Dead & mi$$ing

$1.7M gone from slain landlord’s $2M account

SLAIN LANDLORD Menachem Stark’s money is missing.

A court-ordered review of a $2 million account controlled by Stark and his business partner, Israel Perlmutter, revealed that $1.7 million of the cash had been “improperly” removed, the Daily News has learned.

Another $200,000 of their cash is missing, and other money may have been misappropriated, court filings state.

Brooklyn Bankruptcy Court Judge Elizabeth Stong ordered the review of the partners’ South Side House account last week, following Stark’s shocking murder.

Stark, a 39-year-old father of seven, was abducted outside of his Williamsburg real estate office on Jan. 2. His body was found in a trash bin on Long Island the next day.

Stark and Perlmutter, 42, were about $40 million in debt on South Side House — a 74-unit apartment building in Williamsburg — at the time he was abducted, court filings state.

Their main creditor, German American Capital Corp., asked Stong to order the review of the $2 million account in the wake of media reports that Stark had frantically been trying to come up with cash before he was grabbed, according to court papers.

Stark and Perlmutter had been ordered to maintain the account to keep the building operating after they filed for bankruptcy in 2009.

The results were shocking.

“The review demonstrated that approximately $1.7 million has recently been improperly taken” from the account, the building’s court-appointed trustee, Jonathan Flaxer, said in court filings.

He also said it appeared from bank statements that the building’s monthly operating reports to the judge “may have been tampered with to conceal the diversion.” Another account that was supposed to have “well in excess of $200,000” had just $3,500 in it, and “there is reason to believe that further monies have been misappropriated,” the filing stat

ed.

Flax- er told the judge he wanted to depose Perlmutter about the missing money, and was advised by the landlord’s lawyer that he would invoke the Fifth Amendment if he did. Attorneys for Perlmutter and the trust did not return calls for comment.

A lawyer who received $150,000 from the South Side account in November was deposed on Monday, and refused to say who his client was or what exactly the money was for, except that it had to do with Brooklyn real estate. The lawyer repaid the money this week, filings show.

A law-enforcement source said police are aware of the goings-on, but are still zeroing in on a contractor to whom Stark owed $20,000 as the most likely suspect.

He had ties to the van that was used in the kidnapping and to a cell phone that was found attached to the bottom of Stark’s car.