WASHINGTON (AP) – Wearing a lapel camera and posing as an Internet repairman, an undercover government agent walked into a luxury villa at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas and recorded everything he saw as part of a major international gambling bust.
Defense lawyers said the FBI shut off Internet access to the suspects’ villas and then agents impersonated repair technicians to get inside and collect evidence in an elaborate ruse the morning of July 4.
Video recordings of the encounters show investigators devising code words to use while they were inside; a back-and-forth about the cover story for an agent, who adopted the name “Sam,” which he had used in other operations in the past; and a brief exchange about how an investigator should dress for the role of Internet repairman.
“If you put on that shirt, you have to look the part. Go all the way,” said Mike Wood, an outside technician working for Caesars, advising Nevada Gaming Control Board Agent Ricardo Lopez before Lopez headed to one of the suites. The AP obtained about 30 minutes of audio and video recordings of the covert reconnaissance.
Inside another Las Vegas villa a day later, Lopez appeared to try to fix an Internet outage for several minutes while glancing around the room and asking more than once to view a laptop screen to verify that Internet connectivity was still down. Defense lawyers said in their filing that Mike Kung, the FBI agent, was sent inside with Lopez because he spoke Chinese.