The Crime

Welcome to Colts Neck, NJ

2007-10-21T21:13:00.000-07:00

Welcome to Colts Neck, NJ
http://www.colts-neck.nj.us/index.html

Police, Fire & First Aid Emergency 9-1-1
Township Police Non-Emergency 732-780-7323
County Police Non-Emergency 732-462-4343
Town Hall 732-462-5470
Mayor mayor@colts-neck.nj.us
Town Hall town-hall@colts-neck.nj.us
Police Non Emergency police@colts-neck.nj.us

The history of Colts Neck can be found at http://www.colts-neck.nj.us/hist/hccn.html

Directions

2007-10-21T20:58:00.000-07:00

The murder took place on Blue Bell Lane (the map only shows a Blue Bell Road so I am assuming it was reported in the article I read incorrectly.)

These are directions from the murder site to the site where the gun was found:
1. Head northwest on Bluebell Rd toward Freemont Ln

2. Turn left at Freemont Ln

3. Turn right at Bucks Mill Rd

4. Turn left at Cedar Dr

5. Turn right at Boundary Rd

6. Turn left at Vanderburg Rd

This is the way to the Big Brook Preserve where the gun was found. http://www.colts-neck.net/cgi-bin/pages?PAGE=/recreationandparks/leagues/par_A_Big.Brook.Preserve/news.txt

Businessmen Killings Baffle Police

2007-10-21T20:44:00.000-07:00

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.
3 Posted on 10/28/1999 03:26:28 PDT by Chucky
http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a3818049953f9.htm

Internet Stockbroker Sleazies Murdered Execution Style

2007-10-21T20:43:00.000-07:00

Internet Stockbroker Sleazies Murdered Execution Style

Source: New York Times
Published: 28 October, 1999
Author: Iver Peterson
Posted on 10/28/1999 01:08:57 PDT by Chucky

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.

1 Posted on 10/28/1999 01:08:57 PDT by Chucky
http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a3818049953f9.htm

Colts Neck murder still unsolved

2007-10-21T20:32:00.000-07:00

From: Jeffrey S. Mitchell
11/1/2006 3:43:36 PM
of 1123

Colts Neck murder still unsolved
Bodies of two stock promoters were found in mansion in 1999
Posted by the Asbury Park Press on 10/30/06
BY DAVID PORTER
THE ASSOCIATED PRESSCOLTS NECK — The gated mansion with its ornate fountain still sits at the bend of a quiet cul-de-sac, in a spot where the only sound that interrupts the chirping of birds is the occasional distant hum of an airplane passing overhead.Little has changed outwardly in this tucked-away corner of one of New Jersey's most picturesque communities since the night two stock promoters were found slain on the marble floor of the mansion's dining room, shot multiple times as they reached for their cell phones. even years after the killings, the case remains unsolved. Despite an apparent wealth of potential suspects and some promising leads at the outset, the killers of Alain Albert Chalem and Maier Lehmann have never been found."As time goes by on any crime, especially a homicide, the trail gets colder and colder," said former Monmouth County Prosecutor John Kaye, whose office initiated the investigation in concert with the FBI, local authorities and investigators with the Securities and Exchange Commission.The multi-agency investigation reflected the tangled web of the victims' business dealings, which authorities strongly believe played a part in their deaths. The execution-style killings were widely seen as a sign that the volatile world of small-cap Internet stock trading, which had already been infiltrated by organized crime, was starting to unravel. he slayings also reverberated through the leafy streets of Colts Neck, a town of horse farms and sprawling homes that had one of the lowest crime rates of any town in the state." t the time it was rather shocking for us all here," said Lillian G. Burry, Colts Neck's mayor in 1999. "We're a very quiet, well-manicured, semi-agrarian community. This was the kind of thing you read about in a magazine, not that you'd see in your hometown."Colts Neck was hardly a stranger to white-collar crime, however. Living across town from Chalem in 1999 was Jeffrey Pokross, a mob-connected stockbroker who was arrested for stock fraud and later helped the government arrest more than 120 people in one of the nation's biggest securities fraud stings. Disgraced penny stock tycoon Robert Brennan, currently serving a federal prison term, owned a stable and golf course in the township, and former New Jersey Devils co-owner Marc Cooper, convicted of swindling clients of his bill-processing firm out of $78 million, also lived there." ecause it's very quiet, and by virtue of the way homes are laid out and the open spaces, you don't have neighbors knowing what neighbors are doing," Burry said. "From that point of view, if you were thinking of something illicit, it would be a good place to hide out."The list of Lehmann's and Chalem's potential enemies was lengthy. Lehmann, who lived on Long Island, had cooperated with the government in an insurance fraud case in the early 1990s that led to the arrest of more than 100 people. Chalem had worked at A.S. Goldmen, a corrupt brokerage accused of stealing nearly $100 million from investors, though he was never indicted.Both men also were heavily involved in promoting stocks on a Web site that was registered in Panama and operated out of Hungary. After the killings there was intense speculation that the two had been involved in "pump and dump" schemes — inflating a stock's price using bogus press releases, taking a profit and then dumping the worthless stock on unsuspecting investors — and had been slain by people they had ripped off."A lot of people had bad feelings toward these people, but that didn't mean they killed them," Kaye said. "We went down some very promising paths that in a normal case would have resolved it. One resolution we thought was certain, but our use of DNA confirmed this person had nothing to do with it." Whoever killed Lehmann and Chalem on the evening of Oct. 25, 1999, left little behind. At one point, investigators reportedly tried to get human DNA samples from two dogs that were in the mansion at the time, but that proved fruitless."There was very little evidence left at the scene," Colts Neck Police Chief Kevin Sauter recalled. "Months later, someone came back and said someone may have dumped a gun in a pond, and we had a team come out, but they didn't find anything. Since then it's kind of died out, as far as leads go."Long Island attorney Alexander Novak, who had represented Lehmann in a securities case, said he has a theory about the killings based on conversations with his client.Investigators never interviewed him formally, Novak said last week. Even today, he declines to divulge details of the conversations with Lehmann, citing ethical constraints.Meanwhile, the house at 3 Bluebell Road is still owned by Russell Candela, whose daughter, Kimberly Scarola, lived with Chalem at the mansion but was in Florida with her son from a previous marriage on the night of the slayings. A phone number is listed for Scarola at the address, but she did not return messages.The Monmouth County prosecutor's office would only confirm that the investigation is still open.Novak, for one, is not optimistic."It sounded like an extremely professional hit," he said. "It sounded like the perpetrators were on a plane back to Eastern Europe before they even found the bodies."
Copyright © 2006 Asbury Park Press. All rights reserved http://www.app.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20061030/NEWS/610300323/1001/OPINION

