Probe of Violent Crimes Focuses on Finance Firm

Behind the tinted-window storefront in a Huntington Beach strip mall, Coleman Allen and Jay Olins ran a minor-league finance company that fronted spending cash to fledgling businesses.

But now investigators say the obscure firm also may have been a hub for strong-arm criminal activity that has five police agencies examining its links to a series of violent crimes, including the murder last year of a Fountain Valley flight attendant.

Los Angeles police confirmed Wednesday that investigators are looking into Premium Commercial Services Corp. as part of their search for the killer of Hollywood recording executive Barry Skolnick, who was shot to death in January. Skolnick had turned over his company to Premium Commercial to pay off $900,000 in debts.

And investigators of the shooting of a fast food executive in Newport Beach also are joining the growing scramble to look into the dealings of Premium Commercial.

As details about the firm emerge, so does a portrait of Allen as a hard-nosed entrepreneur whose tactics drew critics even in a cutthroat business.

“It was just his attitude about dealing with people,” said a former client whose Los Angeles-area furniture factory borrowed from Premium Commercial and who asked for anonymity for fear of retaliation. “He once said to me, ‘There are ways of dealing with a client. You deal with them nicely or you make accidents happen.’ ”

But the life of Allen, who died April 6 of heart disease at age 57, defies easy characterization. Described by some borrowers as a bully, he was recalled by others as caring and compassionate.

A former Air Force secret-code specialist with a high security clearance, Allen was the father of a Los Angeles County prosecutor. But the Tarzana resident was prosecuted by his daughter’s office last year for bashing a borrower with a pipe wrench during a business meeting, court records show. Allen pleaded no contest to that crime and was placed on probation for three years.

Premium Commercial, the company Allen founded 13 years ago, may be key to the widening mystery about the string of violence, police said.

In Newport Beach, detectives investigating the Aug. 29 attack on fast food executive Beverly J. Blake--who was wounded in a point-blank shooting while sitting in her Mercedes-Benz--also are searching for a link to the firm.

“There’s no connection yet, but we want to work all the angles,” said Newport Beach Police Sgt. John Desmond. He said investigators are reviewing not only the victim’s history, but also those of her roommate, friends and neighbors in case the attack was another errant hit, such as the one suspected in the killing of Fountain Valley flight attendant Jane Carver.

A Signal Hill police official called Allen a “loan shark” and said his agency is continuing a probe that began when Allen attacked a borrower in that city.

Telephone calls to Premium Commercial went unanswered Wednesday. Repeated attempts to contact Olins, an attorney listed on state records as an officer of the firm, were unsuccessful.

“Olins was running the company, as far as I could tell,” said an employee at a competing Orange County finance firm who also asked that his name be withheld. “He was the marketing guy.”

Police have identified Premium Commercial as the common link between the June 1995 murder of Jane Carver in Fountain Valley and the shooting last month of a San Clemente businessman. Both were shot in the face.

In both cases, the accused gunmen owed money to Premium Commercial, according to state records. And police said both crimes started out as botched contract hits against people who owed money to the company. In one case the victim lived. In the other case, police said they believe the hit man shot the wrong person when he killed Carver.

The suspected gunman in the Carver slaying, Leonard Owen Mundy, put his Los Angeles electrician’s shop up as collateral for a loan from Premium Commercial last August, according to records on file with the California secretary of state. The records do not show how much he borrowed.

Those records also show that Paul Gordon Alleyne, charged in the attempted murder of San Clemente financial investigator James Wengert, was indebted to Premium Commercial. He offered his auto parts business in Los Angeles to cover a loan, which his lawyer said totaled $30,000. The attorney, Federico Sayre, said the loan was recent and was not yet due. Sayre said his client is innocent and has an alibi.

Premium Commercial is a factoring company, which lends to small companies by fronting the crucial cash the firms expect to receive from billed customers. Factoring companies often charge high interest rates because the loans typically are risky.

