DD Support Board and Research Team

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Greyling/Trump/Sater/stock scams/mob links/murders/shady Real estate deals - a collection of some old notes of mine for bored readers



Leslie Greyling (sometimes known as Leon Larson) is a South African citizen that works mostly out of the UK these days. Leslie Greyling skipped college instead opening his own business as a real estate broker in South Africa in the 1970s. By the late 1970s he claimed to have 11 offices and more than 400 sales associates working under him. He also claimed to have overpaid for a house in South Africa so he could live next door to Harry Oppenheimer.

In 1985 Leslie Greyling moved from South Africa to Florida on a visitor’s visa. Once in the U.S., he quickly established a string of new business ventures - illegally, under the terms of his visitor's visa. They included shops, restaurants, travel companies, loan services and a car auction company. His partner for one of the companies was Herman J. Schannault, whom the Miami Herald called a prostitution kingpin and whom the Detroit Free Press once termed the "king of Detroit massage parlors." His first brush with the law came in 1988, when he was arrested after failing to pay rent on a house in Ohio. According to the homeowner, Maliq Petrela, all Greyling paid was the $2000 deposit then he lived there for 8 months without ever paying rent. When he was finally kicked out, Greyling took the furniture with him. Six years later, Greyling lied on a fresh visa application by failing to disclose the arrest. In 1990, Leslie Greyling was sued by the SEC for his role in a penny stock scam involving a company called American British Enterprises, Inc.; the following year he agreed to a judgment without admitting or denying the allegations of the complaint. Within the next few years, he served three different jail terms for fraud and immigration offenses.

Apparently, incapable of going straight, Leslie Greyling got involved in an Orlando gaming company named Members Service Corp ("MSC") in 1993 which was chaired by former Republican governor of Florida, Claude Kirk. MSC put out fraudulent press releases to pump the stock price and even brought in Saudi Arabian billionaire businessman (and arms dealer) Adnan Khashoggi to assist with the scam all while Leslie Greyling was selling stock into the market. Khashoggi was brought on to help develop an Orlando theme park called Sportsworld 2000 that would be "bigger than Disney" and promote Middle East reconciliation through soccer, according to a May 1994 story in the Palm Beach Post. Khashoggi would be paid in Members stock while also enjoying a $50,000 expense account.

Contrary to the glowing press releases, MSC was actually struggling financially. Through Member Services Corp, Leslie Greyling negotiated the acquisition of the Chaparral Hotel Casino. The deal involved Member Services Corp, publicly traded Lone Star Casino Corporation, Hallmark Trading Co Ltd, and publicly traded Aspen Marine Group inc. The complicated deal would result in Lone Star and Hallmark getting shares of Aspen Marine, but when the deal fell through and those shares were never delivered all sorts of chaos erupted. Lone Star Casino Corp and Hallmark Trading Co Ltd both sued, saying Greyling owed them $2.88 million and $575,000, respectively, and that they didn't receive all the stock they were promised. Lonestar and Hallmark both won large judgments in the case then went after Greyling with a collection agency, but it is not known if they ever collected any money. In 1994, Ron Miele filed a civil suit against Members Service Corp and its executives including Leslie Greyling alleging securities fraud. Documents are not available online, but dockets show that Miele won a default judgment against Greyling. It is very possible that Ron Miele is the father of Maria Bella Miele (wife of Irving Aronson - future close partner of Greyling’s in Millennium Energy Corp (MENC)).

In 1996 Leslie Greyling was Indicted on seven counts of money laundering, conspiracy and fraud, for which he could have served a maximum term of 110 years in prison. Federal prosecutors alleged Members Service had lured investors through press releases heralding deals that never stood a chance because the company had no money or assets. Also Indicted were fellow MSC executive Arthur Feher Jr and attorney Daniel Boyar. Leslie hired high profile attorney F. Lee Bailey to help defend him. Bailey had previously defended O.J. Simpson in his high profile murder trial. Astonishingly, Greyling’s trial resulted in a hung jury. He pled guilty to lesser charges, spent a year in jail, agreed to a securities ban, and was deported to the United Kingdom in 1997.

