Frank Monte

Spying in the 1990s is big business. Spying used to mean James Bond and secret government agencies fighting the Cold War, but not these days.

Now, spying often hits close to home as well as a company's bottom line. Our bosses read our e-mail and know how long we've been away from our desks. Whenever we enter a store, our every movement is recorded by hidden cameras. If we cheat on our wives, can we really trust that beautiful blonde giving us the eye across the bar? And who is that listening in on our cell-phone conversations?

It is estimated that Americans spend roughly $300 million a year at spy shops. An estimated $2.1billion was spent on closed circuit video equipment to monitor wireless communications, such as cell-phones.

Corporations have good reason to worry. Spying is no longer limited to governments. The White House Office of Science & Technology has estimate that business espionage costs U.S. Companies $100 billion a year in lost sales. In January 1997, Volkswagen paid General Motors $100 million to settle a corporate espionage lawsuit. That same month, Johnson & Johnson and a unit of Corange Ltd. settled a lawsuit by admitting they spied on each other. One company even allegedly gave employees an "Inspector Clouseau Award" for gathering the best secrets. For a peek inside this shadowy world, Gallery turned to a real spy, Frank Monte. The Australian-born Monte, is a colorful character right out of Hollywood central casting. He drives a Rolls-Royce and red Ferrari, smokes Havana cigars, hires beautiful women to be his operatives, and has had countless Indiana Jones-like adventures. The Hollywood analogy is no accident; a feature film based on his life, "The Private Eye," starring Ralph Fiennes, will be released in 1998. Monte was a cop in Australia in the '60s. He worked for private investigators while studying for his law degree and opened up his own agency in 1971. He established a world record for obtaining evidence in 27,062 divorce cases. He has been shot at 17 times and had his nose broken seven times. In 1973, Aristotle Onassis hired him to be his personal counterespionage agent. Years after Onassis's death, Monte made headlines by accusing the Greek billionaire of being gay. In 1975, the fearless Monte put together a security force of 2000 mercenaries to protect Sheik Rashid of Dubai from rebels. In 1979, the Rockefeller family hired Monte to find out what happened to Nelson Rockefeller's son, Michael, who had vanished into thin air while working in the jungles of New Guinea 18 years before. Monte opened up his first U.S. Office in Beverly Hills in 1989, and London as well as his original base in Sydney, Australia.