ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. — The Trump Plaza Casino and Hotel is closed, its windows clouded over by sea salt. Only a faint outline of the gold letters spelling out T-R-U-M-P remains visible on the exterior of what was once this city’s premier casino.

Not far away, the long-failing Trump Marina Hotel Casino was sold at a major loss five years ago and is now known as the Golden Nugget.

At the nearly deserted eastern end of the boardwalk, the Trump Taj Mahal, now under new ownership, is all that remains of the casino empire Donald Trump assembled here more than a quarter-century ago. Years of neglect show: The carpets are frayed and dust-coated chandeliers dangle above the few customers there to play the penny slots.

On the presidential campaign trail, Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, often boasts of his success in Atlantic City, of how he outwitted the Wall Street firms that financed his casinos and rode the value of his name to riches. A central argument of his candidacy is that he would bring the same business prowess to the Oval Office, doing for America what he did for his companies.

“Atlantic City fueled a lot of growth for me,” Trump said in an interview in May, summing up his 25-year history here. “The money I took out of there was incredible.”

His audacious personality and opulent properties brought attention — and countless players — to Atlantic City as it sought to overtake Las Vegas as the country’s gambling capital.

But a close examination by The New York Times of regulatory reviews, court records and security filings leaves little doubt that Trump’s casino business was a protracted failure. Though he now says his casinos were overtaken by the same tidal wave that eventually slammed this seaside city’s gambling industry, in reality he was failing in Atlantic City long before Atlantic City itself was failing.

But even as his companies did poorly, Trump did well. He put up little of his own money, shifted personal debts to the casinos and collected millions of dollars in salary, bonuses and other payments. The burden of his failures fell on investors and others who had bet on his business acumen.

In three interviews with The Times since late April, Trump acknowledged in general terms that high debt and lagging revenues had plagued his casinos. He did not recall details about some issues, but did not question The Times’ findings. He repeatedly emphasized that what really mattered about his time in Atlantic City was that he had made a lot of money there.

Trump assembled his casino empire by borrowing money at such high interest rates — after telling regulators he would not — that the businesses had almost no chance to succeed.

His casino companies made four trips to bankruptcy court, each time persuading bondholders to accept less money rather than be wiped out. But the companies repeatedly added more expensive debt and returned to the court for protection from lenders.

After narrowly escaping financial ruin in the early 1990s by delaying payments on his debts, Trump avoided a second potential crisis by taking his casinos public and shifting the risk to stockholders.

And he never was able to draw in enough gamblers to support all of the borrowing. During a decade when other casinos here thrived, Trump’s lagged, posting huge losses year after year. Stock and bondholders lost more than $1.5 billion.

All the while, Trump received copious amounts for himself, with the help of a compliant board. In one instance, The Times found, Trump pulled more than $1 million from his failing public company, describing the transaction in securities filings in ways that may have been illegal, according to legal experts.

Trump now says he left Atlantic City at the perfect time. The record, however, shows that he struggled to hang on to his casinos years after the city had peaked, and failed only because his investors no longer wanted him in a management role.

There are those here who fondly remember Trump’s showmanship, the thousands he employed in a struggling city and the tens of millions of dollars in tax revenue his casinos generated.

“He was a great person for the company,” said Scott Butera, president of Trump’s company at the time of its 2004 bankruptcy. “With his oversight, his brand and marketing, he’s really adept.”

Many others were glad to see him go.

“He put a number of local contractors and suppliers out of business when he didn’t pay them,” said Steven Perskie, who was New Jersey’s top casino regulator in the early 1990s. “So when he left Atlantic City, it wasn’t, ‘Sorry to see you go.’ It was, ‘How fast can you get the hell out of here?’”

1990: ‘It’s truly going to be an incredible place’

Trump darted beneath the 70 gold-tipped minarets and nine carved elephants that lined the roof, through the lobby and across the casino floor, seemingly oblivious to the spectators’ cries of “Donald, Donald,” and the gamblers clutching bricks of $100 bills at the blackjack tables.

It was April 1990, and Trump was officially opening his third gambling resort in Atlantic City, the biggest project of his career: the $1 billion Trump Taj Mahal.

“It’s truly going to be an incredible place,” he told reporters. “We’re calling it the eighth wonder of the world.”

The Taj was certainly of outsize proportions: Its 42-story tower was New Jersey’s tallest building, and the casino was the world’s largest.

In a remarkably short time, Trump had become a commanding figure in Atlantic City, with his casinos accounting for nearly a third of its gambling revenues and employing more than 8,000 people.

Trump Plaza came first. In the early 1980s, Trump gained control of a prime spot on the boardwalk. Unable to get financing to build a casino, he forged a partnership with Harrah’s Entertainment, a national gambling operator.

