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| A Colts Neck police cruiser guards the crime scene | |
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Police Look Into Business Dealings of Slain Stock Promoters
By IVER PETERSON
COLTS NECK, N.J. -- The two partners in an Internet stock promotion operation who were found shot to death on Tuesday inside a mansion here were linked to "shady" business dealings and may have been killed to be silenced, the Monmouth County Prosecutor said Wednesday. One victim, Albert Alain Chalem, 41, who lived in the mansion in this wealthy suburb, had worked for the brokerage A. S.
Goldmen, which was indicted in July in New York on several charges of stock manipulation and illegal trading; the firm has denied the charges.
The other victim, Maier Lehmann, 37, of Woodmere, N.Y., paid $630,000 in penalties and refunds to investors last year to settle a regulatory complaint accusing him of fraud and securities registration violations.
The case remains under criminal investigation by Federal prosecutors.
The two men, shot execution style, were found on the marble floor of the foyer of the $1.1 million home by two friends of Chalem's at 1 A.M. Tuesday. Lehmann apparently died of a single shot, while Chalem was shot several times, suggesting that he had tried to get up after being shot. Cell phones belonging to the two men were lying nearby, and are being analyzed.
The house was otherwise undisturbed, and money has been dismissed as a direct motive.
"If someone swindles you out of money, what you want is your money back," John Kaye, the County Prosecutor, said. "You don't murder them, because then you don't get your money and you get caught.
So my operating belief is that there was something more here. It was probably related to the victims' business activities, and the killer or killers feared something else more than the loss of money."
Kaye called the two men's business practices "shady." They operated a Web site, www.stockinvestor.com, that provided free stock quotes but also recommended that investors buy certain small and obscure stocks, known as penny stocks. Just a little buying or selling can cause big changes in such stocks' prices, which is why the number of Web sites devoted to them has soared, despite warnings from securities regulators that many of these sites are vehicles for stock fraud.
Aggressive penny stock promotions have been a chronic problem for regulators for more than a decade, and have proliferated during the current stock market boom. But until the last few years, these cases have rarely involved violence or threats of violence.
Investigators spent today hauling away vanloads of evidence from the mansion, including paper files and computers.
The computer hard drives have been sent to the New Jersey State Police laboratories for analysis and duplication, Kaye said, and Federal investigators, including officials from securities law enforcement agencies, are helping to sift the financial records taken from the house. No weapon was recovered, said Chief Kevin A. Sauter of the Colts Neck Police Department.
Investigators appeared to be focusing on Chalem, if only because the slayings took place at his home, although given his involvement in a case under criminal investigation, Lehman may also have had knowledge that would have made someone want to silence him.
"We have lots of evidence and lots of leads and lots of suspects, because lots of people didn't like these people," Kaye said. Securities and Exchange Commission records give Lehmann's wife's name as Tamar, and a phone number for a Tammy Lehman is listed in Woodmere, N.Y. The number was connected to a fax machine.
Chalem is listed in his most recent regulatory filing as living in East Hampton, N.Y., at 20 Cross Highway, but Chief Sauter said the broker had moved to Colts Neck in the spring.
The white brick mansion sits on about 10 acres on Blue Bell Lane, with a circular drive surrounding a fountain. It was bought in the spring for $1.1 million by Russell Candela, of Brooklyn, who is the father of Chalem's girlfriend, Kimberly Scarola, 39.
Ms. Scarola, who lived with Chalem, was in Florida when the shootings took place, the prosecutor said, and returned to New Jersey today and was questioned.
"The house is in the father's name, whatever that means," Kaye said.
Kaye said the two men's Internet site was listed in Web registration documents as having its headquarters in Panama City.
But the site's administrative contact was listed as Moos Gabor, with a Budapest telephone number.
"They did stock promotion over the Internet and in mass mailings," Kaye said.
"A lot of these things involve stocks worth around $5 and a lot of them violate S.E.C. rules."
Stockinvestor's site Wednesday offered two stocks, apparently technology-related, that sold for less than $10 a share.
Penny stock operations have proliferated in New York, New Jersey and Florida.
Kaye said investigators did not know of any illegal operations involving the Web site.
Chalem and Lehmann had been involved in the seamier side of the securities business, according to regulatory records.
From 1994 through early 1996, Chalem worked for A. S. Goldmen, a now defunct brokerage firm, according to records maintained by Federal and state securities regulators. Goldmen, which specialized in selling tiny stocks to unsophisticated investors, has a long history of regulatory and legal problems.
In July, the firm, which had offices in Iselin, N.J., as well as in Florida and New York, was indicted along with its owners and more than two dozen brokers by a Manhattan grand jury. Robert M. Morgenthau, the Manhattan District Attorney, said the firm and its employees manipulated stocks, lied to investors, forged documents and made unauthorized trades; lawyers for the firm have denied the charges.
Last spring, Lehmann, without admitting or denying the charges, agreed to settle a separate complaint by the S.E.C. involving a company called Electro Optical Systems. According to the commission, he was one of a large group of people who conspired to inflate the price of the fledgling company's stock by promoting it on the Internet and by issuing false press releases about it; investors lost about $10 million in the scheme, according to the S.E.C.
Legal proceedings in the case have been put on hold because of a pending Federal criminal investigation, S.E.C. officials said earlier this year.
