How Businesses Unknowingly Enable Human Trafficking | Noel Thomas

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Here is your host, Alan Pavloski. All right. Hello, hello, hello. Welcome to the Legacy All Stars podcast. I'm your host, Alan Pavloski. On Legacy All Stars, we talk a lot about impact, responsibility and the idea that success means more when it's connected to service. Today's conversation sits right at the intersection of business and technology and one of the most tragic human crises of our time. Noel Thomas is the founder of Darkwatch, a cybersecurity company built to protect businesses from real world data threats, digital threats, etc. But behind the technology is a deeper calling. Using entrepreneurship as a tool to expose disruption and ultimately help prevent human trafficking, which is a cause that is near and dear to my heart. I've always tried to work with people that are focused on putting an end to that tragedy. This episode isn't just about systems and security. It's about people. It's about awareness. It's about what happens when leaders choose not to look away, but instead to lean in and take responsibility. Welcome to the show, Noel. Good to see you.

Thanks for having me on today.

Yeah, my pleasure. Let's jump right in. Take us back. What was your professional journey before founding Dark Watch?

So it was a pretty windy road. Went to school for business and always knew that I would go into entrepreneurship. My first business was a window washing and pressure washing business. So a services based business. And from there I played in a rock and roll band for a little bit. Traveling around the world and using the business background to book the tours and manage the finances of the band, run the marketing and, and all that. And then from there worked selling software solutions, everything from high resolution aerial imagery to procurement software and learning and then really falling into this career and passion to make the world a safer place. Including that, you know, from human trafficking.

Yeah. Was there a moment or experience that personally connected you to the issue of human trafficking?

So for me, I say it started as a child. Our family was walking in this indoor market and my sister was four years old at the time. My dad is walking, he gets bumped by this lady and when he looks down he sees that my four year old sister is gone. So thankfully he trusts his instincts, runs towards the exit of this building and a man we didn't know was walking out the door with my sister. My dad recovers her at the last second and that really left an impression on me. I was about 8 at the time and through the course of life I got to see human trafficking firsthand in India. This 14 year old girl that was being trafficked right above a police station and really just changing my life about 15 years ago. For how can we, how can we solve this and how can we change the statistics around this? So that childhood moment really connected to what I saw firsthand and that what I continue to see, that there's 50 million people enslaved around the world. It's a $250 billion illicit industry. And unless we drive innovation at scale and I believe through entrepreneurship and real world solutions where we're providing value, I don't think that we're going to see that statistic turn. And so that's, that's the goal of what we're looking to do with Dark Watch.

Yeah, that's great. When did you first realize the link between cybercrime, business infrastructure and trafficking networks?

Absolutely. So, you know, I believe it was really early on that we discovered this. And if you think about what human trafficking is, in addition to an exploitation of a life, it's an economic model that fuels illicit enterprise. And so if you think about it, you can sell a drug maybe one time, a weapon maybe once or twice, but when you sell someone that's being sex trafficked, you could sell them up to 20 times per day. So it's incredibly lucrative for organizations to engage in human trafficking. Seeing human trafficking surpass a lot of other illegal crimes, because how much economics are behind it? And when you realize that this is a crime that contains a lot of business and economics and infrastructure around it, how do we start to bring solutions to address human trafficking in the logistics chain? And that could be everything from a hotel to a bank account to an airline. Right. Where human trafficking is, is touching those businesses. And those businesses are maybe unknowingly supporting human trafficking occurring in their brand. And that's, that's really where we want to be helpful as brands, to identify where these risks are and to recognize it as a crime of economics on top of a crime of exploitation and then give them the proper defense to fight back against it.

What are some of the most common misconceptions people have about what trafficking looks like?

I think it was the same for me, as I always thought, that human trafficking occurs somewhere else. I never would have guessed that it occurs in our backyard, a mile from a school or a place of worship or our business. Right. It's oftentimes in every type of socioeconomic background, from highly affluent to poverty. Right. And that's, I think the biggest shocker is when we show this on A map. These human trafficking hotspots. When people realize, hey, this is really close to my home or somewhere that I care about. I think that's one of the biggest misconceptions is that it's someone else's problem. This really is a problem for all of us. I think the near adjacent one is every business believes that they would never have a problem with human trafficking. So. And that's been particularly true in the hospitality space until recently. There's been all these cases and litigation and reputation loss that's occurred and I think it's been extremely eye opening for these industries to see, hey, we can be affected by human trafficking too.

Why is it so difficult to detect and disrupt compared with other crimes?