Harrah’s agreed to provide Trump, who did not put any additional money into the deal, with $220 million in financing to build the project, to pay him a $24 million construction management fee and to give him half the profits.

The 39-story Harrah’s at Trump Plaza opened in 1984.

From the start, the partners were at odds over its marketing and whose name should be paramount.

“It wasn’t a well-designed partnership,” said Philip Satre, the retired chairman of Harrah’s. “We were a big company with an institutional approach to running a business, and he was a real estate entrepreneur who kind of shot from the hip.”

Then Trump bought Hilton’s nearly completed casino in the marina district for $320 million, calling it Trump Castle. His company issued $352 million in bonds to finish construction and open the casino, and tacked on an additional $32 million. That casino opened in 1985 and competed against his partner’s first casino, Harrah’s Marina.

The following year, Harrah’s scuttled its partnership with Trump and sold him its stake in Trump Plaza for more than $220 million.

Next Trump went after the biggest casino of all, the Taj Mahal, which Resorts International, builder of Atlantic City’s first casino, was erecting. After buying a controlling interest in Resorts from the estate of its founder, Trump battled the talk show host Merv Griffin for control of the company.

In the end, Griffin got the company, while Trump won the still-unfinished Taj Mahal.

Less than two weeks before the casino opened, Marvin Roffman, a casino analyst at Janney Montgomery Scott, an investment firm based in Philadelphia, told The Wall Street Journal that the Taj would need to reap $1.3 million a day just to make its interest payments, a sum no casino had ever achieved.

“The market just isn’t there,” Roffman told The Journal.

Trump retaliated, demanding that Janney Montgomery Scott fire Roffman. It did.

“It was doomed way before the start,” W. Bucky Howard, who was promoted by Trump to president of the Taj five days after it opened, said in a recent interview. “I told him it was going to fail. The Taj was underfunded.”

Almost immediately, Trump had trouble making the debt payments on the Taj and his other casinos. It was also clear that the Taj was cannibalizing the Castle and the Plaza, whose combined gambling revenues dropped by $58 million the year it opened.

After more than tripling as new casinos opened through the 1980s, gambling revenues in Atlantic City flattened in 1990, rising just 1.35 percent, as gamblers grew more cautious in light of a national recession. All were hurt, recalled Perskie, the casino regulator, but none was in the catastrophic financial shape of Trump’s.

At the same time, Trump’s real estate empire in Manhattan, where the recession cut property values, was also failing.

In an August 1990 report, New Jersey regulators noted the “sheer volume of debt” on Trump’s holdings: $3.4 billion, including $1.3 billion on the casinos and $832.5 million in loans personally guaranteed by Trump. Regulators warned that “the possibility of a complete financial collapse of the Trump Organization was not out of the question.”

The Taj Mahal missed its November debt payment. The Castle was also late.

By December 1990, when Trump needed to make an $18.4 million interest payment, his father, Fred Trump, sent a lawyer to the Castle to buy $3.3 million in chips, to provide him with an infusion of cash. The younger Trump made the payment, but the Casino Control Commission fined the Castle $65,000 for what had amounted to an illegal loan.

As all of his ventures neared collapse, Trump’s lenders insisted that he submit a business plan, appoint a chief financial officer for the Trump Organization and sell, among other things, the Trump Shuttle airline, his yacht and his stake in New York City’s Plaza Hotel, which also filed for bankruptcy protection. They put him on a $450,000-a-month budget for personal and household expenses.

Just over a year after it opened, the Taj Mahal was in bankruptcy court, followed in 1992 by both the Plaza and the Castle. In the plan that was worked out, Trump ceded to the lenders a 50 percent stake in the businesses in return for lower interest rates. The lenders agreed to defer certain principal and interest payments and hold off on personal claims against Trump for five years. But there was little or no reduction in the enormous debts that would plague his gambling empire far into the future.

Trump now says he looks back on the period as his golden era in the casino business.

“Early on, I took a lot of money out of the casinos with the financings and the things we do,” he said in a recent interview. “Atlantic City was a very good cash cow for me for a long time.”

Others were hurt.

“He helped expand Atlantic City, but he just did not put the equity into the projects he should have to keep them solvent,” said H. Steven Norton, a casino consultant and a former casino executive at Resorts International. “When he went bankrupt, he not only cost bondholders money, but he hurt a lot of small businesses that helped him construct the Taj Mahal.”

Beth Rosser, of West Chester, Pennsylvania, is still bitter over what happened to her father, whose company, Triad Building Specialties, nearly collapsed when Trump took the Taj into bankruptcy. It took three years to recover any money owed for his work on the casino, she said, and her father received only 30 cents on the dollar.

“Trump crawled his way to the top on the back of little guys, one of them being my father,” said Rosser, who runs Triad today. “He had no regard for thousands of men and women who worked on those projects. He says he’ll make America great again, but his past shows the complete opposite of that.”

