UNDERWORLD figures, including one of Australia’s most wanted men, had access to the personal details of thousands of people through their alleged roles in one of the Gold Coast’s biggest nightclubs.
Club LIV recorded details of patrons’ driver’s licences and passports for 18 months before police alleged the venue was a front for drug trafficking and secret investments by alleged crime figure Ivan Tesic.
Another Gold Coast hotel that pioneered ID scanners removed two Bandidos bikies involved in a brawl last year from its blacklist because they were friendly with management, police sources claim.
The cases highlight concerns about a government proposal to make scanners compulsory in nightclubs, with doubts about oversight and criminal infiltration.
LIV, the first Gold Coast nightclub to stockpile patrons’ details, trumpeted its $30,000 scanner as a way to “keep out undesirables”.
LIV’s registered owner Craig Missen told The Courier-Mail in 2012 this included Rebels bikie president Ricky Ciano, who “couldn’t get in” despite being an alleged silent partner in the club along with Tesic.
However, Ciano was photographed in the venue last year.
Mr Missen yesterday declined to comment.
Detective Superintendent Jim Keogh said there was no evidence the data had been used illegally. But the “mere fact that you have got a scanner out the front isn’t totally indicative of running a club that’s free from crime,” he said.
Fraud and Cyber Crime squad boss Detective Superintendent Brian Hay, whose team’s first identity theft scalp was a Gold Coast Finks bikie in 2006, is a longtime opponent of scanners in nightclubs.
“The simple reason is you don’t know who’s controlling the information,” he said.