More on this from Reuters:
Stockbrokers Gunned Down In Colts Neck - (COLTS NECK) -- Authorities in Colts Neck say they're investigating a true "whodunit." Two stockbrokers were found shot to death execution-style early Tuesday in the foyer of a lavish, one-Million dollar Monmouth County estate. There were NO signs of burglary and there's NO immediate motive for the killings. The victims are identified as 41-year-old Alan Chalem and 37-year-old Mayir Lehmann. Chalem was shot repeatedly while Lehmann was shot once in the head. The two traded penny stocks through a private website they operated and had some business dealings in Israel. Police say they have NO leads.
More on this from AP:
Businessmen Killings Baffle Police
By Martha Raffaele
Associated Press Writer
Thursday, Oct. 28, 1999; 6:10 a.m. EDT
COLTS NECK, N.J. –– Authorities say it will take a massive effort to unravel why two businessmen who promoted penny stocks over the Internet were gunned down in the foyer of a mansion.
"This case already is suffering from an information overload," Monmouth County prosecutor John Kaye said Wednesday. "We have so much information that we're just trying to sift through it."
Friends found the bodies of Alain Chalem, 41, and Mayir Lehmann, 37, early Tuesday. They were face down on the marble floor of the estate Chalem shared with his girlfriend and her 13-year-old son in this small, wealthy community about an hour from New York City.
The home's wrought-iron gates were open and its front door unlocked, but there were no signs of burglary, Kaye said. Authorities said the victims appeared to have been reviewing business papers together before their deaths.
Chalem was shot once in the chest and five times in the head, while Lehmann, of Woodmere, N.Y., was shot in the leg and once in the back of the head, Kaye said. Their cellular phones were inches from their hands, and the phones were still ringing on Wednesday, he said.
"People are still calling these people, and we're answering the phone," Kaye said.
Kaye said the ex-husband of Chalem's girlfriend has been eliminated as a suspect and there are few leads, no suspects, no murder weapon and no motive.
"In this county, there are about a dozen homicides a year, and they are not whodunits," Kaye said. "It's probably business-related, but the current theory is it had to be something in addition to that."
Last year, the Securities and Exchange Commission charged Lehmann and other defendants with distributing false information about companies after stock of the Electro Optical System Corp. rose from 50 cents to over $5 per share in one day, the Asbury Park Press reported today.
Kaye said the men promoted stocks for investors on the site www.stockinvestor.com, sending mass e-mails to prospective investors and receiving commissions or discounted stock from securities firms. The Web site has been registered in Panama and managed in Hungary.
Chalem had lived on the 16-acre property for up to eight months with his girlfriend. The home is owned by her father, Kaye said.
The friends who found the bodies said that Chalem had planned to drive to Tennessee and then charter a plane to Florida to meet his girlfriend, authorities said.
The friends told authorities they had talked with both Chalem and Lehmann throughout the day on Monday, then could not reach them later that night.
I might get interested in this case IF Valerie Candela is the wife of Russell. She is a Gore and Schumer donor.
As the article notes there are a number of these sleazy penny stockbrokerages. A big case last year was that of L.C. Wegard. What made that interesting was that a bunch of the indicted brokers were all contributing to Rep Nita Lowey.
I am struck by how much more concise, detailed in the right places, and easier to read, the AP story is over the New York Times. Reading the Times story was uphill all the way; the AP story grabs you by the throat right off and then smacks you upside the head, saying, Pay attention! We got a story here!
Gee, people are angry out there. Brokers aren't even safe in their homes.
Please note that one of these people was to drive to Tennessee before flying on to Florida. Does this raise any suspicions for anyone? Where is Gore from and where are his campaign headquarters?? Florida, another interesting location - Didn't Lucky and company used to own a lot of Florida say like most of the Gold Coast?? There is smoke here when you finally get to the bottom of it. Look at where the penny stock company's work from - NY NJ and FL. Someone connect the dots.
Mob hits were so much more fun when they wired your car or got you eating Duck a l'orange; this is soooo tacky...must have been a disounter from South Philly.
Chalem was shot once in the chest and five times in the head, while Lehmann, of Woodmere, N.Y., was shot in the leg and once in the back of the head, Kaye said.
This is interesting. I'm going to guess that the weapon here was a semi-auto .22. They tend to ratle around inside the skull and are so deformed that a balistic trace is allmost impossible. The shot in the leg part is a bit puzzling; it's possible the guy was ordered to his knees and refused so the killer shot him in the leg.
Sounds like these two hood-winked the wrong guys in one of their schemes. Either they flat out stole from them, or they didn't ante up the correct "share".
btt
Is Hillary listening?
It's surprising that nobody ever did that to Keating or Millican (sp). They did this to thousands of individuals. I guess the victims in the Keating and Millican scams were honest law abiding citizens, must be the difference between penny stocks and savings and loan scams.
The "Russian" mafia, eh?
Execution-style slaying of stock promoters baffles police
| ||||
October 28, 1999
Web posted at: 11:28 a.m. EDT (1528 GMT)
COLTS NECK, New Jersey (AP) -- Two Internet penny stock promoters found shot to death had ties to "shady" business dealings, which may ultimately have led to their execution-style killings, a prosecutor said.
Alain Chalem, 41, and Mayir Lehmann, 37, were found early Tuesday face down on the bloodstained marble floor of the estate Chalem shared with his girlfriend and her 13-year-old son.
Click here to see the rest of CNN's version of the story.
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I would guess so.
Lifestyles of the Rich & Famous...
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