Arthur Feher Jr never made it to the trial. He fled the country then a few months later his badly decomposed body was found in a bathtub in a Mexico City hotel room. Some 20 years later Daniel Boyar was back associating with Leslie Greyling helping set up front companies in the UK which tie back to Millennium Energy Corp (MENC) and helping him with raising funds from investors for a private company named London Gold LLC. Daniel Boyar was arrested on January 25, 2017 in Orlando and Indicted for scamming elderly people out of $3,300,000 through a telemarketing timeshare scam between 2010 - 2012. (see the superseded Indictment here for more details). Boyar pleaded guilty on December 1, 2017. He was sentenced to over 5 years in prison and ordered to pay $3.37m in resitution.

Greyling was also said to be fronting for Adnan Khashoggi to get a Casino built in Rum Cay, Bahamas. Plans for the casino were approved in 2006 at a cost of $700 million but the Resort never ended up being constructed. Rum Cay was an interesting location to chose for the Resort because of the locations links to Wally Hilliard, Rudi Dekkers, drug runners, and even 9/11 (more here). Khashoggi gives us an interesting link to Donald Trump. In 1980, Khashoggi commissioned the construction of the yacht Nabila for a cost of $100 million. The yacht was featured in the James Bond movie Never Say Never Again and inspired the song Khashoggi's Ship on Queen's 1989 album The Miracle. In 1988, Khashoggi sold the yacht to Donald Trump "apparently via the Sultan of Brunei" for $29 million "after Iran-Contra put Khashoggi's finances in a brief tailspin." Donald Trump named the boat Trump Princess and later sold it in 1991 to Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal, who named it the Kingdom 5KR.

Greyling made a lot of money from his stock schemes. In 1993, it was reported that Greyling acquired a 1929 Addison Mizner home at 710 S. Ocean Blvd. in Mar-a-Lago, Palm Beach for $5.95 million (the priciest real estate transaction in Palm Beach that year). The home was bought off of Brookstone Ltd which had acquired the property for $3.7 million in 1988. The deal was said to have been done under the table as part of some confidential agreement since Greyling was not a legal US citizen. Greyling’s Real Estate broker for the deal was Robert Wyner. The transaction never showed up in the Palm Beach county property records. Later in December 2006, Brookstone Ltd (still listed as the owner of the home) sold the property to a new investment group for $13 million. Upon Wyner’s death in 2012, Donald Trump said Wyner “was a wonderful member of Mar-a-Lago who everybody loved. We will miss him.”

In early 1993, Greyling signed a deal to acquire the Chesterfield Hotel in Palm Beach, floating out the name Donald Trump as a partner in the deal.

A short time later, in November of 1993, Leslie Greyling did a shady looking Real Estate deal with Donald Trump for a lavish 7,863 square-foot, marble-floored property adjacent to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida. What made the deal especially shady is that Leslie Greyling had just acquired the property located at 1094 S. Ocean Blvd (by becoming the control person of L&V Investments Inc - the property owner) then flipped it to Donald Trump in November of 1993 for $1.6 million which was more than $2 million less than he paid to gain control of the property. Jeffrey Paine, the lawyer involved in all stages of the deal, told the Miami Herald that Greyling had taken a "substantial" loss, and wondered if he planned to make it up in another deal with Trump.

On November 6, 1993, just three days after the sale of the mansion next to Mar-a-Lago to Trump, the Herald reported that Members Service had made a $7 million offer for the Chesterfield hotel and that Donald Trump would manage it. Wyner, the broker in the deal, would not discuss the future president's plans but told the Herald: "With the recession ending, he feels this is the time to buy in Palm Beach. He likes this town and intends to spend much more time here." A day later, Trump told the Palm Beach Daily News that the Herald article was "totally false" and that "friends" of his were buying the hotel but he wasn't involved. Three days later, he told the Palm Beach Post he was, indeed, in "informal talks" about managing the place. A Members Service spokesperson told the Herald that Trump was central to the plan. The plan was never finalized. In February of 1994, the owners of the Chesterfield sued Members Service for defaulting on the sale (and eventually won a judgment of $250,000).

