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and use the promo code “HAI.” Welcome to Las Vegas—the oasis that went
from a settlement, to an outpost, to a haven for construction workers on the hoover dam
to blow off some dam steam. Sin city can and does tolerate plenty but there’s one cardinal
sin that the city just doesn’t tolerate: cheating.
So what do poor multi-billionaire casino owners do when someone starts beating the house?
Well, cheating in a casino is actually a felony although in most cases, depending on the severity,
perpetrators are just escorted out. Anytime a casino encounters a cheater they take down
their information and pass on their names to paid agencies that compile and look into
the cheaters. The most well-known and perhaps notorious of these is Griffin Investigations.
Founded in 1967 by Robert R. Griffin and his wife at the time, Beverly, this mom-and-pop
detective agency considered themselves a "White Hat" in the gambling world—they’re the
good guys but of course so is the guy who made Scrubs Season 9 according to the guy
who made Scrubs season 9. Apparently, Robert Griffin had a gift for
remembering faces and kept a log of criminals and cheaters in a three-ring binder called
the Griffin Book. At first, Griffin was reluctant to go digital due to a distrust of computers,
but his wife eventually convinced him to work with modern technology and the book grew into
a multi-volume database with dossiers on known-cheaters in the gambling world updated in real time.
If a cheater was in the area, Griffin’s clients would receive a fax outlining the
cheater’s most recent alias, height, weight, date of birth, and security photos of them
from where they were last spotted, but Griffin gained his reputation as the expert after
taking down the infamous MIT Blackjack Team in the early ‘90s.
This MIT Blackjack team used the movie cliché technique of card counting. There’s even
a whole movie about the team… with Kevin Spacey who’s clearly a good actor since
he convincingly played a law abiding, moral citizen. Card counting, you see, is the fully
legal process of gaining an advantage while gambling by counting cards. In Blackjack,
players need a combined card value higher than the dealer’s, but that value can't
exceed 21 or else you’re out. There are fixed amounts of cards and decks involved,
so card counting is the practice of weighing your bets based on the odds of the next card
while keeping in mind the value of the cards on the table. Since players are using math
and logic, this isn't technically cheating, but it does label card counters as "advantage
players" which is Casino-speak for “nerds that lose us money."
Casinos in Vegas are legally allowed to ask card counters to beat it and bar them from
returning as long as there’s no other prejudice involved. It’s easy enough to ban one player
but it’s tougher to try and ban teams of card counters which is exactly why the MIT
Blackjack Team was founded. After having existed off-and-on for years since players, you know,
graduated, the team was reborn in the early ‘90s as a registered business run by three
of the former players. This team legally raised a million dollars from investors to gamble
away and win back which is a pretty good sign that their methods were reliable.
In the two years after its rebirth, the team grew to 80 people and their players simultaneously
hit casinos around the world winning millions. Whenever the casinos would ban the members
they caught, new members would take their place like a Hydra head, or interns. Soon,
the members of the MIT Blackjack team found it impossible to go into a casino unrecognized.
They even tried disguise and drag. Unable to get in anywhere, the team found out that
they'd been outed by Griffin Investigations. Once Griffin had realized that the brilliant
MIT Blackjack Team Members were not brilliant enough to leave out their Cambridge, Massachusetts
addresses in their hotel reservations, they entered all MIT students into their databases
just to be safe—simple solution, but it worked. With their identities blown and wigs
snatched, the MIT team found it impossible to play, so it was dissolved by 1994.
Griffin’s legacy, however, didn’t stay golden. In 2000, advantage players James Grosjean
and Michael Russo were arrested while playing at Caesars Palace under the charge of cheating
after winning over $18,000 dollars from an inexperienced dealer at poker. Though they
were experienced players, everything they were doing was legal. The officers, however,
believed that they were using illegal means based off information given to them by Griffin.
Griffin’s page on Russo categorized him as a known-cheater and cardbender. Russo disputed
this, and the pair took the case to court. A jury agreed that the entries had been libel
and Griffin had to pay 25k in punitive damages to Grosjean and Russo.
Soon after, Griffin Investigations filed for bankruptcy. In 2008, Beverley Griffin said
they'd been caught up in payments and that she'd taken over for her ex-husband in 2003.
Robert R. Griffin died in 2016. Griffin Investigations is still running, but its site hasn't been
updated since the early 2000s. James Grosjean, however, was entered into the Blackjack Hall
of Fame in 2006 and he takes personal credit for the downfall of Griffin Investigations.
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