A clock radio with a hidden transmitter.
A "modified jock strap" with hidden tape recorder and microphones secreted in a belt.
Microcassette tapes the size of postage stamps that could record for up to two hours.
All of that equipment, say lawyers in a controversial civil suit settled here last month, was used by a private investigator who became a "double agent," working first for Trump Hotel & Casino Resorts Inc. and then for Wynn's Mirage Resorts Inc.
"I have never seen such unethical corporate espionage as I've seen in this case," said Gregory Smith, a Los Angeles lawyer whose client, former Mirage employee Laura Choi, was one of the defendants sued by Mirage. To date, Choi, a former marketing representative, is the only defendant not to have reached a settlement. "They [Mirage] operated as if they were a government agency coordinating a sting operation."
The case, which Mirage and Trump settled Feb. 23, is replete with allegations of fraud, money-laundering, conspiracy, perjury and the theft of trade secrets.
But the most outrageous of all the charges is the claim that Wynn's Mirage Resorts had secretly flipped a private investigator hired by Trump's company, turned him into a "double agent" and sent him back to meet and secretly record conversations with Trump officials who became defendants in suit Mirage filed here back in April.
"Unethical" and "unbelievable," said attorneys for Trump before a confidentiality agreement at settlement barred them from further comment. "Chicanery" and a "Faustian deal" were two other descriptions that appeared in motions and pleadings along with references to corporate investigative operations dubbed "Operation Snake Eyes" and "Operation Seoul Train."
Mirage lawyers countered by arguing that the investigator, Louis "Curt" Rodriguez Jr., a former Los Angeles police officer who later worked for both the IRS and U.S. Customs Service, was a "whistle-blower" who switched sides because he was asked to dig up dirt on Wynn and Mirage in an unethical manner.
Now overshadowed by last week's blockbuster announcement that Mirage has agreed to accept a $4.4 billion buyout offer from industry giant MGM Grand, the charges and counter-charges offer a glimpse at the seamy side of a multibillion-dollar industry.
* Who is bigger? Who is better? Who has more staying power?
Those are the bottom-line questions that define the legendary industry feud between Wynn, 58, and Trump, 53, say those who have followed the saga.
The antipathy, says casino analyst Marvin Roffman, stems from the fact that both men are so "similar." The two University of Pennsylvania graduates are self-made and in many ways larger than life.
Trump toys with running for president and owns the Miss Universe and Miss USA contests. Wynn builds billion-dollar adult-fantasy lands on the Las Vegas Strip and owns some of the finest art in the world.
"They hate each other's guts," said Roffman. "It's like poison."
They have been sniping at each other for years.
This particular battle began in Atlantic City in 1995 where Wynn's plans for a grandiose, billion-dollar casino in the marina area were opposed by Trump and some other Boardwalk gambling operators.
After two years of acrimony that included charges and counter-charges of political manipulation, Wynn's Mirage company filed an antitrust suit in federal court in New York alleging that Trump and Hilton Hotels used sham lawsuits and illegal political influence in an attempt to keep Mirage out of Atlantic City.
As part of its defense, Trump Resorts hired a Manhattan investigative firm, William Kish International. Kish, in turn, contracted with Rodriguez, a partner in Pacific Empire Group, a Los Angeles-based investigative firm.
Both parties in the suit concede those facts.
What remains in dispute is what Rodriguez did and for whom he did it in the 18 months leading up to a second civil suit filed in federal court here by Mirage against Trump Resorts and several of its top officials.
In that suit, Mirage charged that Trump Resorts and some of its top officials engaged in a conspiracy with current and former Mirage employees to steal trade secrets, primarily lists of Korean high-rollers.
"I wish I could talk about this but I can't," William Kish, a retired FBI agent, said in a brief telephone interview last week. "I really, really wish I could say something."
Because of a confidentiality agreement, Kish, like all other defendants in the case, is barred from discussing the litigation. Rodriguez, who is also covered by that prohibition, said through his attorney that he would have no comment.
But both PIs had plenty to say on the record in sworn affidavits that are part of the settled lawsuit.
Each tells a different story.
Rodriguez said that he was hired in February 1998 to dig up dirt on Mirage and Wynn, to purloin information about Korean high-rollers who frequented Wynn's casinos and to spread rumors about Mirage's alleged involvement in money-laundering in Korea and its suspected mob ties in Atlantic City. Along the way, he said, he even gathered information about the gambling habits of Steve Wynn's elderly mother.