But the same month, Donald Trump jumped much more enthusiastically into another deal with Members Service. On February 3, 1994, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported the future president had paid the firm $320,000 for an option to buy 32 acres of waterfront land in Missouri, where Trump was thinking of putting a "riverboat casino complex."

"We think it is a fantastic piece of property," said Trump, adding the project would be "something truly spectacular." He declined to say where, exactly, the property was located.

A press release from Members Service was sunny. If the future president exercised the option to buy the land, the company would receive an additional $3.2 million from him. That money would be "raised through an initial public offering of equity securities by Trump."

Despite the hoopla, Members Service's stock price was in the dumps. It had gone from more than a dollar per share in November 1993 to $.06/share at the beginning of February 1994. Beginning February 3 and continuing for several days, newspapers listed Members Service's stock as one of most active on the NASDAQ. By the end of a week of trading, it had hit new lows. Members Service was delisted from the NASDAQ in 1994 and collapsed. Investors lost at least $2 million, and some even gave up their life savings. In March 1996 in the Middle District of Florida, Greyling was indicted on charges of money laundering and stock fraud. Federal prosecutors alleged Members Service had lured investors through press releases heralding deals that never stood a chance because the company had no money or assets.

Before Greyling was indicted, when questions began emerging in the local press about his background and finances, Donald Trump distanced himself. "I really don't know him very well," he told the Palm Beach Daily News in June 1994. "I bought a house from him, and the few times I met him, he was a perfect gentleman," Trump said, making Greyling perhaps the only illegal immigrant he's ever liked. He didn't mention having paid Greyling's company $320,000 for an option to buy 32 or 40 "fantastic" acres in Missouri.

The Casino never ended up happening. In 2018, Trump International Realty was offering 1094 South Ocean — which is now owned by Eric Trump — for rent at $86,000 per month.

In 2005, Donald Trump was rumored to be a silent partner in Leslie Greyling's take over bid of the Villa Park football team.

Jeffrey Paine (legal counsel for L&V Investments Inc), the attorney that helped arrange the Palm Beach property transaction between Trump and Greyling, ended up getting busted in 2000 and sentenced to 5 years in prison for his role in the American Benefit Services Inc "viaticals" scam. The head of the American Benefit Services Inc scam, Frederick C. Brandau, received a 55 year prison sentence. Another person involved in the scam, Michael Pollaccia, wasn't named in the Indictment but was named in an Administrative Order issued by the State of Florida Department of Banking & Finance. After his American Benefit Services inc gig, Michael Pollaccia took a job at First Madison Securities. Anthony's new boss, Ray Vahab, ended up getting busted as part of the "Mob on Wall Street" busts in October of 2000. One month later in November of 2000 Michael Pollaccia legally changed his name to Michael Anthony later becoming one of the most prolific penny stock shell hijackers with his wife, attorney Laura Anthony. Also named in the "Mob on Wallstreet" busts was Leslie Greyling.

Michael Anthony would end up having a connection to Leslie Greyling later in 2006 when he hijacked an old shell that once belonged to Leslie Greyling in the 1990s named Sunquest Holdings Inc. Greyling (through LaSalle Group Ltd) acquired the shell in 1997 with the assistance of attorney John Frohling Jr when it was named Sterling Worldwide Corp. Leslie then inserted his wife, Anne M. E. Greyling, as the CEO and renamed it to Sunquest Holdings Inc. In 2000 the shell got abandoned. Then in 2006, Michael Anthony hijacked the abandoned shell. Soon after the hijacking, Charms Investments Ltd (Leslie Greyling) showed back up and assisted the shell in a merger/acquisition which inserted Robert Chin as the CEO and resulted in a name change to Sunrise Consulting Group Inc (SNRS). In 2012, the SEC brought legal action against SNRS and several of its insiders.