Premium Commercial, a bit player in the little-known world of factoring, reported making monthly loans of about $10 million to $15 million, according to a statewide trade group.

“You get down to the guys like Premium who take everything in sight as collateral and most companies can’t survive it,” said Jim Morrison, an executive vice president with Capital Factors in Los Angeles. “The smaller firms are high-pressure, hard-core.”

Some alleged that Premium Commercial went too far to collect.

Margaret Wengert, wife of shooting victim James Wengert, charged in court papers last year that the firm used pressure tactics to take over her Fountain Valley home to cover her husband’s debt, which the firm said totaled more than $400,000. Three days after she filed her suit against Premium Commercial last year, a gunman shot Carver in what police said appears to be a case of mistaken identity.

One executive at an Orange County finance company who did not want his name used said he was contacted by state investigators 18 months ago concerning Premium Commercial’s tactics. Officials at the state Department of Corporations, which regulates factoring companies, would not comment Wednesday.

Premium Commercial also had dealings with Skolnick, the 30-year-old recording executive from Thousand Oaks who was gunned down in a Hollywood parking structure.

Skolnick, the general manager of Hollywood Recording Services, died from a single gunshot to the chest in the early morning hours of Jan. 30, police said. No arrests have been made in the case, but Los Angeles Police Det. Rick Jackson said Wednesday that, since the Orange County Sheriff’s Department approached him last month, he has been investigating possible connections between Skolnick’s murder and the Fountain Valley and San Clemente shootings.

Skolnick filed for bankruptcy in September 1994 after running up debts totaling more than $2 million, records show. His assets, including his equity in two houses, totaled $579,000.

But one debt excluded from the bankruptcy protection was a guarantee on a $900,000 loan from Premium Commercial, records show. The company, instead, had taken over Skolnick’s Hollywood Recording Studios, according to bankruptcy records.

“Barry Skolnick appeared to be a real hard-working guy, young and enthusiastic,” said Scott Campbell, a Los Angeles lawyer who represented a creditor in Skolnick’s bankruptcy.

In 1992, Skolnick turned to Premium Commercial for loans that helped him buy a one-third stake in JBL Sound Studios Inc. in New York, records show. Campbell’s client, North Fork Bank in New York, had made routine business loans to JBL, securing the loans with the company’s accounts receivable, the attorney said.

“The bank thought Skolnick was worth more than he was,” Campbell said. But Skolnick had failed to include in his financial statement about $1.5 million in debts, Campbell said.

Meantime, Skolnick pledged JBL’s accounts receivable to Premium Commercial. Once JBL went bankrupt, the bank went after Skolnick for $500,000 owed. Shortly before Skolnick’s slaying, the bank sued Premium Commercial for the debt.

The 13-year-old finance company has been involved in 31 Orange County Superior Court lawsuits, most as the plaintiff in legal actions, records show. Most of the cases involved small businesses.

Still, Allen and his firm enjoyed a solid reputation in some of its most important business dealings.

“We didn’t think anything like these strong-arm tactics were going on there,” said Judy Bloom, an attorney representing National Bank of California in Los Angeles, which extended Premium Commercial a $400,000 credit line. “It was all commercial clients, companies. Typically you think of strong-arm tactics with individual consumers.”

Allen grew up in an apartment above his family’s Baltimore catering business, according to court records. In 1955, he joined the Air Force at age 17, later learning cryptography and working with U.S. spy planes in Turkey, Greece and Libya, records show. He was discharged in 1959.

The finance executive’s direct manner impressed some people, who praised him as generous and caring.

At Beit T’Shuvah, a Los Angeles rehabilitation center for addicts where Allen volunteered as part of his sentence in the assault case, he is fondly remembered for offering a job at his recording studio to a former addict.

“I would describe him as a man of enormous heart and caring for people, and a passion to make a difference,” said Harriet Rossetto, the center’s director.

Times staff writers Matt Lait, Ed Boyer, Thao Hua, James Granelli, Lee Romney and Emi Endo contributed to this story.