1996: ‘It will be the best’

In June 1995, with the risk of being forced into bankruptcy just weeks away, Trump shifted ownership of the Trump Plaza casino to a new, publicly traded company: Trump Hotels and Casino Resorts. In the initial public offering, 10 million shares were sold at $14. At the same time, the company also sold an additional $155 million in junk bonds, at a 15.5 percent interest rate.

Becoming a public company burdened Trump with the responsibility of putting shareholders’ interests first. But Trump, the largest shareholder and chairman of the board, could generally meet that obligation by obtaining approval from his board and disclosing financial details in securities filings. The board’s three outside members were widely seen as bowing to his wishes.

A week after the initial public offering, the new company began using some of the almost $300 million it had raised to clear Trump’s personal debts. During his financial pinch two years earlier, Chemical Bank had forced Trump to give up his ownership of the Trump Regency, a hotel next to the Trump Plaza. He held an option to buy it back for $60 million, which included debt on the hotel and $35.9 million that he personally owed the bank from his purchase of a Manhattan property. The new company exercised that option, in effect transferring Trump’s debt to its own balance sheet.

In 1996, the public company issued more stock and sold $1.1 billion in junk bonds. The money was used, in part, to pay off $330 million in bonds on the Plaza that had been guaranteed by a company Trump controlled, as well as almost $30 million that Trump personally owed to two banks. The company also bought the Trump Taj Mahal and Trump Castle — soon renamed the Trump Marina — shifting more of Trump’s debt to shareholders.

Another crucial deadline came in 1998. Trump personally owed $13.5 million to Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette, the investment bank that had underwritten the initial public offering in 1995; under the terms of that loan, he was in danger of defaulting, because the stock price of Trump Hotels and Casino Resorts had fallen so low. A default would have made him lose control of the company. Instead, the casino company lent him the money to pay back the bankers. A shareholder sued, accusing the board of directors of breaching its fiduciary responsibility.

“THCR is a casino and entertainment company,” the lawsuit, filed in 1999, said. “It is not in the business of loaning money. The company desperately needed (and needs) cash to shore up its deteriorating financial condition.” (The suit was dropped in 2000, shortly after Trump paid the company back.)

Indeed, the company posted losses of $66 million in 1996, $42 million in 1997 and $40 million in 1998. Those losses would continue.

Still, Trump made money, receiving $1 million a year for what was essentially a part-time job. In 1996, he was paid a $5 million bonus. The public company lent him $3 million to cover costs he had incurred while exploring whether to open a casino in Indiana, then forgave the loan when the stock met price targets.

The casino company leased office space in Trump Tower in Manhattan, and Trump’s other businesses were paid to entertain its “high-end customers.” It was later alleged in a lawsuit that at least part of the money was paid for big-name performers, including Celine Dion, Tony Bennett and Billy Joel, who had appeared at Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s resort in Palm Beach, Florida. In its response, Trump’s company did not challenge that allegation.

2005: ‘We have a company that’s really got great potential’

Though he has acknowledged mistakes in piling crippling debt on Trump Hotels and Casino Resorts, Trump has steadfastly maintained that his resorts were the best-run and highest-performing casinos in Atlantic City.

“The casinos have done very well from a business standpoint,” he told Playboy magazine in 2004. “People agree that they’re well run, they look good and customers love them.”

In reality, the revenue at Trump’s casinos had consistently lagged behind their competitors’ for a decade before larger forces ravaged the industry. Beginning in 1997, his share of the Atlantic City gambling market began to slip from its peak of 30 percent.

Revenues at other Atlantic City casinos rose 18 percent from 1997 through 2002; Trump’s fell 1 percent.

Competition grew more intense in 2003 when the Borgata Hotel Casino and Spa opened. The $1.1 billion, 40-story resort redefined the concept of an Atlantic City luxury casino. Revenues at Trump casinos dropped another 6 percent in a little more than a year.

Had Trump’s revenues grown at the rate of other Atlantic City casinos, his company could have made its interest payments and possibly registered a profit. But with sagging revenues and high costs, his casinos had too little money for renovations and improvements, which are vital for hotels to attract guests. The public company never logged a profitable year.

“There’s something not right when every single one of your projects doesn’t work out,” said Roffman, the casino analyst.

Since taking Trump Hotels and Casino Resorts public, Trump had been bound by a “contribution agreement” that required him to engage in the gambling businesses only through his own company and banned him from personally owning more than 5 percent of the stock in any other casino company. So when he bought 10 percent of the shares in Riviera Hotel and Casino, a company based in Las Vegas, Trump was required to grant his public corporation an option to purchase the shares.

However, when Trump sold the Riviera shares in April 2004, the company, which was entitled to the proceeds, canceled the option without explanation.

