Police Suspect O.C. Financier Ordered Murder

Investigators suspect the deceased president of a Huntington Beach finance company under scrutiny for its strong-arm methods may have orchestrated the murder of a Hollywood recording executive who was deep in debt to the company, a source close to the case said Thursday.

Investigators think it is unlikely that Coleman Allen, founding president of Premium Commercial Services Corp., fired the shots that killed 30-year-old Barry J. Skolnick in January, according to the source.

The source said detectives are looking at the alleged hit men in two separate Orange County shootings--including the murder last year of a Fountain Valley flight attendant--as possible suspects in the death of Skolnick, who was general manager of Hollywood Recording Services.

Allen had taken over control of the studio, which then took out a $2.5-million life insurance policy on Skolnick. Premium Commercial required a number of other borrowers to buy hefty insurance policies designating the finance company as sole beneficiary, according to investigators and court records.

An attorney for Premium Commercial denied Friday that any proceeds from Skolnick’s policy have been received by either the finance company or the studio.

“These proceeds have been deposited in court pending the court’s determination as to the rightful owner,” according to Beverly Hills attorney Lawrence H. Nagler.

At least seven law-enforcement agencies are now seeking information on Premium Commercial and the Orange County attacks and for potential links to unsolved violent crimes, according to another source.

Fountain Valley police investigators, however, are now turning their efforts to prosecuting Leonard Owen Mundy, the Los Angeles electrician who is charged with shooting flight attendant Jane Carver as she returned from a jog near her home last June. Detectives suspect Carver was the victim of mistaken identity.

“Our focus now is to build a really solid case for court,” Lt. Bob Mosley said.

Mundy, 42, appeared briefly in a Westminster courthouse Friday, but his pretrial hearing was postponed until May 31. Mundy was arrested at home last weekend after investigators turned up information on him during a visit to the offices of Premium Commercial.

Detectives were led to the factoring firm, which fronts spending cash to small businesses, while probing the April shooting of a San Clemente businessman who owed money to Premium Commercial. Like Carver, the man was shot in the face, but he survived.

The police investigation into Skolnick’s death is focusing on Allen, a hard-nosed businessman who died of heart disease last month amid allegations his firm threatened delinquent borrowers and demanded some buy life insurance policies naming Premium Commercial as sole beneficiary.

Skolnick signed over his recording firm, Hollywood Recording Services, to Allen after racking up a $900,000 debt. The recording company took out a $2.5-million insurance policy on Skolnick, naming the Allen-owned studio as sole beneficiary. Skolnick was found fatally shot in a parking Sunset Boulevard parking garage Jan. 30, a few weeks after a separate creditor sued Allen’s company for money it said Skolnick owed.

Court records show that other borrowers said they were directed to purchase life insurance policies--in some cases up to five times the amount owed. Businessman Sandip Sengupta, who took out a $500,000 life insurance policy though he owed less than half that, told detectives Premium Commercial took over the policy payments when he could no longer afford them. Allen pleaded no contest to charges that he struck Sengupta with a pipe wrench and was placed on probation last year.

Signal Hill police released more details Friday about the Sengupta attack. He told police Allen invited him to inspect a vacant condominium in the city and, while showing him a downstairs bathroom, pulled out a pipe wrench hidden beneath a towel, according to Sgt. James Peterson.

Allen then hit Sengupta twice with the tool, wrestled with him as he tried to escape and, finally, attempted to choke him, Peterson said. Allen only relented when Sengupta “begged for his life,” the detective said.

The vacant condominium where that attack took place belonged to another borrower, who had turned the property over to Allen to cover debts and left the state out of fear, according to an affidavit filed by police. Peterson said he interviewed more than a dozen borrowers during his probe of Allen’s business dealings, some of them giving the businessman glowing reviews, others portraying him as a bully. Some borrowers were responding to Allen’s direct mail campaign to small businesses, and many were in financial straits, Peterson said.

Premium “was kind of a last resort type of financing for these people,” Peterson said.

James Wengert, the San Clemente businessman who survived being shot in the face April 10, also owed money and had taken out a life insurance policy. Margaret “Peggy” Wengert, his wife, had sued Premium Commercial over the firm’s hardball collection practices and police have said she may have been the intended target of the gunman who murdered Carver, who lived nearby at the time, during a botched hit.

Both men arrested for the Orange County shootings owed money to Premium Commercial, state records show.

The Skolnick murder renewed interest in a dormant Las Vegas case in which the studio’s previous owner and his wife were wounded in 1991.

In February, Los Angeles investigators scooped up a pile of evidence from Las Vegas police in a hunt for possible connections between the Skolnick case and the unsolved shooting of Fred Jones, who had sold him the Hollywood recording company. Jones and his wife, Laurel, were critically wounded as they slept in their Las Vegas apartment.

Steve Scholl, a former Las Vegas police detective who worked on the Jones case, said the couple have “gone deep underground--they’ve dropped out.”

Jones’s attorney said Los Angeles police told him they believed Skolnick was the intended target in the 1991 attack on the couple.

“Barry was supposed to be visiting Fred on that very night, but it ended up not happening,” said Encino attorney Ronald Gallant.

Despite his deep debt at the time he died, Skolnick was “a financial wizard, an accountant type, who quite frankly helped Fred Jones build [the studio] into a tremendously profitable venture,” Gallant said.

Times staff writers Michael Granberry, Dexter Filkins and Michael G. Wagner, correspondent Jeff Kass and researcher Sheila A. Kern contributed to this report.