Clark County Recorder Frances Deane, right, and her attorney, Conrad Claus, listen at a preliminary hearing on Wednesday. Photos by Gary Thompson. "She said something about a title business, title records, if I knew anything about it, that there's a lot of companies making a lot of money doing it. I said I might be interested if you could make some money with it." MONTY MILLER

Two businessmen in court Wednesday told how they secretly paid Clark County Recorder Frances Deane $36,000 in cash for access to a massive computerized database of county records.

Las Vegas businessman Monty Miller said he hand-delivered two $10,000 cash payments to Deane for access to the data, which he planned to resell to title companies for as much as $1 million.

"She (Deane) said she bought a television, a plasma 42-inch," Miller said during Deane's preliminary hearing Wednesday. "After that, I just assumed my $100 bills were down at (RC) Willey's."

Another businessman, Joseph Gekko, testified that two of his workers delivered $16,000 in cash, hidden in stuffed animals, to Deane for access to the same information.

Gekko, who owns Lenders Service Direct in Orange County, Calif., sought Clark County's entire database of records to sell the information to title companies or other businesses.

When asked why Deane was taking the cash, Gekko paraphrased Deane as saying, "I'm not going to get re-elected, so it's time for me to get a piece like everyone else."

The testimony unfolded in the courtroom of Las Vegas Justice of the Peace Karen Bennett-Haron.

Deane was charged last month with 19 felony counts, including misconduct of a public officer, fraudulent appropriation of property, theft and unlawful commissions, personal profit and compensation of public officers.

She has pleaded innocent to the charges.

Authorities allege Deane conspired to sell computerized records of up to 60 million documents. The records include items such as title, foreclosure, lien and loan records.

Images of titles recorded in Deane's office are copied and maintained in a "title plant" operated by Clark County Title Services. That company is jointly owned by Las Vegas title companies, each of which pays $1.5 million to become a shareholder with full access to the decades' worth of title records.

According to police reports, Deane approached Miller in 2002 and asked the owner of American Document Co. if he wanted to start his own title plant.

"She said something about a title business, title records, if I knew anything about it, that there's a lot of companies making a lot of money doing it," Miller said. "I said I might be interested if you could make some money with it."

He said that a week or two later Deane called him and asked whether he was still interested in the venture.

"Did I want to buy some data from her," Miller said. "She said she knew someone who was retiring who might want to sell the data."

Miller said he ended up meeting an unidentified elderly woman in an east Las Vegas parking lot. The original asking price for a "couple of tubs" full of computer disks containing county records was $20,000, but he ended up paying $8,000 for the records.

In a second instance, he said, he delivered $10,000 cash to Deane at her Las Vegas home. On a third occasion, he said, he delivered $10,000 to Deane at her condominium for more data.

"I figured if we could put it all together, we could get a million," Miller said.

But originally, he had trouble selling the data to local title companies because they already had their own source. He said at one point Deane referred an out-of-state businessman to him, and the data was sold through the broker for about $95,000 in total.

When Miller was asked whether he thought he had done anything illegal, he said the documents are public records.

"I'm not charged. I don't think I did anything wrong," Miller said. "If she'd put it into the county bank account, we wouldn't have this."

When asked why he paid Deane cash for the data, Miller said: "We live in a cash town. You go down to the 7-Eleven, win a royal, they'll give you $4,000 cash."

Miller also testified that he twice gave Deane $5,000 in cash while she was running for political office.

"Why did I do it at the time? Because my wife told me to," Miller said.

Deane's attorney, Conrad Claus, grilled Miller with questions about his credibility.

He noted Miller has a felony case pending against him in District Court in which he was charged in October with stealing nearly $185,000 in cash and real estate from a 70-year-old woman who uses a wheelchair and suffers from memory loss.

Miller said he has signed an agreement with prosecutors to testify against Deane, and if he testifies truthfully, his cooperation in the Deane case could benefit him in his pending criminal case.

He also has avoided prosecution for the payments to Deane as part of the deal with authorities.

Gekko said he, too, signed an agreement with prosecutors that calls for him to testify truthfully against Deane. If he does so, he will not be prosecuted.

He said he approached Clark County through Deane with a deal to buy the records. He expected to pay about $100,000 for the records to the county, but county officials rejected the deal.

"I played it cool and stayed in touch with her," Gekko said, referring to Deane.

He said he took Deane to dinner in 2005, and when she dropped him off at his hotel, she gave him three disks and asked him "what they are worth."

"I said, 'If it's what I think it is, it's worth $100,000,' " Gekko said. "She asked me how much I could get to her immediately, and I said $8,000."

Within 48 hours, he had one of his workers show up at Deane's office with a stuffed Care Bear. The bear had $8,000 hidden inside.

But Gekko said when his employees analyzed the disks Deane had given him, he said "the data was no good."

Still, he said he maintained contact with Deane and later sent another workers with a stuffed lion to Deane's office. Inside the stuffed animal was another $8,000 in cash, he said.

He said Deane then gave his worker access to a computer drive, the contents of which his employee downloaded over three days.

Again, when the information was analyzed, Gekko said, it was incomplete.

"I cut off ... communication," Gekko said. "I wrote it down as a loss."

He said that Deane continued to try and get a hold of him. He said she got him on the phone last fall and said she needed money for a Hurricane Katrina rescue effort.

Gekko said he did not give Deane the money.

When he was asked by Deane's attorney, Claus, whether he thought the payments in the stuffed animals were illegal, Gekko said: "I was under the impression it was a questionable transaction. I thought it was questionable, but I always thought I could get an attorney like you to get me out. Someone's going to buy the data."