Jazz Club’s Would-Be Rescuer Jailed on Fraud Charges : Insiders feel that their trust has been abused by a man who said he’d reopen the legendary Donte’s.

David Robert Silvert, who raised the hopes of jazz aficionados when he announced plans in October to refurbish and reopen Donte’s, the legendary North Hollywood nightclub, has been jailed in Arizona on five real estate fraud charges, authorities said Thursday.

The nightspot, which showcased such well-known musicians as Dizzy Gillespie, Stan Kenton, Count Basie, Buddy Rich and Art Pepper before closing in April, 1988, after 22 years, was auctioned earlier this month to satisfy a $97,000 lien against the property. The new owner, who had made the loan to Silvert, said Thursday that he plans to sell the club to recoup his money.

Some jazz lovers hope the shuttered club will somehow resurface. But many insiders are angry and feel that their trust has been abused by Silvert.

A smooth talker who drove Jaguars and Mercedes-Benzes, once rented a tour bus to take a crowd of friends to dinner and a show and bragged of plans to buy a record studio, Silvert seemed desperate to ingratiate himself with Los Angeles’ jazz circle, business associates and musicians said.

Held in Phoenix

Silvert, 36, is being held in the Maricopa County Jail in Phoenix with bail set at $685,000. During a Maricopa County Superior Court bail hearing Thursday, he said his financial situation was “bleak.”

He was arrested April 7 by officers from the Los Angeles Police Department fugitives section in the bar of the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel, hours before he was to pick up airplane tickets for Barcelona, Spain, Los Angeles police said. He was taken to Phoenix on April 12.

Silvert was indicted in March by an Arizona grand jury on five fraud counts, including four felony charges, resulting from his alleged attempt to purchase 4.75 acres of land in Glendale, Ariz., from a 75-year-old Phoenix woman, Arizona authorities said.

Bob Williams, a special investigator with the Arizona attorney general’s office, said Silvert is charged with felony theft, three felony charges of filing false documents and a misdemeanor charge of using fraudulent schemes to obtain money.

Larry Debus, Silvert’s attorney in Phoenix, declined to comment on the charges. He said the bail hearing will continue today.

State Allegations

The state alleges that Silvert fraudulently obtained a $160,000 loan on the property before the sale was completed. When he defaulted on the loan, the property was seized, and the seller was left without the property or any money from the sale, Williams said in a telephone interview.

That purchase also resulted in one of three dozen civil suits filed against Silvert or one of a number of companies he set up during the past five years, according to evidence introduced in court. Silvert filed for bankruptcy in U.S. District Court in Phoenix in October, 1987. Nine months later, he surfaced on the edge of Los Angeles jazz circles, saying at different times that he was an attorney, a bass player, a talent manager and a wealthy developer, authorities and associates said.

“I knew he was slippery but I didn’t know he was that good at it,” said Erin Geyer, manager of the real estate office that handled his July, 1988, purchase of Donte’s. “He really gets people fooled.”

No Charges

No charges have been filed in connection with Silvert’s purchase of Donte’s or a piece of vacant land in Calabasas that he bought from an Oceanside couple. However, Williams said that the transactions were similar to those in many of the three dozen Arizona cases, which resulted in the sellers contending that they were swindled out of more than $4 million.

Loans on the Calabasas property, which Silvert bought for $115,000 in November, 1988, are also in default. A trustee’s sale on that property is scheduled for May 2.

According to Los Angeles County real estate records, a Japanese businessman bought Donte’s, in the 4200 block of Lankershim Boulevard, in April, 1988, for $300,000. The club had declined, and owner and founder Carey Leverette had done everything from book acts to wash dishes.

Leverette was found dead in the club’s cluttered office April 6, 1988, the day escrow was to close and only three days after the club closed its doors. The purchaser, Koichi Akemoto, told associates that the death was a bad omen and that he wanted to sell the property.

Akemoto sold it July 22, 1988, to West One Corp., one of Silvert’s companies, for $550,000, according to real estate records.

Akemoto financed $455,000 of the sales price himself, and Silvert used the deed on the property to obtain a $220,000 loan from First Statewide Capital of North Hollywood. In September, 1988, he obtained a $97,000 loan on the property from National Mortgage of Studio City, the records indicate.

Reopening Announcement

Sources said Silvert convinced Akemoto that he should allow him to use the property’s deed to obtain the other loans, which he said he wanted to use to revamp the place. In October, 1988, he announced that the club would reopen on New Year’s Eve. When that date passed, the club was rumored to be set to open in March.

Meanwhile, Silvert failed to make any payments on the $97,000 loan, according to lender Ben Karvelnig of National Mortgage. Karvelnig said he would try to sell the property. He declined to say how much he had to pay to obtain clear title to it. Akemoto, the Japanese businessman, remains unpaid.

Terry Aarons, founder of the Los Angeles Jazz Society and a one-time Donte’s employee, said musicians had been “excited at possibility of Donte’s” reopening.

Chuck Niles, the well-known saxophonist and KKGO disc jockey, said that the apparent demise of Donte’s is “disappointing and depressing” and that its closure has left a void.

“What a bizarre ending to the whole story,” he said.