Harold Lieberman - accused swindler
John Vogel
From the 2/23/98 edition of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch:
Lieberman falls from 6th-floor apartment, dies of
apparent suicide
12 noon Monday, February 23
Tim Bryant
and William C. Lhotka
Of the Post Dispatch Staff
Harold Lieberman fought to the last hours of
his life not to return to St. Louis in
handcuffs.
With his deportation from Santiago, Chile
fast approaching, Lieberman managed to
leap from the balcony of his sixth-floor
apartment Monday with three police officers
guarding him. The death was ruled an apparent suicide.
A man who helped found one of the country's biggest and most
successful home building companies only to face a 37-count
federal fraud indictment was a hard case to the end.
Hard to prosecutors who tried unsuccessfully for six years to get
him back to St. Louis. Hard to family members and others who
tried to convince him to return.
Of the many unaswered questions that surround Lieberman's
death, one of the biggest is how much money, if any, he had left.
The FBI said the brothers moved nearly $2 million to Chile
before they fled. Other sources put the amount at closer to $6
million. Alan Lieberman reportedly disclosed that at least $5.8
million was laundered.
Lieberman, 70, was accused of defrauding banks, contractors
and home buyers out of millions of dollars.
One of his company's victims, Sherry Miles of Creve Coeur, said
Monday she had long predicted that Lieberman, 70, would never
return to the United States alive.
``He'd rather die than give money back,'' Miles said. ``There is
no way he could face the humiliation...There is no way he could
come back in handcuffs and face all these people.''
Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Reap said that had the
Liebermans surrendered, as they had promised in May 1992,
their prison sentences would have been completed by now.
``This is an unbelievably unfortunate, huge tragedy for a lot of
people,'' Reap said. ``All this would be over by now.''
Assistant U.S. Attorney Audrey Fleissig said: ``It's a tragedy to
have a case end like this. Our objective from Day One was to
return Harold Lieberman to the United States for a fair trial.''
Lieberman was to be cremated Tuesday in Santiago. A memorial
service was to be held there at one of the city's synagogues. His
ashes were expected to be returned to St. Louis for burial,
officials said.
Police said that while under surveillance, Lieberman ``in a
surprise manner jumped from the balcony of his room to the
backyard of the building'' where he lived in one of Santiago's
most exclusive neighborhoods. He fell approximately 70 feet.
Deputy Interior Minister Belisario Velasco said an investigation
had been ordered to ssee how Lieberman managed to jump with
three police officers guarding him.
The director of the city's emergency hospital said doctors worked
for an hour to keep Lieberman alive.
``He arrived here in extremely serious condition,'' the doctor
said.
``Our efforts were fruitless.''
Lieberman's death was the closing chapter of an odyssey that
began six years ago when he and his brother Alan fled to
Santiago shortly before they were charged in St. Louis with
defrauding banks and customers. Alan Lieberman, 68, returned
to the United States a year ago and pleaded guilty. He is serving a
ten-year sentence at the federal prison in Lexington, Ky.
When the Lieberman Corp. collapsed in 1989, it was $15 million
in debt.
Federal prosecutors said they believe the Liebermans had spent
nearly all of the $1.8 million the FBI managed to trace to
Santiago. The approximately $750,000 of the brothers' money
that wound up in a St. Louis bank was a ``minute'' bit of their
total debt, prosecutors said.
Quick tempered and prone to volatile outbursts, Harold
Lieberman once tried to choke a Post-Dispatch reporter on the
grand staircase of Chile's Supreme Court building.
``Get him out of here!'' he shouted. He gave the reporter's tie
three or four good pulls as he tried to shove him over the railing.
Lieberman never publicly apologized to the people he was
accused of swindling.
Lieberman must have realized all his options had run out when
he was told he couldn't board a plane to Havana. On Saturday
night, police drove him to the airport. He had a flight ticket and
the required visa to go to Cuba, where he planned to apply for a
resident's visa.
Police took him back to his apartment -- about an hour's drive --
when the airplane's crew refused to let him board.
``Things were not in order,''' an airline employee said.
Lieberman's lawyer Hernan Montealegre predicted that
Lieberman would have been arrested and returned to the United
States if he had been deported to another country.
Lieberman's most recent difficulties started late last year when
the Chilean government refused to renew his resident visa. About
two weeks ago, the country's Supreme Court upheld a
government order to expel him.
Miles said she suspects that because Lieberman was never tried
in the fraud case here, his remaining money will go to his estate,
not to his creditors. She said she other creditors believe
Lieberman still had money despite Chile's decision to expel him.
Miles said Alan Lieberman ``did the right thing'' by returning to
St. Louis last year and pleading guilty.
``He probably figured he'd never see his brother again, anyway,''
she said. ``What a sad thing.''
Miles added that she was appreciative of federal authorities who
never gave up their pursuit of the Liebermans. ``They never
closed the door,'' she said.
Alan Lieberman, 68, is serving at the federal prison in Lexington,
Ky. Efforts to reach him Monday were unsuccessful.
After Alan Lieberman's return, federal prosecutors quietly tried to
negotiate an agreement for Harold to come home. On June 25,
the federal court in St. Louis appointed lawyer Hardy Menees of
Clayton to represent Harold Lieberman in the negotiations.
Menees said Monday he had represented Lieberman ``to effect
an orderly surrender and plea negotiations.''
``Despite discreet and diligent efforts, this result was never
accomplished prior to his death today,'' Menees said.
Reap said Menees had negotiated honorably.
``Harold was the one not dealing in good faith,'' Reap said.
Harold Lieberman and his wife, Barbara, divorced in June 1995.
That date is in a petition she filed a year ago Friday to change
her
last name to Kline. She previously was married to the late
Richard Kline, her petition said. A judge in St. Louis County
granted the request April 1.
Reached Monday at her house in Ladue, Kline declined to
discuss Lieberman's death.
Alan Lieberman's wife, Phyllis Lieberman, pleaded guilty last
year of federal currency violations. She admitted helping the
Lieberman's Chilean lawyer, Alvaro Gomez, sneak some of the
brothers' money into the United States. She also pleaded guilty of
possessing a small amount of cocaine.
She is serving her sentence at the federal prison camp, a
minimum-security facility, in Pekin, Ill. near Peoria. Through the
prison spokeswoman, Lieberman declined to discuss her former
brother-in-law's death.
When the Lieberman Corp. failed about 150 families lost escrow
deposits.
Among the victims was Carol Pohlman, who owns a condo near
the one Harold Lieberman had planned for himself at The
Carlyle, in Creve Coeur. Pohlman said from her winter home in
Naples, Fla., that she feels sorry for Lieberman's relatives.
``Nobody should go out that way,'' Pohlman said. ``I guess his
ego got him into this and his ego got him out of this.''
She said an FBI agent who has worked on the case for years
called her to tell her of the death. Pohlman said she believes the
brothers had spent nearly all their money in Santiago.
``I still don't think we're going to get anything back but at least
its
over now,'' she added.
After they arrived in Santiago, Harold and Alan Lieberman
shared adjoining luxury apartments in a modern apartment
building. Under house arrest for a time, they spent their time
studying Spanish, eating long meals in front of a window with a
spectacular view of the Andes and worrying about their possible
extradition.
It was a fear Harold Lieberman was never able to put out of his
mind.
Pohlman was unsure how to take Lieberman's death.
``Maybe he was despondent at this point, living under those
conditions for the last six years,'' she said. ``It's sad but it's
over.''
