Soviet Circus Takes Tumble in Promotional Fiasco : Show business: The hastily arranged tour collapsed, leaving Russian-speaking strongmen and animal tamers stranded in cut-rate motels, in need of handouts. The FBI and L.A. police are investigating.

The bears and lions were confiscated in New York, the trapezes and magic boxes are in storage in Atlanta, and most of the performers for the Great Circus Bim Bom have flown home to Russia in disgrace.

One of the few reminders of this spring’s disastrous U.S. visit by the world-famous troupe of aerialists and illusionists is a colorful poster on the wall of the Encino business that promoted Bim Bom’s “Peace and Goodwill” tour. As it turned out, the tour’s title was the greatest illusion of all.

Scheduled to last two years, the hastily arranged tour collapsed this spring after only a few weeks, leaving Russian-speaking strongmen and animal tamers stranded in cut-rate Southern motels and forced to accept handouts. Hotels and trucking companies in several states were left holding worthless checks, while a key Kuwaiti investor disappeared after the Iraqi invasion of his country.

Just who is to blame for causing an international debacle that gave the Russian visitors a firsthand look at a dark side of capitalism is still unclear. San Fernando Valley businessmen who promoted and produced the show blame the Kuwaiti for pulling out and leaving the tour penniless, while an attorney for the Kuwaiti said hundreds of thousands of dollars invested in the tour simply disappeared. An expert in promotions said the tour was doomed from the start by poor planning.

Now, the FBI and the Los Angeles police are conducting separate investigations of the tour and of an incident last summer in which one of the city’s most historic buildings, the Clark Residence, was used to film 47 hard-core sex videos over a three-week period. Key figures in both incidents, according to court documents and corporate records, were two men operating out of an Encino business, John Stallion and Jerry Zimmerman. Police say Zimmerman lives in a condominium above Ventura Boulevard and is a former partner of Michael Franzese, a top member of the Colombo organized crime family.

Stallion was in charge of the film shoot, which came to be known in the industry as the great “pornathon.”

Zimmerman also was accused in 1986 of being involved with Franzese in the theft of up to $50 million in Florida gasoline taxes, which was used in part to finance a movie called “Knights of the City,” according to published accounts in Florida. Zimmerman said in an interview with The Times that he was convicted in that case, placed on probation and fined $100,000.

In the interview, Stallion said he and Zimmerman, “regardless of what we did in the past, decided to go into a clean business venture” with the circus. Then when the tour broke down, Zimmerman said they were convenient targets. The attitude among police and media critics, he said, was that the innocent Russians had gotten mixed up with “gangsters and porno stars.”

“We have problems in America,” Yuri Turkin, general director of the circus, said in a telephone interview from the office of Atlanta attorney Richard Keck. Keck is trying to negotiate the return of the animals so the last few performers can go home. And so the coterie of American volunteers who canvass the Atlanta vegetable markets for free vegetables to feed the performers can resume their own lives.

Asked if he was sorry he came to the U.S., Turkin replied philosophically. “No. In Russia, we have many not good promoters. America has the same.”

The Great Circus Bim Bom, named after two famous clowns who performed in the early part of the century for Russian czars, has some of the premier circus performers from the Soviet Union, including top gymnasts. According to Brooks Savage, the Washington, D.C., attorney for Kuwaiti multimillionaire Abdul Khorsheed, who was the key investor in the circus tour, the troupe first played in Kuwait in 1988. After this success, a tour of the United States was suggested and Khorsheed put up $331,000.

As the fateful United States tour came together, two camps emerged. There were the Middle Eastern business interests represented by a Florida company called International Show Business Inc. Principals in the company were Khorsheed’s son, Waleed, and a Jordanian national, Wadah Al-Kilani, whose names appeared on several checks that ultimately bounced, according to Stallion and people who received them. One of those checks, for $5,000, was to cover the lavish hotel bill run up by the Kuwaiti millionaire in Hershey, Pa., Stallion said.

Then there was the American contingent, operating mainly through a company called International Show Business West, whose spacious ground-floor office is in the Atrium building at a prestigious address on Ventura Boulevard in Encino. The key figures associated with this company, which was established to promote and produce the show for a percentage of ticket sales and 10% of concession sales, were Stallion and Zimmerman, along with Willy Biles, identified as president of ISB West.

Zimmerman was a past partner of Michael Franzese, an admitted Colombo organized crime family member who was named in 1986 by Fortune magazine as one of the top 50 mob bosses in the nation. Zimmerman and Franzese also were executive producers of a horror film called “Mausoleum.”

“We made two or three movies together,” Zimmerman said. “We enjoyed being close.” He said the attitude among police and others when the circus collapsed was, “Let’s blame Jerry, the Mafia guy.”

Stallion and Zimmerman also had roles in the great “pornathon” of 1989, when a YWCA facility was used as the setting for sex videos with titles such as “Wanda Does Transylvania.” Embarrassed YWCA officials said later they thought a documentary was being made.

The production ultimately collapsed and many cast and crew members complained that they had not been paid. The Organized Crime Intelligence Division of the Los Angeles Police Department and the Employment Development Department of the state of California have begun investigating Zimmerman and Stallion on suspicion of failing to pay employment taxes in that case. ISB West’s offices were searched in July.

Several people who lost money in the venture said privately that they thought the tour was a con from the start that eventually cost investors and vendors $1.5 million, although officials have not documented the amount of the losses. But Stallion said he and the other American promoters were victims as much as anyone. “My water has been turned off” at home, he said, indicating he is destitute.