The Crime - October 20th, 2007

2007-10-21T20:21:00.000-07:00

On October 20, 2007 I went fossil hunting with my friend Cheryl and a friend named Christine. We went to a place in Colts Neck, New Jersey that Cheryl has been fossil hunting at for nearly 20 years. Normally she finds all kinds of things ranging from fossilized squid to shark teeth.
Well on this fine day around 4:30pm we we walking in the stream looking for fossils. Cheryl was getting serious about hunting so she was much farther up the stream than Christine and I were. Christine and I had to pass under a bridge to get to her and the water in that area was very deep, almost past our knees. We were moving very slowly trying to find the most shallow parts to walk through. Christine saw a yellow shopping market bag in the water and asked what I thought it was. I made a joke that it could be a body and then I gave the bag a tug. It didn't budge since it had a large rock, larger than a bowling ball, on top of it. I told Christine to lift the rock and I picked up the mangled plastic bag. I suddenly realized what I had and got all excited, "IT'S A GUN! Oh my God we found a gun!"
We shouted for Cheryl to come back right now. She hurried back and we all rejoiced in our find. When we got the bag back to the car we realized that there were two bullets with it as well. We took pictures of the gun at this point and then called the police.
We took the gun to the police station in Colts Neck and at first they weren't sure what to do with it. This was certainly not a police station that got to see a lot of action. They had a very plush life in a very wealthy area. The first officer to hold the gun wanted to see if there were any bullets in the barrel, and since the gun was rusted and full of mud he needed a tool to clean it out. He couldn't find anything near him so he took his cuff pick out of the shirt pocket and started to go for the gun when the other officer told him in a scolding voice not to use it. That officer went and got a pair of scissors and began to scrap at the barrel. So much for preserving evidence.
We were thanked for gun and they took our contact information and we went on our way. It was certainly the most exciting find we had ever had, and may ever have.
Whoever left the .38 caliber gun obviously didn't realize that people fossil hunt in this water. Then again the hiding place had worked for a VERY long time. People normally don't pick up garbage in the water, we just happened to go against our first instincts to take a closer look. Let us just say that someone in Jersey tonight has no idea that his or her past may no longer be the past.