I believe that this is a very hard to detect crime because a, a lot of the brands that we've worked with, prior to working with us, didn't know what they were looking for. Oftentimes this is happening right under our nose in the ways that least suspect. And it breaks all the norms of what we think a human trafficker looks like. I mean, a human trafficker could be wearing a suit and look like a business person or a doctor or a teacher. Right. So that's one of the misconceptions is that there's this particular nefarious look to human trafficking. So when brands start to realize to know what to look for, especially on the payment side or the reservation side or these other tools that they have, that's when they start to detect it more. One great example of this is we had an investor and he said, you know, I've got a bunch of commercial real estate properties. I believe that something is going on at one of these properties. Can you run it through the dark watch system? Sure enough, there was a match. And when he took it to the local sheriff's, they got there and when they got there, a lady was trying to escape that was being sex trafficked. Now this is, you know, an investor who would have never thought that his facility, his, you know, commercial real estate property would be hit with this kind of crime. But that's just to go to show you, I mean it really can happen anywhere. And when businesses realize that this could happen on their property and they start to become proactive, they start detecting it more.

Yeah. So that particular individual obviously had a sensitivity and a desire to make a difference on that. But what role do businesses often unknowingly play in enabling trafficking activity?

That's a great point because a lot of the businesses aren't aware that maybe human trafficking is occurring or they aren't aware of their liability in facilitating it, even if it is unknowing. And so there were several cases that occurred recently, without naming the brands, that there was major payouts for human trafficking. And what they realized is when it went to litigation, the lawyers used what's known as constructive notice that the brand either knew or should have known that this was occurring on, on their property. And what happens is in Yelp reviews and Google reviews, people will say, hey, human trafficking is occurring at this property. Someone needs to do something about it. And the brands thought, okay, you know, maybe this person was making it up or, you know, or maybe this isn't true, or maybe, you know, it's best for us to just leave this alone and not even address it. And what they found is that when they went to court with that posture, they ended up paying out very large sums of money to the tune of 30, 40 million dollars per case of this, which is existential to these businesses. And so what's happened is the standard of care of if we don't see it, then we're not responsible. That standard of care has changed, the bar has rose. And now the brands have to be more proactive in their stance on human trafficking. And that's everything from policy to training to tools like Dark Watch and other tools that are out there to be more proactive when it comes to their responsibility in looking at human trafficking.

Yeah, no longer safe to bury your head in the sand, right?

That's it.

Yeah. You know, being a techie and a geek at heart, I want to understand how poor cybersecurity or lack of oversight create openings for exploitation.

Oh, absolutely. You know, I think that from the brand side to our own homes, cyber criminals and specifically organized criminals that operate in this way are very sophisticated. And, you know, I talk a lot about this story personally that I experienced as a child. You know, the one that we've all been taught, stranger danger, you know, kind of the scenario. But the new battlefront is really occurring in the home. And what a lot of families don't realize is how sophisticated these criminals are in the forms of sextortion or exploitation that might occur online, where they're eliciting images from these victims and then extorting them for money to either send more images or do something. And unfortunately, there's so much shame around this that there's been tragic loss of life and harm that's come from this. And so, you know, in addition to the work that we do on a day to day business to protect businesses from Having these situations occur. We often do talks in communities and elsewhere, just helping parents realize, parents and families realize the risk that exists within the home. And I believe that that's one of the greatest things, because they're looking for that physical risk, which certainly situational awareness and these other things can shore up, you know, a safer environment when you go out. Right. But in reality, the biggest risk is on the computer and online and knowing the games, the social media, how the chat functions are working, and all of these tools and how to set up parental controls. Is a PSA that really every family needs to hear on the cybersecurity side is to have some of the basics in protecting your home devices.

Yeah, I want to get a little bit more granular detail on that in a few minutes. But I want to understand from your perspective, what responsibility do founders and executives have once they become aware of the issue, and what could they do?