The troupe of 126 performers arrived in New York on April 1, and was then bused to Wheeling, W. Va., where they rehearsed and prepared to open the show in Hershey, Pa. Problems began almost immediately.

Mary Sneed, a professional promoter based in Nashville, said she received a call from Stallion in March or April asking her to help him promote the show. “I said, ‘You’re kidding,’ ” when he outlined his plans to take the circus on the road with almost no advance publicity.

She later found out the $75,000 check she had been given by the tour promoters to cover her expenses and salary was no good. Now, she says, “I stand to lose everything I own. I owe the bank $70,000.”

According to both sides, a pivotal event occurred when Abdul Khorsheed flew in to see the show during the opening week. A grand entrance was staged for Khorsheed, and Keck, the Atlanta attorney, said the father quickly sized up the situation. “He figured out who these people were.”

Khorsheed’s attorney, Savage, said it appeared the money already invested “was not used to pay the debts. The hotel and Civic Center ended up with bad checks.

“I estimate that of the $330,000, $250,000 is unaccounted for.”

“I know where every penny went,” said Andy Trueman, a former rock ‘n’ roll tour organizer who said he was brought in by Zimmerman to stage the circus shortly after it landed. “Nothing was misappropriated.”

After Hershey, the circus moved on to Knoxville, Tenn., with just four days of advance publicity. Sneed said as few as 50 tickets were sold for each show.

In Johnson City, Tenn., in early May, it all came undone. The promoters passed out vouchers at a local restaurant, said Laurie McLeod, a truck driver who volunteered to help the Russians when the tour went broke. “We got breakfast, but then they wouldn’t take them for lunch,” she said.

“We got back to the hotel and the police were there. They kicked us out of town and out of the hotel.”

Khorsheed had decided to pull out of the business arrangement, cutting his losses.

Sneed, the Nashville businesswoman, witnessed the chaos in Johnson City. “They were all running back and forth, making frantic phone calls,” she said of the promoters. Credit cards were presented, rejected, and others found, she said. Finally, the performers were packed off to Atlanta, while some promoters stayed behind under a kind of house arrest to settle accounts.

Special Agent Jeffery Kimball said the FBI in Pittsburgh is investigating “possible violations of federal law,” such as fraud and theft. They are believed to be scrutinizing some of the worthless checks. Stallion said neither he nor Zimmerman wrote any bad checks.

Savage said that after the Kuwaiti backer Khorsheed pulled out, Savage started receiving threatening phone calls. “If your client doesn’t put up more money, we’re going to drag his name through the mud,” Savage remembered the anonymous caller saying. The Kuwaiti businessman has not been seen since the Iraqi invasion of his country, Savage said.

Stallion has denied having anything to do with any threats. He said that Khorsheed’s departure victimized him and everyone else associated with the tour.

“We were in the same boat with the Russians,” he said, meaning he had become a victim of a capricious investor.

In Atlanta, the Russians cooked on hot plates in cheap motel rooms. The low point, said McLeod, came when “we got kicked out of the Motel 6 in Marietta. They kicked us out in the rain.”

Finally, the story of the homeless Russian circus began to attract regional attention. John Stallion’s face popped up on local television screens pleading for help.

Stallion, who refers to himself as a “mover and a shaker” who knows how to get things done, said he arranged fund-raising events on the radio and at a lavish miniature golf course that said it would raise $150,000 in return for an appearance by a few Russian performers. The mayor of Marietta attended and a large helium balloon proclaimed, “The Russians Are Coming.”

The Russians balked at being paraded before television cameras as charity cases and failed to show. Also, at this time, rumors about Zimmerman’s and Stallion’s pasts began surfacing in local newspapers.

In a nasty confrontation, the proprietors of the golf course accused Stallion and the other Americans of being frauds, Stallion said. “ ‘You abused us, shamed us in front of the city,’ ” he said he was told. He was now being called “John Stallion, the porno king. Now, because of somebody’s past, nobody wants to help the Russians.”

Even so, there were several near-rescues for the ill-starred circus. First, the Kentucky Kingdom amusement park reportedly entered into negotiations to hire the circus. But snags developed quickly.

Turkin, the Russian circus director, said he was threatened with deportation unless he gave up on the amusement park and went off to Las Vegas for a show being arranged there. Speaking in broken English, Turkin said he was told, “All people go in Las Vegas, or we deport circus.”

Stallion denied any threats were made.

In the end, half the performers did go to La Vegas, where they reportedly lounged around the pool for a while waiting to go to work. But when neither the performers in Atlanta nor those in Las Vegas were able to get their hands on the equipment and animals, which had been seized for unpaid debts, those jobs evaporated.

Finally, money was donated by representatives of the competing Moscow Circus this summer for plane fare home for most of the performers.

Of the 20 or so Russians left behind and fighting to regain their beloved animals and equipment, some are staying in private homes. McLeod, now without a job and staying with the performers at a local motel, goes to the local farmers market every two or three days to beg for food.

Of the Russians, she said: “They’re great, really nice people. They just got shafted.”

Alex Nichols, whose New York firm transported the animals for the tour and now is housing them, said it costs $800 a day to feed the 16 horses, 10 dogs, three lions, five bears, six monkeys and 18 parrots.

“If I add everything up,” Nichols said, the bill would be “in excess of $300,000. All I’m asking is for $100,000.”

“It honestly was an excellent show,” said Savage. Despite their trip through the nether regions of the Western business world, the Russians say they hope they might come back to the United States some time and that the welcome then will be more congenial.

The Encino office of ISB West is still in business, though under a new name. Now involved in the music business, Stallion asked that the company name not be mentioned.