Mary is married, and Mary is having an affair. The Chicago wife told her husband she was sightseeing in Los Angeles last August, but that was a lie. Mary and her boyfriend were vacationing in Las Vegas, and Mary paid a professional cover-up company $350 to ensure that her husband would never find out.

He didn’t. The Alibi Network, an Illinois company that specializes in its namesake – alibis – armed Mary with a fake airplane itinerary, fake hotel reservations and a fake hotel answering service; when her husband phoned Mary’s fake room in Los Angeles, the call was routed to her real cell phone in Las Vegas. Three months later, Mary doesn’t want her name printed in the paper. She’s planning on using the Alibi Network again.

“I needed to get away,” she said. “I set something up.”

Mary isn’t the only person whose tracks can be covered for a cost.

Michael DeMarco, the Alibi Network’s vice president of marketing, says Las Vegas is a top destination for the company’s clientele.

It’s only natural, DeMarco says, in a city where what happens, stays.

Costs for cover-ups range anywhere from $75 for a temporary untraceable phone number to $1,500 for a “full-blown alibi,” DeMarco says.

The Alibi Network doesn’t give out business figures, but DeMarco estimates that 20 percent of the clientele who hire the company do so to stage their attendance at fake work seminars – complete with fake seminar schedules, fake seminar registrations and optional fake certificates of seminar completion.

Roughly half the Alibi Network’s clients use the service to hide an infidelity. Company executives insist it’s a healthy deception – if you care enough to craft an expensive alibi, the logic goes, you must have some tender feelings for the deceived. (A company radio commercial explains, “If you’re in a situation where you have to stray, why not get away with it? … Your partner will be spared the hurt. AlibiNetwork.com – keeping your affair discreet, keeping your marriage alive.”)

Most of the people who want to hide vacations in Las Vegas, however, tend to roll into town with a different tide: the professional sports season. When there’s a big tournament, or an important playoff, the company is flooded with clients who sneak off to Las Vegas so they can loaf at the sports book in secret and play cards in privacy.

Brian, an Alibi client who also lives in Chicago, explained that while he has long since gotten over his gambling addiction, his wife of 12 years still wouldn’t like the idea of his going to Las Vegas alone. It might, Brian said, “raise a red flag.”

So, when the urge arose last April, Brian hired the Alibi Network to stage a three-day Las Vegas seminar on a subject related to his field – finance. The Alibi Network sent Brian a fake seminar invitation, and Brian packed his suitcase. In Las Vegas, he played blackjack and hung out in sports books. During “seminar lunch break,” Brian called his wife to check in. Then he went back to gambling. His wife still has no idea.

“If you can’t lie, you can only go so far,” Brian said. “You can’t not be a little nervous, I guess, but (Alibi) sent me all the information I would get normally if I went to the seminar. The invitation was perfect. It was the real thing.”

Like Mary, Brian wasn’t about to blow his alibi by telling a reporter his last name.

Alibi clients who come to Las Vegas for gambling might stay for a little extramarital entertainment, DeMarco said. Business always picks up around the holidays, he says, when clients call the company screaming “in-laws, in-laws, in-laws.”

For these sorts of situations, the company offers a “Rescue Call” service, an “Escape-a-Date” service and a “Call In Sick” service – three variations of the same thing: a fake phone call the client accepts and then uses as an excuse to escape.

DeMarco can’t think of a time his clients have been caught. The company, however, doesn’t offer any guarantees.

Mary was nervous, but only at first. Brian planned on purchasing some added protection in the event his wife got wise; a call from the seminar sponsors to his home afterward or a bogus certificate of seminar completion. Quickly though, it became clear his wife didn’t have any idea. The businessman eased up and has since stopped feeling sort of bad about it.

“Quite honestly, once I came back and realized she didn’t know, and there wasn’t any problem, I didn’t feel guilty,” Brian said.

DeMarco doesn’t feel guilty, either.

“If there was no demand, we’d have no company,” DeMarco said. “We didn’t invent lying. We didn’t invent infidelity. We just found a niche in an existing market.”

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