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Police Continue Investigation Into Stark Murder; Financial Details Emerge

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Menachem Stark was abducted January 2 in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. His body was found in Long Island the following day.
Menachem Stark was abducted January 2 in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. His body was found in Long Island the following day.
The murder investigation of businessman and father Menachem Stark took a new twist Tuesday, January 14, when it was revealed that over $1.2 million of “unauthorized” withdrawals were made from his Capital One account in the weeks after he died, according to New York Newsday.

The mysterious withdrawals surfaced in files submitted by a mortgage company in a bankruptcy court. The legal documents filed in court revealed that Stark’s account had been flush with as much as $1.8 million in recent months but had dropped to $190,347 by January 9, 2014, six days after his body was found partially burned in a commercial trash bin at a Long Island gas station.

Police told the New York Daily News just last week that they are convinced Stark’s business partner has been lying to them during the investigation. His business partner, Israel Perlemutter, has been using a Russian businessman as a scapegoat, police told the Daily News.

At press time, Newsday most recently reported that Perlemutter has in fact been cooperating with police, and that detectives have reportedly told him that he “is not a suspect” in the case, according to the man’s lawyer Henry Mazurek.

Furthermore, it has been reported that police believe that some businessmen Stark associated with were involved, and that he was accidentally suffocated to death during an attempt to restrain him. Resentment may have been directed at Stark, police told Newsday, and noted that he may have been running a foreclosure scheme – buying foreclosed properties at low prices and then selling them to his own associates at highly reduced rates.

Stark was reportedly sued in 2011 over a $29 million loan that financed a 74-unit residential rental building at 100 South 4th Street in south Williamsburg, The Real Deal initially reported. Family members have since acknowledged that Stark was involved in several large real estate deals, but the family also insisted that it “knows of no bad blood that could have sparked the kidnapping,” according to Newsday.

The investigation has also revealed that Stark felt he was being stalked in the days preceding his murder.

Family members have also stated that they are not looking for revenge, and that they feel the murder was “an act of G-d” (verbatim). Stark’s family announced a $25,000 reward following the murder. The reward is being offered for finding Stark’s killer, and a prominent Brooklyn rabbi has appealed to the public for help with the investigation.

Police have also theorized that, despite owing “tens of millions of dollars to different creditors” a contractor Stark owed “about $20,000” to has been singled out as a suspect in Stark’s death, sources told the Daily News on Thursday.

The contractor has been linked to both the van that was used in Stark’s January 2nd kidnapping as well as to cell phone that was subsequently found attached to the bottom of Stark’s car, the sources said. In addition, the cell phone that the Jewish Voice reported last week had been found strapped to the undercarriage of Stark’s vehicle is no longer thought to by police to have been used as a tracking device, as previously reported

Police found the 2002 Dodge Caravan with Pennsylvania plates used in the kidnapping in Brownsville on Tuesday. They questioned the driver, who is the son of the van’s owner. Detectives claim to have seized the vehicle as a man got in and tried to drive off. The man was questioned but not charged, according to WPIX Channel 11.

Sources said the owner is not a suspect, but the driver had ties to the contractor that Stark is said to have owed a $20,000 debt to.

One source said an arrest is not yet imminent.

“We’re waiting for forensics on the car and tracking his calls. But he owed this money, the guy picked up in the Caravan knows him and the phone under [Stark’s] car has ties to the contractor,” the law-enforcement source said.

Detectives believe the abduction might have been carried out to scare Stark, 39, into paying the debt, and that his death by suffocation might have been accidental.

A source close to the Stark family said that despite his numerous real estate holdings, the father of seven didn’t leave behind a will.

The source said Stark’s longtime business partner Israel Perlmutter will take control of Stark’s share of the business, while working with an appointed member of Stark’s family.

Among the properties the pair owned was an apartment building called South Side in Brooklyn, which bankruptcy records show they were $40 million in debt on.

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