The FBI spy testifying against alleged Real IRA leader Mr Michael McKevitt tried to become a professional wrestler in a bid to earn money, a court heard today.
US businessman Mr David Rupert also switched cash after becoming bankrupt to avoid repaying a $30,000 loan, it was claimed.
The former trucking company boss later declared himself penniless again two weeks before being plunged into a $50 million lawsuit when one of his lorries was in a road crash that killed three children.
During intensive cross-examination at the Special Criminal Court, it also emerged that his partner in a doomed gambling boat venture was guarded by a former head of a specialist Geneva security services unit.
He also made at least four trips to the Cayman Islands but denied having secret funds in offshore accounts.
Mr Rupert, 51, had been in negotiations to set up the floating casino in Florida after his businesses in New York were seized by a bank because he defaulted on a mortgage loan in 1985.
After recharging, the double agent told the court how he began wrestling and even had stomach surgery in a bid to succeed. Mr Rupert told the court he abandoned the plans when he realised his lack of ability, he said.
Mr McKevitt (53) of Blackrock, Dundalk, County Louth, denies directing the Real IRA and being a member of the dissident republican organisation which killed 29 people in the August 1998 Omagh bomb atrocity.
Mr Rupert's businesses had been stripped from him following his failure to repay the $30,000 he owed to the Massena Savings and Loans Association in New York state.
As he probed him about the default, Mr Hugh Hartnett SC, for the defence, established that the witness had transferred some of his money into his secretary's account despite owing hundreds of thousands of dollars to various creditors who had supplied lorries, trailers and other business equipment.
The barrister claimed: "You unlawfully and dishonestly diverted the funds."
Mr Rupert agreed that he had switched the cash but denied suggestions that he had committed a crime.
"I have always considered the possibility that if anything was a criminal offence I wasn't interested in doing it," he said.
"I don't believe this was a criminal offence, it was a civil offence and I was never arrested for it."
In 1992, after re-establishing himself in the trucking business, Mr Rupert was forced to declare himself bankrupt once again.
He had earlier told the court that an horrific accident on December 27th of that year involving one of his drivers that resulted in the deaths of three children, had forced him to wind up.
But after reading out a statement in which Mr Rupert said the accident triggered a $50 million dollars lawsuit, Mr Hartnett said bankruptcy papers had already been prepared on December 14.
He declared: "I am suggesting you told lies to the Lordships when you told them you went into bankruptcy because of the accident.
"It has been your habit when things go wrong in life to try and foist the blame on someone else."
But Mr Rupert insisted his business was already heading for the rocks and that the crash was "the straw that broke the camel's back."
PA