According to Egan, he mowed lawns for drug trafficker and securities fraudster Bobby Vesco and was, at one point, approached by the FBI to become an informant.
[3][a] In 1996 Egan filed a civil rights lawsuit against the City of Hackensack, claiming police officers had attempted to extort free food and money from his restaurant through a protection racket.
In his autobiography, Egan says that his father at one point discovered, in his room, communist literature given to him by staff of the Vietnamese delegation and expelled him from the family home.
Though the U.S. government declined his request for asylum, Egan provided housing to the diplomat and helped generate enough negative publicity that the decision was reversed.
[3] Egan's relationship with the DPRK delegation became increasingly cordial and he began to frequently organize hunting and fishing trips for North Korean diplomats.
[4] To provide cover for the trips, he was appointed – by the DPRK government – president of a non-existent entity known as the USA-DPRK Trade Council.
[3] In 2002 Egan contacted the New York Times at the behest of the DPRK mission to arrange an exclusive interview with North Korean ambassador Han Song Ryol, about that country's nascent nuclear weapons program.
[3] According to Egan, in addition to providing political advice and catering services to the North Korean UN delegation, he has also regularly collected information about DPRK diplomatic staff for U.S. intelligence agencies.