KERIK ALLY BORROWED BIG $$ FOR CLUB By CHRISTOPHER BYRON
December 22, 2004 -- Former Bernard Kerik ally Lawrence Ray borrowed $350,000 from Frank DiTommaso, the co-owner of a Mafia-linked construction company that had just hired Ray for a "no show" job after Kerik vouched for him, The Post has learned.
Law enforcement sources in New York and New Jersey told The Post that Ray — who was paid $100,000 a year for the construction job — began borrowing the cash in stages, beginning in late 1998.
In testimony to New Jersey state investigators, DiTommaso said Ray wanted the money to buy out a business partner in a nightclub that Ray owned, and that when Ray thereafter failed to repay the loan, DiTommaso foreclosed on the property and took it over.
A search of New Jersey State property transfer and business ownership records shows that in late 1998 Ray and an individual named Frank Ricciuti were partners in a company called Rayric Corp., which in turn owned a Scotch Plans, N.J., nightclub called the Club Malibu.
The club had become the scene of increasingly noisy and disruptive behavior by customers, which climaxed over the 1998 Thanksgiving weekend when a patron was gunned down in a parking lot shootout.
Documents obtained from the New Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement show that the first $25,000 loan from DiTommaso to Ray occurred only days after the shooting, in December of 1998, followed in subsequent months by three more payments.
Then, a year later, property-transfer records show that Rayric was itself purchased by Ray for $400,000, using an entity called LR Family Holding Company LLC as the purchaser.
A search of property records shows that Ray's holding company took out an additional mortgage, of $1 million, in May of 2000 on the Club Malibu property, apparently so that Ray could post bond on his indictment on an unrelated case in Brooklyn.
In that action, Ray was charged, along with 18 others, including several members of organized crime, for running a $41 million stock fraud scheme backed by Mafia muscle. Ray claims that when news of his arrest reached Kerik, his onetime friend simply cut him off, as did DiTommaso.
With reporting by Philip Messing |