The securities ban and deportation obviously didn't stop Leslie Greyling from continuing to get involved in securities scams in the United States. SNRS wasn't the only shell that Greyling got involved with using his wife, Anne M.E. Greyling, as his nominee. In 1996, Leslie Greyling (through Lasalle Group Ltd) agreed to assist a publicly traded company named Wasatch International Corporation by providing financing to a struggling aviation company named Kiwi International Airlines Inc. Kiwi International Air Lines Inc was an outfit involved in narcotics smuggling and said by sources in Moscow to have once been tied to Felix Sater’s father and the Russian intelligence services. Wasatch was run by Dirian Kaloustian and Joe T Logan Jr. at the time. Joe Logan Jr was known to regularly associate with Russian mob boss Felix Sater and to use Sater's White Rock Partners Inc brokerage firm. Assisting in the financial arrangement was Greyling's attorney friend John Frohling Jr.

When the Kiwi International Air Line Inc deal fell through, Greyling gained control of the Wastach shell. Greyling did a merger with a private company he controlled named E-Pawn Inc and inserted his wife, Anne M. E. Greyling, as the nominee CEO and son, Clinton Greyling, as a director for the company. On June 14, 2000, Leslie Greyling was named as a defendant in a mob-related penny stock manipulation prosecution because of E-Pawn Inc (EPWN). E-Pawn.com (EPWN) had become ensnared in a sting by the Federal Bureau of investigation designed to try to wipe out the “Mob on Wall Street”. According to the Justice Department 120 individuals were charged in an Indictment that spanned 19 different publicly traded companies. Leslie Greyling was arrested in the U.K., but he got lucky again when the British Home Secretary, Jack Straw, refused to extradite him ruling that insider trading was not covered by Britain's extradition treaty with America. Leslie Greyling was released on June 21, 2000. He repaid the kindness by spending the two decades ripping off investors in the U.K. An interesting summary of the case can be found in this Civil Suit filed by E-Pawn (then known as uBuy) against the former insiders.

John Frohling Jr (Greyling's main attorney in the late 1990s) ended up getting busted in the Greenstone Holdings SEC litigation in 2010. He was subsequently disbarred by the state of New Jersey in 2012.

After resigning from Wasatch International Corporation, Dirian Kaloustian and Joe Logan formed Aviation Industries Corporation. Aviation Industries Corporation proceeded to acquire a lien of $1.8 million in Kiwi International Airlines from the Moscow-based General Investment Bank (formerly Commercial Bank HELP). In February of 1998, Aviation Industries Corporation acquired CITA Americas, Inc., an opiate detoxification company that was part-owned by Alain Chalem. Aviation Industries also entered into an agreement with an outfit called AIBC Investment Services to raise $5 million to invest in Sun Jet International Airlines. AIBC Investment was controlled by John Doukas. Doukas was also serving as president of White Rock Partners (aka State Capital Markets Corp), the outfit controlled by Russian Mafia boss Felix Sater.

On March 1, 2000, Doukas was Indicted along with 18 others including his fellow executive at While Rock Partners, Walter Durcharter, for running a mob linked "pump and dump". Between 1993 and 1996, White Rock Partners was involved in a $40 million stock manipulation scheme run by members of the Gambino and Bonanno organized crime families that cheated investors out of $40 million in four publicly traded companies. According to FINRA’s report on the incident, Doukas permitted Felix Sater, a statutorily disqualified individual, to play a significant role in the firm’s securities-related activities. Doukas allowed Sater to conduct meetings with the firm’s brokers, hold sales contests, and award cash to brokers who sold the firm’s securities despite the fact that Sater was disqualified from the securities industry as a result of a prior felony conviction. Doukas was barred from the broker industry as a result. Felix Sater was not named as a defendant. Slater quietly cut a deal in 1998. In return for his “cooperation” as a government informant, he was allowed to plead guilty and get on with his life. His part in the pump and dump scheme did not become public knowledge until 2007, and he wasn’t sentenced until 2009. Thanks in part to a forceful government plea for leniency, he got no jail time, and although he’d signed an agreement to pay $40 million in restitution, he wasn’t compelled to make good on that. Instead, he paid a paltry $25,000 fine and forfeited a nice home in the Hamptons.

On August 9, 2002, John Doukas was sentenced to 9 months in prison. After he got out he changed his name to Jon Doukas and formed DLG Management LLC, a mergers & acquisition consulting company. In 2011, Doukas started Gibraltar Advisors which provided financing and other services for penny stocks. In 2014, Doukas came full circle back to Greyling when Gibraltar Advisors formed a joint venture with Greyling’s Charms Investments Ltd. In 2016, Doukas teamed up with Clinton Greyling as a partner in Trends Mergers & Acquisitions LLC.

