The family of slain slumlord Menachem “Max” Stark on Monday increased the reward for information about his unsolved murder to $25,000.
“We beg you, whoever knows anything or thinks they know anything — for your own sake, for the sake of your brothers and sisters, citizens of New York City, the human race — come forward,” Rabbi David Niederman of the United Jewish Organizations of Williamsburg said during an afternoon news conference.
Brother-in-law Moses Strulowitz said: “We are not, as Hasidic, Orthodox Jewish people, looking for revenge.”
“God will punish them no matter what happens,” he said of Stark’s killers.
Another brother-in-law, Abraham Buxbaum, said Stark’s family is “shattered and broken to pieces,” describing the murdered father of eight as a “wonderful husband” and “wonderful father.”
Stark, 39, was violently abducted by two men as he left his office in Williamsburg during Thursday night’s blizzard.
His smoldering body was found Friday in a gas-station dumpster in Great Neck, LI.
Law-enforcement and neighborhood sources have said Stark amassed a long list of enemies through his business dealings, which included defaulting on more than $30 million in real-estate loans, owning rental properties riddled with code violations and loansharking.
He also spent his final days repeatedly begging his associates for a six-figure loan, finally convincing a Borough Park developer to deposit $500,000 into an account for him on the day he disappeared, sources said.