Rodriguez said the plan was dubbed "Operation Snake Eyes." He said that Kish repeatedly referred to Wynn as "the villain" and encouraged Rodriguez to share any information he developed with federal authorities, including the FBI, the Customs Service, and Korean and Japanese law-enforcement agencies.
Rodriguez said Kish told him that the Trump organization had a "three-pronged" attack plan that it hoped would result in the indictment of Mirage executives and would jeopardize Mirage's chances of winning a New Jersey casino license.
But after after working for Kish and the Trump company for about six months and receiving about $88,000 in compensation, Rodriguez said he had a change of heart.
He said he decided to approach the Mirage company "after becoming uncomfortable that the information that I had gathered . . . was being used . . . in an immoral and unethical manner to cause financial harm" to the Mirage company and to Wynn.
Kish, in affidavits that are also part of the court record, said that was not the way it happened.
Attorneys for both Kish and Trump Resorts, pointing to a $10,000-a-month consulting deal Rodriguez had with Mirage and a golden-parachute provision that guaranteed Mirage would not execute any financial judgment it might win in a lawsuit against him, say the private investigator had other motives for telling his tale.
Rodriguez's only mission, Kish said in two sworn affidavits, was to gather information that could be used by the Trump company to defend against the antitrust suit Mirage had filed in New York.
Kish said that the phrase "Operation Snake Eyes" was the name of a continuing "intensive investigation by the FBI" into the Mirage company, not, as Rodriguez claimed, an operation launched by Trump.
The FBI declines to comment about any investigation it may be conducting.
Kish also said that Rodriguez spent a good part of his time either looking over his shoulder or worrying about money.
According to Kish, Rodriguez complained that his life was in danger, that Mirage agents were harassing him, that he was not being paid enough, and that Mirage investigators were making much more. At one point, he suggested that he and Kish "join up with the other side."
Kish said that when he "strongly criticized" Rodriguez, "he told me not to get so upset, that he was only kidding."
By October 1998, however, Rodriguez was secretly meeting with Mirage officials. By November, they were talking about an arrangement that ultimately resulted, Trump lawyers now charge, with Rodriguez's turning over to Mirage officials all the confidential information he had gathered while working for Trump.
Finally, Trump's attorneys contend, Rodriguez agreed to become a "double agent" and work "Operation Seoul Train," the name given to his counterintelligence foray.
Between January and April 1999, court records indicate, Rodriguez taped 20 conversations with Trump officials or other individuals who eventually would be named defendants in the civil suit filed here by Mirage. Those secretly taped included Kish, Trump's head of security Joseph Guzzardo, and Paul Liu, a Mirage employee who worked the Korean high-roller market.
* On April 20, 1999, Mirage filed suit in U.S. District Court here alleging that the Trump company had engaged in a conspiracy to harm Mirage and purloin trade secrets.
At that time, Steve Wynn called the case an example of "the most outrageous misconduct, the most flagrant violations of law and decent behavior in the history of the resort hotel industry."
Trump Resorts, Kish, Guzzardo, Liu, Choi and Rodriguez were named as defendants.
When Trump's attorneys learned of Rodriguez's actions as a double-agent, they responded in kind.
"Rodriguez dishonored his fiduciary duty in a fashion that would have made Judas Iscariot proud," wrote Donald Campbell, Trump's Las Vegas lawyer, in a blistering motion filed in August that included the argument that Mirage was perpetrating a "sham" on the court by listing Rodriguez as a defendant.
The charges and counter-charges continued for months.
All of it was expected to become part of a sweeping evidentiary hearing set to begin here on Feb. 22.
But after a one-day delay, lawyers announced that a settlement had been reached here and in the antitrust suit in New York.
No one would comment, but both sides acknowledged that the cases had been dismissed "with prejudice," meaning they could not be refiled, and that none of the defendants would pay any damages to Mirage.
A week later, MGM made its first offer to buy Mirage Resorts for $17 a share. Last week, after private negotiations, the deal was finalized. The sale price was $21 a share, a deal worth about $4.4 billion.
Wynn, as the largest Mirage stockholder, will receive about $300 million after taxes, if the deal is completed, as expected, by year's end.
Left unresolved is the fate of the billion-dollar marina casino-hotel Mirage had hoped to build in the marina section of Atlantic City.
While a controversial $330 million inner-city tunnel, partly funded by the state, to the marina site is under construction, not a spade of dirt has been turned on the grandiose Palais Le Jardin that Wynn had trumpeted in 1995 when he announced his return to Atlantic City.
That casino project, which sparked the antitrust suit in New York and the civil suit here and which eventually led Trump to hire Kish and Kish to hire Rodriguez, may never be built, casino analysts were saying last week.