Certainly, I believe on a couple different fronts that entrepreneurs, founders, it's almost a calling, if you will, in life, and you're bringing vision and things into fruition that may have never existed before, and certainly the business hasn't existed before. And so I believe that there is a need for more founders to step up, to bring their creativity, to not just solve the next software solution, although maybe great, you know, is that to make real, lasting, historical impact on mankind. How do we solve the hard problems like human trafficking and clean water and these other issues that there's a world being impacted, and how do we use the wheels of capitalism and entrepreneurship to drive value in there and sustain it? I think that that's one of the ways that founders, when they see a problem, especially a big challenge, is how can we provide value, and how can we turn this into a business where actual value is being provided and we could sustain this effort for over 100 years. On the other side, where brands become aware that they are liable for human trafficking, whether it be hospitality or banks or trucking, logistics or even retail, all of these businesses have what I believe the duty to train the workforce to understand these risks, how to spot these risks, and how to respond, and then to get as proactive as possible with technology and with the recent legislation and regulation around this. As you said before, you know, the business can no longer put its head in the sand. And you're seeing that the businesses that roll out training and roll out policy and strategy are the ones that are faring that, you know, forbid it to happen, that they have one of these events. They're doing everything according to the standard of Care and above to get ahead of it. They fare so much differently than the brands that just throw up their hands and say, hey, that's not our problem. And I believe that that's a real shift in what we're seeing in the marketplace of how we're going to tackle and address issues like this.

Yeah, I mean, look, going back to my personal geekiness and my desire to understand technology and tools, tell me more about what Darkwatch does to help provide information and or tools to help businesses prevent trafficking.

Yeah, so it's really easy. We use a privacy first solution that does a check when you're going to set a booking to a hotel or check into a hotel, it runs to see if you're a human trafficker while protecting the privacy of the guests. And if a flag is returned to the brand, and now they can action that flag and be proactive in detecting that and responding according to their own policies and how they want to, as a brand respond to this. We give suggestions as well. And we've also worked with corporations, major, you know, Fortune 1 hundreds in giving them the right tool set to respond in their unique business. And so the technology that we deploy to hotels and other hospitality brands is slightly different than the technology that we would deploy to, to a bank that's looking at the money side of it or the money laundering piece of it. And really each industry can have a slight tweaking and customization of this technology so that they can detect it ideally on the front end of this. And then from a more technical standpoint, we've got three patents pending on basically data harvesters that go out and collect this data in the way that we put it together and attach risk profiles to it and some basic AI and information sharing kind of all in one. These, these three patents have created a system that is highly effective. No matter what workflow the business has is, it can really plug in seamlessly, whether it's on the payment side or the reservation side or on the sensor side. It's a really simple solution that plugs into whatever they're natively using.

Got it. Can you give me a little bit more detail on how business leaders can protect their companies while also protecting vulnerable people?

I think the first and foremost is to have a conversation. It all starts with saying, hey, we're going to sit around the table as executives and attempt to solve this problem. Once we realize that, hey, this could be a problem that impacts our business, then there's workflows that come from that first putting in place company policy. How do we Respond as a company when this occurs, because it's oftentimes not a matter of if, it's a matter of when this is going to occur on the property. What do we do to respond to this threat? What is our policy? What is our stance? How do we be proactive as a brand, not only from the compliance angle or regulation or litigation, but because it's the right thing to do. And we want our guests to be safe and we want our customers to be safe and we want our employees to be safe. And so starting with that conversation of, hey, we're going to do something about this now let's architect a plan of how that rolls out from a policy and posture and then it becomes more technical from there. You know, training the entire workforce, let's say, on spotting the signs of, of human trafficking and updating it to be current with the different tactics that traffickers will use. Right. That could be one of the workflows that comes out of that stance as a brand where we're standing up against these types of injustices or exploitation. And then the next, you know, obvious is bringing technologies like DarkWatch in that are proactively detecting and helping brands respond to the risks that come from human trafficking.

Got it, Got it. Let's discuss one of my favorite subjects and that is entrepreneurship as impact. And I think, you know, you don't have to be a non profit or make no money to make an impact in a positive way and be mission driven and purpose driven. How do you define entrepreneurship as a force for good?

So I often think about these hard problems and there's certainly a place for charity and non profits and appreciate the good work that charity and nonprofits do. Often say that if you want to land a mission on Mars or go to the moon, you need a space industry to do that. And there has to be the wheels of capitalism and for profit incentives that are aligned to bring whole industries together to solve very hard problems. And so when I think about the hardest problems that we're facing, whether that be human trafficking or solving water scarcity or any of these challenges, this is what an entrepreneur and a founder is made for, right. Is to this calling to solve these, these hard problems and bring solutions forward. And I believe that there's the misconception that you have to only be a non profit or a charity to solve these. And I'd argue that there are these dual impact companies that can both make a lasting impact on society while making a profit and even being wildly profitable in the process. And I believe that profit and Aligned economic incentives are so important because that's how you keep the founding idea going for generations. And so when you talk about entrepreneurship as impact, those two things can coexist and I believe should coexist and that there should be more founders that are stepping up, whether it be human trafficking. And it's a new solution that solves part of it. These problems are so big that there's plenty of room for companies to create solutions that fight these, these types of issues. And so that would be my encouragement to anyone that maybe is listening to this podcast, is bring out the best of your creativity and grit and passion to, to make a difference and you can do that in a for profit way.

