Man Slain Outside Deli Was Target of Fraud Suit : Scams: The state alleges up to 8,000 investors nationwide lost about $140 million in partnerships sold by the shooting victim and his associates.

A man who was fatally shot outside a popular Northridge delicatessen last month was under state investigation for allegedly helping to defraud thousands of investors in a multimillion-dollar scheme, according to police, court records, and attorneys in the case.

John J. Collette of Agoura Hills, shot at point-blank range Oct. 28 as he waited outside Brent’s Delicatessen in broad daylight, was among six defendants in a pending civil suit filed by the state Department of Corporations.

The suit alleges that as many as 8,000 investors nationwide lost an estimated $140 million in partnerships sold by Collette and his associates in the Los Angeles-based firm of Parker Bryant Inc. during the last five years.

But whether the slaying of 29-year-old Collette, who also spelled his name Collett, is connected to the fraud case remains under investigation, Los Angeles police said Saturday.

“We think there may be a connection with his business dealings. Whether this is the one or not, we do not know,” said Detective Tom Broad.

Last week, police arrested Marva DeCarlo Johnson, a 29-year-old computer technician from Pasadena, in connection with Collette’s killing and said they believe he is the triggerman. But so far they have been unable to establish a link between Parker Bryant and Johnson, said Broad and Lt. Al Durrer of the Police Department’s Devonshire Division.

Broad said detectives also were looking at the possibility that Johnson and Collette were involved in a soured business deal of their own. Broad said Johnson has no criminal record, “not even a traffic ticket.”

“There’s no evidence at this point to even tell us this was a murder-for-hire,” Broad said.

A second man who allegedly drove a getaway car for Johnson is still being sought by police, Broad and Durrer said. The shooting occurred at 1:30 p.m. before a full lunch crowd at Brent’s at 19565 Parthenia St.

Collette’s attorney, Sheldon M. Jaffe, said he doubted that his client’s death stemmed from the Parker Bryant case.

“In my experience, I have just not seen this kind of a case give rise to that kind of physical violence,” the securities specialist said Saturday.

Jaffe described Collette as “a very nice, pleasant human being” who was “simply a salesman” at Parker Bryant. Jaffe said he had not been impressed by the state’s evidence against Collette, adding that as a salesman, Collette had the right to “reasonably rely on” the information he received from his firm’s leaders.

But according to court records and attorney Barry M. Weisz, who represents about 1,200 investors, Collette was the scam’s “star salesman,” responsible for at least $11 million in transactions with 240 individuals.

Weisz said Saturday that Collette not only sold partnerships for Parker Bryant, most of them in oil and gas ventures, but was named as president or general manager of “several” of the 200 partnerships seized by the state in May.

Since then, those partnerships have been under the management of a court-appointed receiver, and according to Weisz, about 150 have filed for bankruptcy.

Weisz represents the Knight/Bryant Security Owners Protection Assn., which he said was formed to protect investors’ interests. The association takes its name from Parker Bryant’s principals, David Knight and David Bryant, Weisz said.

“It’s really a sad story because these people, most of them, are retirees and this was their retirement or life’s savings,” Weisz said.

In one example of how Collette and his associates allegedly cheated investors, only a fraction of the money raised for a drilling venture was actually spent on drilling and the rest was kept as management and consulting fees, Weisz said.

The partnership, called Zenith 90A, raised $3.4 million from investors, of which only 15% was supposed to be spent on overhead, Weisz said. Instead, an audit by the court-appointed receiver shows that only about $100,000 was spent on drilling while the balance was paid to various consulting firms controlled by Knight and Bryant, Weisz said.

Brokers such as Collette also took 30% to 40% commissions from their sales instead of the 10% promised investors, according to Weisz. He said Collette, a former stereo salesman, met one of Parker Bryant’s principals at an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting and soon began making “hundreds of thousands of dollars a year.”

“They were taking it every which way,” Weisz said. “We don’t know what they did with all this money. They had the top two floors of the Oppenheimer Building in Westwood and had very lavish lifestyles. We think there may be money hidden away.”

Weisz also said there had been testimony in the ongoing case that Collette and other salesmen were given bonuses in gold coins. When he was killed, Collette was under a court order to limit his spending to no more than $15,000 every two months, as are the case’s other defendants, Weisz said.

The state also obtained a separate order restraining Collette and the suit’s other defendants from having any contact with several witnesses, including former employees, concerned about their safety, court records show.

But Jaffe, Collette’s attorney, said the restraining order had been issued without a hearing and that later, after evidence was presented, Collette was dropped from the order.