Re: 10/29/99 - Slain Brokers Were Probe Targets
Friday, October 29, 1999
Slain Brokers Were Probe Targets
By BARBARA ROSS and LEO STANDORA
Daily News Staff Writers
he Manhattan district attorney's office was investigating the two stockbrokers found slain, execution-style, in a New Jersey mansion, and authorities said yesterday they likely were rubbed out before they could point the law at others.
"These men had lots of enemies," a law enforcement source said of Albert Alain Chalem, 41, and Maier Lehmann, 37, whose bullet-riddled bodies were found in Chalem's Colt's Neck home Tuesday. "But what we don't know is whether this was a business problem or whether it was something personal."
Both victims were penny-stock promoters and partners in an online business.
Sources, however, said District Attorney Robert Morgenthau's office was looking into Chalem's dealings when he worked for A.S. Goldmen, a Manhattan brokerage firm indicted in July on charges of stock manipulation and illegal trading.
An indictment named 33 people in the company but not Chalem. Goldmen has denied the charges.
Morgenthau also was investigating Lehmann's involvement in the online business, which hawked small-capital business and new stock listings.
One reason the business raised a red flag was that its Web site is registered in Hungary, keeping it free of Securities and Exchange Commission scrutiny.
Lehmann, of Woodmere, L.I., was a defendant last year in a penny-stock case the SEC brought against Electro Optical System Corp., whose stock rose from 50 cents to more than $5 in one day.
The SEC said defendants distributed false information about the company.
Sources said Lehmann also made enemies in 1993, when he pleaded guilty in a Long Island insurance fraud case and helped the feds convict many of the 110 people charged with crimes.
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