Casino Operators Beware: AKA23

[lojo]

Is it just me or is the title of this thread unwarranted and more than a little derogatory toward AKA23?

I for one vote for an edit.

Are you kidding? Look at the free advertising he's getting.

kapow, backfire.

[dominique]

I just looked and can't find the CPA value clause. It may still be there someplace or in the agreement you sign, or maybe it's an oversight by a new casino.

[thelawnet]

Is it just me or is the title of this thread unwarranted and more than a little derogatory toward AKA23?

I for one vote for an edit.

I think this is already the edited version - it had his real name in it before Bryan changed it....

[NASHVEGAS]

PART 1
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal JUNE 18,2006

Jury deals gamblers winning hand

Two awarded punitive damages from detective agency used by casinos

By ROD SMITH
GAMING WIRE


Two advantage gamblers whose rights were violated in an incident five years ago at Caesars Palace on Friday won punitive damages from a detective agency that supplies information to casinos.

A District Court jury ordered Griffin Investigations to pay Michael Russo $15,000 and James Grosjean $10,000 in punitive damages.

Advertisement

Advantage gamblers increase their chances of winning by legally taking advantage of a dealer's or a casino's mistakes or by means such as card counting.
Griffin Investigations supplies lists of suspected advantage players and cheats to casinos.

Last week, the jury decided that Caesars Palace had falsely imprisoned, defamed and battered the two men and that Griffin Investigations was guilty of libel and maliciousness.
It ordered each company to pay Russo and Grosjean actual damages of $25,000 apiece and found that Griffin Investigations and Caesars Palace should be subject to punitive damages. Judge Lee Gates, who heard the case, ordered Friday's hearing to decide on punitive damages.

Sources familiar with gaming law said this is probably the first case in which Griffin has failed to win on technical arguments.

The case's conclusion was also unusual for advantage gambling lawsuits, which are normally dismissed or settled out of court and for much less, usually from $15,000 to $20,000, according to several local attorneys.

On Thursday, Caesars Palace settled its punitive liabilities from the lawsuit for an undisclosed amount.

David Strow, spokesman for Harrah's Entertainment, which acquired Caesars Palace this week as part of its $9 billion merger with Caesars Entertainment, declined comment.

"The jury in this case clearly told Griffin Investigations it no longer can include the universe of advantage gamblers and just say individuals are suspected of cheating or using a device and ascribe a felony (as they did in this case)," said Bob Nersesian, a Las Vegas attorney who represents Russo and Grosjean.
The judgments vindicated his clients and showed that people in Nevada believe casinos should treat all patrons, even winners, with proper respect under the law, he said.
The complaint in this case originated from an April 2000 incident when Russo and Grosjean were playing Three Card Poker at Caesars.

Grosjean, a doctoral candidate in economics at the University of Chicago and author of "Beyond Counting," a "how-to" manual on beating the gambling odds, was winning the game thanks to a "sloppy" dealer and his own "hole carding," where a player tries to catch a glimpse of a dealer's face-down card, he said.

Caesars Palace pit workers, based in part on an entry about Russo in Griffin Investigations' book of known cheats, detained the two men and accused them of card bending.

Griffin Investigations has listed Russo in its book since 1993, and has described him as having a history of "21 hole carding, card bending, Caribbean Stud conspiracy."

The company also listed Russo as a "known" card bender in a number of fliers sent to casinos.

Caesars Palace called the Nevada Gaming Control Board, handcuffed and searched Russo and Grosjean and detained them for five hours.

Russo and Grosjean were then arrested by Las Vegas police for allegedly cheating.

Russo was released the next day, but Grosjean was held in custody for 4 1/2 days.

At the recent trial, Caesars Palace contended the Gaming Control Board had investigated and decided to arrest Russo and Grosjean. However, the jury found Caesars Palace had pressed to have them arrested based on evidence the casino gave state investigators.

The jury found that Caesars Palace had no probable cause to believe that Russo or Grosjean committed a gaming violation or a felony.

Last year, Grosjean won a $400,000 judgment against Imperial Palace in a related case.

PART 2
Griffin Investigations
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Griffin Investigations was once the most prominent group of private investigators specializing in the gambling industry. The company was founded in 1967 by Beverly S. Griffin and Robert R. Griffin.
The company maintained dossiers on card counters, serial jackpot winners, and other individuals, chiefly professional gamblers using legal techniques to gain an advantage in casino games; these profiles were regularly published in the Griffin Book, and distributed to subscribing casinos. Griffin Investigations was instrumental in ending the MIT Blackjack Team’s winning streak, after a Griffin investigator purchased the names, photographs, and other details identifying the group’s members and the company distributed the information to casinos. Roughly half of the major casinos in the U.S. once subscribed to Griffin’s services.

