Playing By The Book - Casino Security
In the high tech world of casino security - there's only one name worth mentioning.
Whether or not it's your intention, Las Vegas is the place to be seen. Any casino worth its chips will have an intricate network of spy cameras - the so called "eyes in the sky". On the casino floor it's virtually impossible to escape their gaze. Then there are undercover security agents, satellite sleuths who patrol the gaming floor incognito, directed by faceless people monitoring entire walls television screens in the backroom nerve center of the casino's operation. Add to that the casino staff at the tables, trained to detect unusual behavior or game play anomalies, and you have a tangled web with which to catch would be casino cheats.
But, like any web, there are holes that can be expolited. That's where a company like Griffin Investigations comes in. For almost four decades, Griffin Investigations has been in casino security and not just in Vegas. Its crime busting reputation is international and most of the world's major casinos are thought to be on Griffin's books.
As a private investigation company specializing only in the gambling industry, Griffin maintains volumes of data on card counters, serial jackpot winners, card cheats and other dubious customers attracted by the thought of easy money. Virtually all major Vegas casinos subscribe to Griffin's services, which include privileged client access to the infamous 'Griffin Book' - a Who's Who of the industry's bad boys deemed persona non grata by many gambling establishments. If you're a swindler, getting your face in the Griffin Book is tantamount to committing career suicide. In fact, the scourge of Las Vegas Blackjack tables for the better part of a decade, the notorious MIT Blackjack Team, had its winning streak abruptly ended when a Griffin investigator got hold of their names and photographs from an MIT yearbook and circulated them.
Little is known about Griffin Investigations. It goes about its business as discreetly as a counter tracking cards in a shuffle. The company declines to comment on how much it charges for its services, how it obtains information and how many people it employs. Other than clients and gambling regulators nobody else is privy to the database.
What began in the late 1960s as a simple gumshoe detective agency, founded by Beverly Griffin and her husband Robert, has evolved into a high time crime busting outfit. The couple cut their teeth by battling small time casino hoodlums. They relied on good old fashioned detective work to expose gamblers who cheated at the tables, rigged the sots and played with loaded dice. As criminals became more resourceful, turning to disguises, computers and min cameras to aid them in their schemes, Griffin Investigations has kept pace. Today, the Griffin Book is no longer just a hard copy collection of con artists' mug shots, but an ultra sophisticated database that uses biometric technology, data mining and advanced facial recognition software to catch the bad guys.
Griffin On Line Database (G.O.L.D) can search through entire databases at phenomenal speeds, cross referencing MOs and matching facial features to fill in the blanks and red flag possible unsavory customers. It's proven to be the bane of swindlers and card counters.
But, despite the company' formidable track record when it comes to uncovering crooks, Beverly Griffin, now divorced, insists they're not police officers. She's often clarified the point that the company only provides information to the casinos and leaves them to make up their minds as to what to do with it. "Our job," she says "is to provide casinos with information to explain why someone is winning." She also agrees with the motto that what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas. "But," se adds, "If you break the law, you stay here too."
Lately, however, things have gone awry for Griffin Investigations. The company has found itself at the center of a number of defamation suits and been ordered to pay over $45,000 in damages to two gamblers who said they were incorrectly flagged as cheaters and arrested. The technology is not foolproof and more than one player has been escorted from the casino simply for being in close proximity for a suspected cheat - guilty by association. There have also been reports of Griffin's mandate being extended to 'physically' persuade people not to return to a particular casino. These are accusations that Beverly Griffin firmly denies.
In September last year the company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. The people who brought you the Griffin Book had apparently gone broke. Was it a sign of a company struggling to keep up with technology that cross references not just faces but facts too, ad being outdone by the developers themselves? Or is Beverly Griffin proving she can be every bit as tactical as the people she has spent her life exposing?
Either way, with the formidable reputation that Griffin has earned, casino crooks and card counters everywhere must be rubbing their hands in glee, hoping that the bankruptcy suit will be the final chapter of the Griffin Book.
