Griffin Investigations – Protecting the Gambling Industry

The gambling industry is worth billions of dollars in annual revenue, and wherever there’s that much money involved, there will always be people scheming to get a slice of the pie. Some using more legal means than others, people have always been searching for ways to ‘break the casino’. There are two basic types of physical security threats to casinos: Teams like Ocean’s Eleven represent one type while the MIT Blackjack Team is a completely different story.

In the first remake of the film Ocean’s Eleven, a team of highly-specialized heist men rob the central vault shared by three Las Vegas casinos: The Mirage, the Bellagio and the MGM Grand. Whether acting as individuals or as a team, people like Ocean and his eleven men are usually confronted by ordinary law-enforcement agencies, as their actions are straight-out illegal. Casinos tend to have state-of-the-art security systems and many paid guards, due to the simple fact that a lot of money is at stake. However, dealing with tough guys and criminals is usually a job left to the cops.

But what about teams like the MIT Blackjack team? They didn’t do anything illegal, but they cost the casinos millions. This was a team of card-counters that worked together to disguise their actions from the eyes of casino security personnel. How about Joseph Jaggers and his roulette-reading team? This British engineer found, through legitimate observation, that there’s a distinctly bias roulette wheel at the Monte Carlo casino in 1873. Jaggers cost the house hundreds of thousands. There are many examples of professional gamblers who throughout the years have employed perfectly legal techniques to gain an advantage over the house. The question is: Who does the casino call when the cops won’t answer? Surprisingly, the answer is not ‘the Ghostbusters’, but its close.

Griffin Investigations is the correct answer. From 1967, when the company was founded by Robert R. Griffin and Beverly S. Griffin, and up until 2005, when they filed for bankruptcy, Griffin Investigations was the most prominent group of private investigators specializing in the gambling industry. Here is how the Griffins describe their role: ‘The gaming industry is under siege from opportunistic scam artists worldwide…Their actions cost gaming operations untold millions a year - and the number is growing.’ (From the official website - griffininvestigations.com)

Through its investigations, the company built up the biggest database of card counters, shuffle trackers, team players, serial jackpot winners, and any kind of advantage gamblers. For many professional gamblers Griffin Investigations were considered to be ‘the bad guys’, since the actions mentioned above are all completely legal. The only problem with advantage gambling is that as soon as the casino takes notice, they kindly ask whoever is performing it to leave and never come back.

However, Griffin Investigations wasn’t only going after advantage gamblers. They also kept a close watch on gamblers who seek advantages with not-so-legitimate means. Known and suspected cheats of any sort also found their way into ‘the Griffin Book’, which was distributed to all subscribing casinos. At one point, more than half of America’s major casinos were subscribed to the service.

Griffin played a key role in stopping the MIT Blackjack card counting team, ending their winning streak after the casinos had no idea what hit them. The movie ‘21’, which was released in April 2008, is based on the true story of the MIT Blackjack team. In the movie, Laurence Fishburne plays Cole Williams, a casino security agent who is based on an investigator from Griffin Investigations.

On September 2005 Griffin Investigations was brought down by two gamblers, James Grosjean and Michael Russo, who won their defamation lawsuit against the company. They claimed to have been improperly detained, labeled as cheaters and arrested, on the basis of information supplied by Griffin. Griffin Investigations filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection due to the legal costs and damages from the lawsuit, and another chapter in gambling history came to an end.

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