Griffin also marketed a controversial face recognition system that used computer software to compare gamblers' faces against several volumes of mug shots. According to a Las Vegas Sun article, Beverly Griffin, co-owner of Griffin Investigations, "estimates as many as half of Southern Nevada's casinos now use biometric technology to identify the faces of card cheats or other undesirables"[1]. However, a Las Vegas casino surveillance director (writing under the pseudonym Cellini) reported in the 2004 book The Card Counter's Guide to Casino Surveillance that biometric technology was considered virtually useless by actual casino surveillance operatives because of overwhelming numbers of false reads.


[edit] History
The Las Vegas Sun reported on September 13, 2005, that Griffin Investigations had filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in light of legal costs and damages from a successful defamation lawsuit against the company. The lawsuit had been brought by two gamblers, Michael Russo and James Grosjean, claiming they had been improperly detained, labeled as cheaters and arrested, on the basis of information supplied by Griffin[2].

[Da_Gambla]

A great deal of my posts in the "Prime removed from Neteller" thread had to do with a sense I was getting from Josh at Prime. I did not contribute a first post to that thread until quite late in the game. A lot of people asked why I wouldn't just accept his answers and move on. It was because of his arrogance that I kept pressing.

I hope it is now clear what I was seeing, and why I kept pressuring.

This post by Josh is calling for all casino managers to basically collaborate to try and end AKA's affiliate business.

For the record, Josh, you have violated two terms of your account at CM:

1.4 - No posting of privileged information. Please remember to respect other's privacy. In the public forum, do not post real names, email addresses, or other personal identifiers that may be considered privileged information. If these items are already publicly available, this shouldn't be a problem. But if these are from private correspondence, or from some user database, discretion is advised.

1.6 - No "Libelous" Posts. Do not make posts that could be considered libelous, defamatory, or posting merely to cause harm to another's business. Opinions are expected, but do not attack others with accusations of criminal activity unless this has been proven in a court of law.

I'm not the least bit surprised at this post.

- Keith

[mikepipe]

i gave OP my warm thanks (-21/2) with the comment "absolutely unprofessional".
nuff said.

[PrimeCasino]

I made a mistake in posting aka23's information here and I wholeheartedly apologize for doing that. I'm glad that Bryan picked it up quickly and was able to edit my post. After reading what you've said here, this was definitley the wrong venue for this discussion. Having said that, I have a great deal of appreciation for the Affiliates that are sending us quality traffic and I started this thread out of frustration that aka23 did not take down our links after sending scores of bonus seeker/advantage player traffic. He's by no means legally obligated to do so but I would have expected as much as a professional courtesy.

This will be my final post on CasinoMeister. Should Bryan ask for comment on issues in the future, I will post an official response/statement but my presence here will be limited to that.

Best Regards,

Josh.

[Da_Gambla]

I made a mistake in posting aka23's information here and I wholeheartedly apologize for doing that. I'm glad that Bryan picked it up quickly and was able to edit my post. After reading what you've said here, this was definitley the wrong venue for this discussion. Having said that, I have a great deal of appreciation for the Affiliates that are sending us quality traffic and I started this thread out of frustration that aka23 did not take down our links after sending scores of bonus seeker/advantage player traffic. He's by no means legally obligated to do so but I would have expected as much as a professional courtesy.

This will be my final post on CasinoMeister. Should Bryan ask for comment on issues in the future, I will post an official response/statement but my presence here will be limited to that.

Best Regards,

Josh.

You are developing quite a habit of of packing up your marbles and runnng home when you don't get the response you're looking for...

I hope you haven't taken any of this personal. A lot of people waltz in and immediately underestimate what this forum can do, ether postively or negatively. You have the ability to do good business as a general rule (although you can't please everyone), or you can get eaten alive in the course of 24 hrs. This forum has such a diverse set of characters that it's almost an entity all its own. One thing for sure, however, is the ever-present bullshite meter. If you ping it as hard as you did, it's gong to be a long recovery. Not impossible, mind you, but certainly challenging enough that I respect your decision to go back to what you do best over there at Prime.

Take care Josh, and of course, thanks for playing...

- Keith

[XXLClubCasino]

What a disappointment not to see our casino listed in the "BEST CASINO SIGN-UP BONUSES" section

[NASHVEGAS]

You are developing quite a habit of of packing up your marbles and runnng home when you don't get the response you're looking for..

Running home as AKA could and should lock this guy down like a Gitmo terrorist. AKA's call and probably will rightfully move on. Just a shame that so many of these online managers do not get it............I suppose Josh is one the reasons that so many veteran forum members drill the 32 Red's and Inetbet's in us underclassmen/women over and over. Kudos to them.