Re: 10/30/99 - Rites for slain stock promoter as probers study his dealings
Rites for slain stock promoter as probers study his dealings
Saturday, October 30, 1999
By ADAM GELLER, LOUIS LAVELLE, and DAVID VOREACOS
Staff Writers
One of the Internet stock promoters found shot to death this week in central New Jersey was buried Friday by his family in Bergen County, as investigators continued looking into the business dealings that may have led to his murder.
More than 150 relatives and friends of Alain A. Chalem gathered at a Hackensack funeral home to pay tribute to the slain businessman during a somber ceremony.
Chalem, who was 41 and grew up in Englewood Cliffs, and his business partner were found shot, execution-style, Tuesday in the dining room of the mansion Chalem shared with his girlfriend in Monmouth County.
Chalem and Maier Lehmann, 37, ran an on-line business trading in high-risk penny stocks, and reportedly had been informers in investigations of the securities industry.
Investigators say they believe the pair's business dealings may have been a factor in their deaths.
But Friday's funeral barely hinted at the way in which Chalem died. Mourners clung to each other, some sobbing, as they recalled the fun-loving, athletic Chalem.
"He was exuberant in his energy and imagination, his wit and his wisdom," Rabbi Andre Ungar of Temple Emanuel of Pascack Valley told mourners at the Wien & Wien/Gutterman-Musicant Funeral Home.
"The question for us is not: Why did this happen?" Ungar said. "The question is: How do we go on?"
Mourners declined to speak with reporters afterward. Chalem's mother and other relatives, who still live in Bergen County, have not returned calls and have rejected requests for comment.
Monmouth County authorities said they are considering a possible organized-crime link to the slayings. They also are examining whether the attack was simply the work of a disgruntled investor with ties to the victims' Internet promotions.
The Monmouth County Prosecutor's Office is getting help in the international investigation from the FBI.
"We are assisting them, but they are the lead agency," said Sandra Carroll, a spokeswoman for the FBI's Newark office.
Chalem and Lehmann operated www.stockinvestors.com, a Web site that promoted trading in penny stocks, the low-priced securities usually considered a high-risk investment.
Chalem and Lehmann were not registered stockbrokers. They promoted certain stocks on their Web site, which is registered in Panama City and operated by an administrator in Budapest.
Prosecutor's detectives, FBI agents, and SEC investigators are trying to unravel the complex web of stock deals the two were involved in, said Second Assistant Prosecutor Robert Honecker.
One theory they are checking is that the men were killed by "somebody who did not like the fact that they may have lost money" doing business with them, Honecker said.
The international investigation includes examining the hard drives of several computers seized from the house, as well as interviewing people who had done business with the victims, Honecker said.
"We're at the very beginning of this investigation," Honecker said. "Every day we look at it, we learn more about their financial dealings."
Authorities also are investigating whether the two men were killed because of reported roles as government informants in fraud cases.
Lehmann gave authorities information in a 1992 federal insurance fraud case in which he and more than 100 others were charged, his lawyer, Richard Horowitz, said Friday.
Horowitz said Lehmann was so helpful that the assistant U.S. attorney prosecuting the case wrote a letter to the sentencing judge "extolling his cooperation."
Chalem tried to help investigators uncover illicit dealings in the penny stock industry, a former acquaintance told The Associated Press on Friday.
Chalem ran a Clifton printing company, Spectrum Inc. at 20 Ann St., in the late Eighties until the company declared bankruptcy, records show. City officials cited the property for environmental problems before the city foreclosed on the abandoned property after suing Chalem in 1992, said city Tax Assessor Jack Whiting.
The Ann Street location is listed as a Superfund site that has been the target of four state and federal enforcement actions in the Nineties.
The company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in 1989. A former company lawyer, Matthew Keshishian, said he sued Chalem after the businessman skipped out on paying more than $6,300 in legal bills, and he is still trying to collect.
"He and his father ran the business, and they were nice people," Keshishian said. "I'm shocked about it. He was a nice kid, but after I got the lawsuit against him, I never saw him again."
After Spectrum closed, Chalem ran a large bar known as the Heartbreak Hotel in the ski resort town of Hunter, N.Y. The bar drew large crowds before burning down in late 1994, said Investigator Timothy Rizzo of the New York State Police, who investigated the stabbing death of a bouncer at the bar.
This article contains material from The Associated Press.
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