Williamsburg slumlord kidnapped & killed

From the Daily News:

A Brooklyn businessman with $4,000 in his wallet was snatched off the street by two men who bound him in duct tape and threw him in a van as a blizzard bore down on the city.

Surveillance video shows landlord Menachem Stark, 39, leaving his office, South Side Associates, on Rutledge St. near the Williamsburg Bridge, about 11:45 p.m. Thursday.

Stark had just managed to trigger his car alarm when he was approached by a lone attacker and a struggle ensued on the snow-swept street, according to a video released by the NYPD early Saturday.

Within moments, a light-colored 2006-2007 Dodge Caravan can be seen on the video pulling up along the sidewalk.

A second man hops out of the vehicle, according to police sources and Stark’s brother, Yitzy Stark.

“They came out of the minivan and went straight for him,” the brother said. “They grabbed him and he fought with them for about five minutes.”

The two men managed to wrestle Stark into the van. Then they sped off with him. Stark has long been strapped with financial trouble, but was still known to carry a lot of cash.

When he didn’t return home Thursday night, Stark’s worried wife reached out to friends, who then notified Shomrim, the neighborhood Orthodox Jewish patrol. The NYPD was alerted hours later — around 2:30 a.m. Friday, police said.

Update from the NY Post:

A smoldering corpse pulled from a Great Neck dumpster is the millionaire Hasidic real estate developer who was dramatically kidnapped outside his real estate office in Williamsburg on Thursday, law enforcement confirmed to The Post.

“He owed a lot of people money,” one source said of Menachem Stark, 39, who had a string of recent foreclosures and owned some 16 mostly vacant or run-down and drug infested properties under at least a dozen corporate names in Queens and in Brooklyn’s Greenpoint, Williamsburg, Bed-Stuy and Bushwick neighborhoods.

The father of eight died of suffocation, sources said. His body suffered severe burns to one hand and below the waist; it is not clear if he was set on fire before or after his death.
Stark’s business troubles included his history of defaulting on $51 million in real estate development loans — and a string of related lawsuits.

Investigators are finding a pattern of shady dealings in which he acquire properties and then “lose” the properties by foreclosing on big mortgage and improvement loans, only to have the properties snapped up at bargain basement prices by family members and associates, one law enforcement source 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’s a Hasidic Jew from Williamsburg, and we think he’s a scammer,” said one law enforcement source. “And he f—ed over a few people.”