Yeah. Can you give me an example of what it looks like when profit and purpose are truly aligned?

So I believe with the model that Dark Watch we've created is we've created an incentive for the brand to protect their reputation, to raise their standard of care, to protect their guests and employees. And ultimately we believe it will give them an edge like a Good Housekeeping seal of approval or Better Business Bureau ranking. Right where the business is proactively leaning into safety. And so that's a very important thing that impacts the bottom line of the brand. In exchange for that value that we create, there's profit on our company's side that's incurred for bringing that value to the brand. So that's probably the best example that I have, just because that's the example that we're working, is how do we bring a lot of value to the bottom line and ROI of the brands and do this as a business?

Yeah. How can small and mid sized businesses make a difference without feeling overwhelmed or paralyzed?

Oh, I think that's a great thought. And one of the things that we've found working with our partners who could be small to medium businesses or brands or even resellers and partners in that way, integrators, is that they find just by working adjacent to our mission, which is making the world safer, you know, human trafficking, being a part of it and these other threats and bad actors that are woven in there. But just being adjacent to the mission gives their workforce purpose to say, hey, instead of just bringing, let's say payments, we've heard this from payments company. Instead of just bringing a payment solution forward, we now can be actively involved in making the world a better place just by partnering and just by bringing your technology and integrating it in. And what I've seen with workforces that we've trained or the brands even taking a position that they care about human trafficking for the first time is they get this renewed excitement from their workforce, where now their workers are excited to come to work, not only to make a profit for them, but because they're helping make the world a better place. And so I think whether it's a small or large business is bringing purpose to the workforce. That's more than just generating profit. It's how can we generate profit and do good? And maybe a low lift is just by partnering with, you know, an organization that is doing X to solve, you know, Y. And that's done really well for our partners that have taken that stance.

Yeah, this is what I like to call the legacy section of the show, because that's what this show is all about. If someone feels compelled to act, what's a realistic first step, really?

Say, have the conversation in your workplace. So if you're hearing this and you want to know what to do, where do we get started? You know, maybe it's not building the next Dark Watch. It's just having a conversation with your executive team or your manager or even your. Your co workers. Just by making them aware, you're leveling up the organization to have a more proactive stance. So just by using your words in a conversation is a powerful tool. And just kind of rewinding the tape for part of the inspiration here is someone handed me a flyer on human trafficking, and that flyer really opened my eyes and then created this downstream effect. So you never know that conversation that you have, how it's going to inspire the next person, how it's going to unlock the business, you know, how you come up with a new idea. So really, having the conversation is the first and probably easiest way that anyone can get involved if they want to fight human trafficking.

Yeah. It's an emotionally charged issue, obviously. And my question for you is, when you think about legacy, what do you hope Dark Watch ultimately represents?

I hope that Dark Watch lives beyond all of us more than a hundred, hundred years, something that is durable. I hope that it inspires other founders that are either listening to this podcast or reading the book that I wrote or whatever it is, that they, too can make an impact and have this dual impact in profit, connection to their purpose, living that out. I believe that that would be a huge, huge success. There's the obvious of the technology itself saving lives. And I believe it's the people behind the technology and it's the future founders, the next generations, and the generations after that say, hey, you know, we saw something slightly wrong with the world. We wanted to leave the world in better condition. And then what we found. And here's our mind share and our craft and our talent and creativity and grit and everything that makes us a founder. Let us channel it into solving this really hard problem. I hope that, you know, thousands or millions of founders and entrepreneurs are inspired to do that in the future.

Yeah. Well, we've come to the end of the show. I'm personally grateful for you sharing your thoughts on this. I want to thank you for your courage, your leadership, and your willingness to confront an issue that many people would rather ignore and put their head in the sand about. So thank you again for that, Noel. Really appreciate you being here. I also want to thank you for what you're doing through darkwatch, which reminds us that business is never neutral. It either contributes to the problem or becomes a part of the solution. And for those listening, we'll include links to Dark Watch so you can learn more and get more informed. I hope you were moved by today's episode. Don't forget to subscribe to the show and be notified of new episodes. I've got a lot of really great episodes coming up and would love to see you subscribe. That's about it. Noel, again, thank you for being here. Appreciate it.

Thank you. Thank you for having me.

Yeah. I'm Alan Pavloski signing off for Legacy allstars.