His gambling debt and experience with explosives were primary pieces of evidence linking him to the bombing. From there, he emigrated to the United States.īirges built a successful landscaping business, but his addiction to gambling led to him losing a large amount of money and prompted the bomb plot. Eight years into his sentence in the gulag, he was released during a period of mass repatriation of POWs held in the Soviet Union to their home countries and returned to Hungary.
He was captured and sentenced to 25 years of hard labor in the Soviet gulag. He claimed to later biographers he flew for the German Luftwaffe during World War II, during which time he provided intelligence to the United States. was a Hungarian immigrant to Clovis, California. He died in prison in 1996, at the age of 74. was convicted of having made the bomb with a goal of extorting money from the casino after having lost $750,000 there. The total cost of the damage was estimated to be around $18 million. After an attempt to disarm the bomb, it exploded, causing extensive damage to the hotel but no injuries or deaths. The Harvey's Resort Hotel bombing took place on August 26–27, 1980, when several men masquerading as photocopier deliverers planted an elaborately booby trapped bomb containing 1,000 pounds (450 kg) of dynamite at Harvey's Resort Hotel (now 'Harveys') in Stateline, Nevada, United States.
