Supreme Court to take up wiretap

Monday, March 27, 2000 | 10:54 a.m.

CARSON CITY -- A dispute over whether Metro Police properly obtained permission for a telephone wiretap in a murder case comes before the Nevada Supreme Court this week.

The full seven-member court, which holds hearings Wednesday and Thursday, also will examine whether Clark County can withhold from the public a certain portion of cellular telephone records of its officers and whether International Game Technology improperly withheld a $1.8 million jackpot from a California man.

Twelve cases are set for oral arguments including one on Wednesday for Heath M. Illiescu, charged with hiring a man for $20,000 to shoot Bruce Ray Fisher, his business partner in Blue Chip Sports, a sports information betting service. Fisher was shot to death in the parking lot of an apartment on East Warm Springs Road.

At the time, Illiescu was in jail facing a charge of destruction of private property for spray painting a 1977 Jaguar owned by Peter Vrettas, who was reportedly vying with Illiescu for the affections of a woman.

Police, having trouble running down leads on the shooting, received approval to tap the Illiescu phone. The approval came from then-District Judge Myron Leavitt, who now sits on the Supreme Court.

But District Judge Joseph Pavlikowski, in a pretrial ruling, suppressed the wiretap evidence on grounds that police did not cite proper grounds for getting the approval. He said the police did not properly identify the relationship between the two witnesses whose statements formed the basis for the wiretap application.

The Clark County district attorney's office appealed the decision to the Supreme Court.

Illiescu's lawyer, Dominic Gentile, argued successfully in District Court that police, in order to qualify for a wiretap, must clearly state what other means had been used in the investigation that failed. He said the wiretap application failed to show that the two witnesses were employees of Illiescu who were fired.

"Their credibility would be highly suspect to a fully informed judicial officer," Gentile wrote.

While tapping Illiescu's phone, police intercepted a call that identified Jason Paris of Chicago as Fisher's killer, and Illiescu was arrested, according to court documents. Paris told police that Fisher was blackmailing Illiescu for $200,000 a year to keep quiet about illegal sports betting. Fisher pleaded guilty to second-degree murder.

Henry Pawik, a friend of Paris, also has pleaded guilty to a charge of solicitation to commit murder. Both Pawik and Paris have agreed to testify against Illiescu.

In the open-records case, also to be heard Wednesday, the Las Vegas Review-Journal asked Clark County to supply the telephone records of the Clark County Commission, the county manager and the director of aviation from Jan. 1, 1996, to Dec. 31, 1997. The newspaper said it wanted the records as part of an investigation into government waste and lobbying and influence of government officials.

The county agreed to supply the cellular phone records but blotted out the last four digits of each outgoing call. The county argued that the newspaper would see the total monthly expenses, each call made that month, the length of the call, whether it was incoming or outgoing and the charge for each call.

The county argued that it had a competing interest in protecting some records, including the rights of county officials to consult in private, the right of citizens to consult with their elective officials privately and the disruption of government business and privacy interests that the publication of unlisted telephone numbers would entail, county attorney Mary Ann Miller said.

The newspaper has maintained the records are public and should be released.

The slot machine appeal is the first case to be heard Wednesday involving Cengiz Sengel, who is challenging International Game Technology and the Silver Legacy in Reno over a disputed $1,797,700 jackpot reportedly hit on Sept. 21, 1996.

Sengel of Belmont, Calif. was playing Quartermania when the jackpot symbols lined up and the jackpot light started flashing. IGT refused payment on grounds there was a security malfunction and the symbols were not properly lined up.

Sengel said there was a malfunction but it was on the door to the cash box of the bill validator and that had nothing to do with the reels lining up for a jackpot.

"Here, shabby treatment extended Sengel by IGT goes beyond all reason," Sengel's attorney, John White Jr., said.

But attorney Dan Reaser, representing IGT, said the malfunction in the security box caused the reels to stop in the middle of the game before the random number generator could complete its work.

Cy Ryan covers state government for the Sun. He can be reached at (775) 687-5032.