FBI Seeking Missing Businessman : He May Have Taken Up to $2 Million From Investors

Federal authorities are investigating the disappearance of a North County businessman who may have absconded with as much as $2 million belonging to his investors and his family, it was learned Wednesday.

Robert Neral, 43, abandoned his wife and three children and left a handful of worried investors uncertain about the status of their money when he vanished three weeks ago.

The FBI and the U.S. attorney’s office are investigating Neral’s handful of companies and his disappearance, according to sources familiar with the case.

An attorney representing several of the investors claimed Wednesday that at least some of Neral’s real estate investment partnerships were designed to “defraud potential investors.”

Neral, a Fallbrook resident, last month was given approval by the state Public Utilities Commission for a cellular telephone network in North County, acquaintances said Wednesday. Neral is also the general partner for several real estate limited partnerships in North County, and he is the owner of several small firms and partnerships that own and manage office buildings.

In Arrears

Execusuites, a headquarters-type office with 20 tenants, apparently served as Neral’s main office. However, payments on the 6,900-square-foot building in Encinitas are in arrears and Nexus Development, builders of the facility and holders of its first trust deed, are preparing to foreclose, a Nexus source said Wednesday. Neither the FBI nor the U.S. attorney’s office would confirm their investigations of Neral. However, sources close to the case claim that federal authorities have been interviewing investors and others connected to Neral.

Neral’s wife, Pamela, has “made herself available” to the FBI, according to her attorney, Robert O’Connor.

Similarly, investors have been cooperating with federal authorities.

“I’ve talked to the FBI extensively,” said attorney Robert Jackson, who represents several North County investors in Neral partnerships.

Jackson’s clients likely will file civil lawsuits against Neral next week, the attorney said.

“We believe that Robert Neral initiated a real estate Ponzi scheme to defraud potential investors,” Jackson said in an interview. Some of the partnership pools, he added, “were never actually attached to real estate.”

Investors in Neral’s firms may total between 30 and 50 and include many North County physicians, according to sources. The total amount of invested capital has not been determined, however.

‘Devastated, Shocked’

Pamela Neral, described by acquaintances as “devastated and shocked” by her husband’s disappearance, was a partner with him in a partnership called Heritage Galleries, records at the county clerk’s office show.

Pamela Neral could not be reached for comment Wednesday.

According to interviews with acquaintances of the Nerals and others familiar with the case, Neral’s leaving, while shocking to those who knew him, was likely well-planned.

The Neral family--including three children ages 3, 7 and 11--went to Disneyland three days before Neral disappeared. While there, Neral snapped several rolls of pictures of his family, keeping the originals and mailing the negatives back to his wife after his disappearance.

“He wanted to get lots of pictures of his kids,” recalled a former business acquaintance.

Estimates of how much investor and personal money Neral took with him range from $500,000 to as much as $2 million.

‘No Money Left’

Pamela Neral is “crushed--she has no money left,” said one source. Neral was trained as a computer expert in the Army and later worked for the Carnation Co., helping to inaugurate the company’s computerized operations in the late 1960s, acquaintances said Wednesday.

He began investing in real estate in the early 1970s, dabbling in development, land and office management.

While in Europe a few years ago, Neral purchased 40,000 “knocked down” antique rocking chairs that had been dismantled for shipment to the United States. Because of a change in currency exchange rates, he sold the chairs prior to the shipment, pocketing a handsome profit, sources said.

Acquaintances said that he later operated a small antique business in Carlsbad.

Several of his initial real estate projects were successful, according to one source who knew Neral. Subsequent investments, however, were less profitable. “I think there’s a chance he got into very speculative ventures that he lost a lot of money on,” one source said.