The company’s description of the sale did not disclose Trump’s profit or how he had sold the shares. But in its securities filings, Riviera reported that Trump had sold the shares in a privately negotiated sale for $10 a share, well above the going price. That would have generated a gain of more than $1 million.

Asked to review the transaction by The Times, James Cox, a professor at Duke University Law School who specializes in corporate and securities law, said such “material omissions of fact” in the filings by the Trump company could have resulted in criminal charges “if it is knowing and willful,” though such charges are rare.

“I think the biggest thing is, it understates his compensation,” Cox said.

At the time, the company was also asking its lenders for a break and headed toward another bankruptcy.

“Basically, that sounds like a fraudulent conveyance” said David Skeel, a bankruptcy law professor at the University of Pennsylvania Law School.

“The company is throwing away money,” Skeel said. “It’s the equivalent of giving big bonuses to your executives right before you file for bankruptcy.”

But lawyers involved in the bankruptcy case said the transaction had apparently gone unnoticed.

In a recent interview, Trump said he did not recall the transaction or why the board had canceled its option.

Months later, in November 2004, the company filed for bankruptcy protection, the third such trip for Trump casinos.

2009: ‘They will see how great it will become’

When Trump has been pressed on his casinos’ performance during his presidential campaign, he has repeatedly said he left Atlantic City at the right time.

“Atlantic City is a disaster, and I did great in Atlantic City,” he said during a Republican Party debate in September, according to a transcript. “I knew when to get out. My timing was great. And I got a lot of credit for it.”

That would suggest Trump willingly left sometime around 2006, the year revenues peaked in Atlantic City and that Pennsylvania allowed its first casino to open, a development that marked the start of a rapid downward spiral in the city. The drop-off was exacerbated by the recession that began in 2008.

But in early 2009, as Trump casinos lurched toward bankruptcy for the fourth time, Trump was still trying to hang on. At loggerheads with board members selected by bondholders after the 2004 bankruptcy, he offered to buy all or a part of the casino company bearing his name. He was rebuffed, and he quit the board soon after.

Testifying in bankruptcy court in Camden, New Jersey, Trump argued that the company could not use his name, since shortly before filing the bankruptcy it had stopped paying him the $166,000 a month he received under the services agreement. He testified that his brand was worth $3 billion. He also testified that he was personally negotiating the settlement of a lawsuit in Florida that would yield more than $100 million for the company.

As in previous cases, others warned that Trump’s promises should not be trusted. This time it was Carl Icahn, the activist investor who had a major stake in the company. (The two men now describe themselves as friends and Icahn supports Trump’s candidacy.)

Icahn’s team argued that the remaining debt was still unsupportable, that the Trump name was replaceable, and that a windfall from the Florida lawsuit was wishful thinking. Under Trump, the company had a long history of making rosy revenue projections and never meeting them, Icahn’s lawyer argued.

But a judge approved the Trump plan and noted that Trump and his supporters had established “that the Trump brand is worth millions of dollars” to the casinos.

This time, bondholders gave up about $1.3 billion for control of the company. For the first time, Trump had no official role at the company he had founded, and he owned no more than 10 percent.

In a recent interview, Trump acknowledged that he left Atlantic City when he did because he failed in his effort to buy back the casinos. But he said the timing worked out well for him, in the end.

“In 2009 they were worth a hell of a lot more than they are now,” he said. “Sometimes you’re better off lucky than good.”

Trump Marina was soon sold for $38 million, less than 10 percent of what the company paid Trump for it in 1996. The Plaza was shuttered. The Florida lawsuit that Trump had valued at more than $100 million produced nothing for the company. Trump and his daughter Ivanka sued the company, saying their brand was being tarnished by the ramshackle appearance of the Taj Mahal.

Trump continued to earn money from the casinos. In 2011, the casinos reported leasing a Trump helicopter for $390,000 and spending $236,000 for “Trump labeled merchandise,” including $197,000 for Trump Ice bottled water.

In retrospect, David Hanlon, a veteran casino executive who ran Merv Griffin’s Atlantic City operations at the time of the Resorts battle, said, Trump succeeded in repeatedly convincing investors, bankers and Wall Street that “his name had real value.”

“They were so in love with him that they came back a second, third and fourth time,” Hanlon said. “They let him strip out assets. It was awful to watch. It was astonishing.”

In 2014, the company filed for bankruptcy protection for the fifth time. The chief executive cited the debt level after the 2009 bankruptcy as the primary reason.

For a time, Trump lent a glamorous sheen to the faded resort city. But some of his former investors no longer see the value.

“People underestimated Donald Trump’s ability to pillage the company,” said Sebastian Pignatello, a private investor who at one time held stock in the Trump casinos worth more than $500,000. “He drove these companies into bankruptcy by his mismanagement, the debt and his pillaging.”