Alain Chalem was murdered execution style at his New Jersey mansion on October 25, 1999 along with Maier Lehmann. There is some speculation that the two murdered stock promoters were cooperating with authorities and their cooperation was found out by associates of theirs (possibly Joe Logan) with ties to dangerous people like Russian Mob linked Felix Sater so they were ordered to be taken out. Others speculate that it had something to do with a stock deal gone bad. Many believe it was the Vax brothers (Michael and Boris Vax) that carried out the hit. According to an article written by Barron's author, Bill Alpert, Maier Lehmann contacted Barons a day after Barrons published a story about Ivana Trump and a penny stock named Tel-Com Wireless to let Barrons know that Michael and Boris Vax were making threatening visits to people they suspected had been sources for the story. The Ivana Trump/Tel-Com Barons piece exposed that stock promoter Chuck Arnold owned a huge chunk of shares received for consulting services and that seven brokers from mob controlled Meyers Pollock Robbins had also received shares. After the Meyers Pollock bust, many Meyers Pollock brokers moved over to Glenn Michael Financial and Glenn Michael became involved in manipulating the Tel-Com share price. There are lots of other theories out there about the motive for the murders. The murders remain unsolved. Michael Vax was Indicted for securities fraud many years later in 2013.

Following his cooperation deal, in 2002, Sater joined a Real Estate firm named Bayrock Group and soon became its majority control person. Shortly after Sater joined Bayrock Group, the firm began working with Donald Trump on a series of deals, the most successful of which being the Trump Soho in New York (more here). Even after Trump learned about Sater's criminal past and mob links, Sater continued to serve as an advisor to Trump in 2010 and 2011. In 2010, Jody Kriss and Michael Ejekam, acting for BayRock Spring Street and BayRock Whitestone, two of the LLCs under the Bayrock umbrella, brought a derivative lawsuit against Bayrock Group, Tevfik Arif, Sater, another principal, Julius Schwarz, and a number of other defendants. The complaint was sealed in the Southern District of New York, where it was filed, but a copy is available from a parallel action in Israel. The complaint is exceedingly long—165 pages—and exceedingly complicated. It alleges that Bayrock is “covertly mob-owned and operated,” and has committed crimes including mail, wire and bank fraud; tax evasion; money laundering, conspiracy; bribery; extortion; and embezzlement.

Felix Sater became a household name again in 2019 during the Mueller investigation into Trump’s links to the Russian interference of the 2016 presidential election (more here).

Starting by 2001, Leslie Greyling and Australian billionaire Alan Bond both became very interested in a company named Vector Medical Technologies Inc which claimed to have the cure for HIV/AIDS. During 1999 and 2000 the company did an unregistered public offering illegally raising $16 million using boiler room calls then was later named in SEC litigation in 2003. Bond gives us another link to Donald Trump. In 1988, Donald Trump sold the St. Moritz Hotel on Central Park South to Alan Bond for $180m. That was a $150m profit for Donald Trump since he had bought the hotel in 1985 for just $33m. In 1996, Alan Bond was convicted of fraud and imprisoned for 3 years after pleading guilty to using his controlling interest in Bell Resources to deceptively siphon off $1.2 billion into his company Bond Corporation. It is unclear how early Greyling and Bond began to enter the same business circles, but what is clear is that the two stayed business associates right up until Bond died in 2015. When Bond died a great deal of his assets were lost in the process. Following Bond’s death, Greyling became very active with Bond’s son to try to rebuild his asset base and get back some of what was lost. Another name involved in Vector Medical Technologies Inc was Christopher Pearce. Pearce accompanied the Vector Medical Technologies CEO, Michael Salit, when Salit approached both Leslie Greyling and Alan Bond for funding. Many years later in 2014, Pearce and Millennium Energy Corp (MENC) legal counsel John Dolkart were involved in acquiring control of the iPure Labs Inc (IPLB) shell from the Minny Mar Group.