The millionaire Hasidic slumlord found burned and suffocated
in a Nassau County dumpster — his body still smoldering from the waist down —
had so many enemies that investigators say they almost don’t know where to
start looking.
“Any number of people wanted to kill this guy,” one
law-enforcement source said of Menachem Stark, 39, describing the father
of eight as embroiled in several “shady” real-estate transactions and being up
to his tuchus in debt.
“He owed a lot of people money,” said another source.
Stark was last seen alive on surveillance tape getting
pulled into a van by two men in a dramatic, mid-blizzard abduction Thursday
night outside his Rutledge Street offices. On Friday afternoon, his body was
found in a trash bin at a Great Neck, LI, gas station.
Just hours before he was snatched, Stark had borrowed a
half-million dollars from a business associate, money he never had the chance
to withdraw and use, the source said.
But his debts weren’t Stark’s only troubles, say
investigators, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Although many neighbors
described him as well-liked and charitable, Stark left behind a trail of angry
tenants from more than a dozen residential properties, mostly in Greenpoint and
Williamsburg, along with an untold number of unpaid contractors and angry
business associates, investigators said.
Stark was also known as a neighborhood ATM machine —
dispensing loans to those in need of quick cash, said a neighborhood source
familiar with his business dealings.
“He was involved in shady business deals, was known to carry
around a lot of money and had a sealed arrest for forcible touching” in his
past, one law-enforcement source told The Post.
The alleged victim was a young teen girl, said the source,
declining to give further details.
“He’s a Hasidic Jew from Williamsburg, and we think he’s a
scammer,” another investigator said of Stark, who had defaulted on more than
$30 million in real-estate loans in recent years and owed tens of thousands in
penalties for building violations.
“He f–ked over a few people,” the source added.
Many on Stark’s enemies list took to social media Saturday —
and not to mourn his passing.
“His slanted shtreimel on his head gives his crookedness
away,” one commenter wrote on FailedMessiah.com, referring to the victim’s fur
hat in a photo.
“Sentence his kidnappers to live in one of his buildings,”
wrote another poster to the site.
Law-enforcement sources told The Post that Stark spent his
final days repeatedly calling business associates, begging for a six-figure
loan. Investigators still don’t know how much he owed and to how many people,
one source said. But probers do know that he left his office with a $4,000
check in his pocket — payment for a plumber who was one of his many creditors.
And on the day he was abducted, Stark had called one
businessman — a Borough Park-based real-estate developer — a dozen times, said
the source, and had just succeeded in convincing the man to deposit $500,000 in
an account for him, the source said.
That lender is not a suspect, nor is Stark’s business
partner, Israel “Sam” Perlmutter, investigators said. Still, all of Stark’s
financial dealings are being probed.
At the time of his death, Stark owed tens of thousands of
dollars in penalties for 148 Department of Buildings violations on his 17
properties, public records show.
“He owed me some money on a job I was doing for him, and he
told me to go f–k myself,” one Williamsburg contractor told The Post of his
dealings with Stark, who was notorious for bouncing checks.
Numerous former Stark tenants described living with vermin,
plus shabby interiors and sporadic heat and water problems.
“I’ve had many conversations with him, and of course in many
of those conversations I wanted to kill him myself,” joked Greg Hanlon, who
lived in a Stark-owned building at 239 Banker St. in Greenpoint.
That building was so decrepit, the city would issue a vacate
order in 2009 — and numerous tenants were left to chase Stark down in futile
efforts to retrieve the four-month deposits Stark had demanded of them, one
tenant organizer said.
The building went into foreclosure shortly after.
“He pretty much ripped off the whole building,” said the
organizer, Ryan Kuonen. “They kept trying to serve him, and he kept hiding from
them. When he’d hear ‘Are you Max Stark,’ he would take off running.”
Investigators are finding a pattern of shady dealings in
which Stark would acquire properties and then “lose” the properties by failing
to pay his mortgage and improvement loans, sources said.
The properties would then be snapped up at bargain basement
prices by family members and associates, one law-enforcement source said.
Nassau County coroners on Saturday found that Stark died
from smothering.
His body had been severely burned below the waist. It was
unclear if he had been set on fire while still alive.
“The smell, it made me sick,” Triumph Getty gas station
owner Fernando Cerff said.
Coldhearted cash
Brooklyn slumlord Menachem “Max” Stark made plenty of
enemies over the years.
*He owed big bucks: Stark and his business partner, Israel
Perlmutter, defaulted on a $29 million loan in 2008, and were still entangled
in federal-court proceeding brought by creditors looking to recoup.
*He was a slumlord: Stark’s 17 properties have racked up 233
complaints and 148 violations, 49 of
which are still open, according to the city Buildings Department. Known for
squalid conditions including vermin, leaky ceilings and lack of heat and gas,
Stark’s buildings also earned 182 Environmental Control Board violations, 60 of
which are still open.
*Hazardous: Conditions were so bad in one Stark-owned
building, 239 Banker St. (inset), that the Buildings Department shut it down,
alleging “occupancy is hazardous to life.” The building had racked up 100
complaints and 59 violations.
*The Greenpoint Hotel: Greenpoint Hotel: In 2003, Stark and
Perlmutter bought the drug and prostitution-infested Manhattan Avenue flophouse
(right), where nearly 20 people died since the late 1990s. The pair did little
to clean up the place, which was seized by federal authorities in 2005.
*Shark sighting: Sources say Stark, a father of eight, was a
loan shark, handing out money to those in the neighborhood desperate for cash.
“He’s a scammer,” a source said.
*Shady business dealing: Stark would snap up real-estate
holdings but quickly allow them to fall into foreclosure, allowing his family
and business associates to snap them up on the cheap.
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