth of a Chinese manufacturer when somebody else was keeping the exhibitor distracted.

After interviewing some exhibitors in the Golden pavillion (China, Taiwan, Korea oriented), we heard some interesting views of the people running the booth, some of their thoughts mentioned:

• “It is not China, punishment for thieves is high in our country, so we think here it would be safe too”
• “It’s a nightmare, I have to constant check to see if we don’t miss our demo products”
• “These people who visit are different culture”
• “We do Computex too but we don’t lose so many items there”

When asking them in all discretion why they don’t report these type of events to the organisation, most kept tight lipped, those who dared to speak up mainly said: “It’s good for our promotion that we are here, to show the people what we do. Organisation can not stop these people from behaving bad.”
Food for the brain to chew on, the organisation has plenty of security present so they honestly aren’t the ones to blame for. Sending out a mailing to inform them to better protect their items on display might be in order, but then again this might scare plenty of exhibitors from showing up.