Ex-Head of O.C. Firm Tied to Murder Plot
A U.S. businessman who once controlled Orange County electronics manufacturer Statek Corp. has been arrested in London and accused of plotting to kill three American lawyers and two Swiss executives in a dispute over control of the company.
Frederick Johnston, 71, a former director of Statek and its holding company, Technicorp International II, is being held without bail after being arrested Tuesday by Scotland Yard detectives. He faces charges of solicitation of murder.
FBI agents in Delaware, where Technicorp is incorporated, said that Johnston, also known as William Reilly, was arrested after British authorities uncovered a plot in the United Kingdom and Ireland to hire assassins to murder the three unidentified lawyers, who do business in Delaware and Pennsylvania, and the two unidentified Swiss businessmen.
Johnston reportedly was seeking revenge after losing control of Statek and Technicorp in a legal dispute with Technicorp director Miklos Vendel in the Delaware courts.
The Delaware Chancery Court ruled in January 1996 that Vendel, not Johnston, was the companies’ controlling shareholder. Vendel had fired Johnston and another executive after raising questions about $26.5 million handled by the executives, according to court records.
According to Dun and Bradstreet Inc., Technicorp was incorporated in 1981 and shares its address and phone number with Statek--an indication that the company has no business other than ownership of Statek.
Statek, which has about 135 employees, makes quartz crystals used in electronic timing devices. The company, which has been in the city of Orange for more than two decades, is run by a manager who reports to Technicorp, a spokeswoman said Thursday.
“We received news of this from the FBI and we were very shocked,” said the spokeswoman, who declined to identify herself further. She said Johnston has not been involved with Statek as an executive or a shareholder “for several years” and that Vendel has never been a Statek employee.
Statek officials, the spokeswoman said, were told “that this is an ongoing investigation, so we cannot say anything more.”
The murder-for-hire conspiracy involved the payment of money to unidentified Irish assailants to kill Johnston’s corporate opponents and their lawyers, the FBI said. No one was killed in the plot, said Jeffrey Troy, an FBI agent who supervised the Delaware portion of the murder-conspiracy investigation.
“The plot never got carried out,” Troy said. He refused to comment on whether Vendel was one of the plot’s targets. He also refused to identify the lawyers targeted.
