Jay Korn was trusted figure in Rockville Centre

Jay Korn was something of an institution in Oceanside and surrounding communities: at various times, a school board member, president of the country club where he had started as a pool boy, Community Center leader, charity fundraiser.

He was an attorney who earned trust and votes with a quick wit and generous flattery, leaving many with the impression that he was not only the smartest guy in the room but also the nicest, friends said.

This was Jay Korn's life. Friends and clients took him at his word when he came to them privately about real estate investments they shouldn't pass up.

"It raised him to a level of respect in the community which he used to network and gain the confidence of his investors," said Garden City attorney Jerome Reisman, who is representing some of Korn's investors.

Using connections developed over a lifetime in Rockville Centre, Oceanside and Hempstead, Korn quietly built an unlicensed investment business into a sprawling enterprise with, authorities now say, at least 75 clients with $23.7 million at stake.

Possible Ponzi scheme

Nassau prosecutors are now investigating the possibility that Korn made no investments at all, instead shuffling money from new investors to old ones, a classic Ponzi scheme. Korn, 70, of Rockville Centre, apparently committed suicide March 24, Nassau police said.

The probe has blindsided those who knew him. The Friedberg Jewish Community Center, where Korn was a trustee for two decades, issued a statement calling the allegations "difficult to absorb. Should they prove to be true, they will only further compound the devastating sense of loss that we all have felt since his passing."

If he was running a scam, it wasn't apparent to all. Said golf friend John Rogers, 64, of Lynbrook: "He was not that kind of individual."

Raised in Rockville Centre, Korn would meet his future wife at Middle Bay Country Club in Oceanside. In 1973, the couple bought a split-level home in Oceanside on Murray Avenue, a block filled with young families.

Around the same time, Korn started a campaign to convert an old elementary school into a community center and, as president of the Ocean Lea Civic Association, fought successfully against the opening of an Off-Track Betting site in 1974.

The next year, he ran unopposed for the Oceanside Board of Education, securing the first of four three-year terms.

Korn, in a 1975 Newsday interview, called running for office "an ego trip. . . . The fact that I was encouraged to run by many people in the community whom I respect was flattering to me."

Meanwhile, Korn's law practice was booming, friends said. "He's like a general counsel, someone you put total faith and trust in," said longtime client Howard Siegel, whose business, American Medical Alert Corp., became famous for the "Help! I've fallen and I can't get up!" commercials.

Attorneys for some of the investors say he began soliciting from clients, country club friends and personal connections in 1993. Nassau prosecutors said last week, though, that the earliest investments they had seen began in 2001.

One client recalled how she met Korn for lunch at Luigi's in New Hyde Park and instead of legal advice, she got an investment pitch. For $200,000, which he'd use to buy and sell foreclosed homes, the client would get monthly 12- to 15-percent interest payments. Korn told her that he'd been involved in such deals for 20 years with his own money.

A matter of trust

"I had no reason not to trust him," said the client, who spoke on condition that her name be withheld. "I had known him for 38 years."

Starting last year, when the Ponzi scheme of Bernard Madoff was uncovered and another was alleged at the Hauppauge investment firm Agape World, some investors asked Korn for their money back, said two investors who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Korn paid some investors back, some said, and police said his bank statements showed large withdrawals recently.

On the day of his death, Korn was to fly to South Florida, where he and his wife had a second home. He told Ellen he had to go to the office and would be home by 10:15 a.m., Siegel said Ellen told him.

She called her husband and got his voice mail, Siegel said. Soon thereafter, she received a call from a police officer.

With Matthew Chayes

AGE

70

HOMETOWN

Rockville Centre

PROFESSION

Attorney

PERSONAL BACKGROUND

Met future wife at Middle Bay Country Club in Oceanside, where he worked as a pool boy. Graduated in 1963 from Brooklyn Law School. He and wife Ellen bought home in 1973 in Oceanside.

COMMUNITY WORK

In 1970s-'80s, four terms on Oceanside school board.

UNDER SUSPICION

Korn had a $23.7-million investment business with 75 clients. But prosecutors say Korn may have made no investments, instead shuffling money among investors - a Ponzi scheme.

DEATH

A suicide on March 24, police say.