(Howard Schnapp)
(
)
A millionaire Long Island software genius under scrutiny by the feds for insider trading fatally shot himself yesterday on the sprawling front lawn of his mansion, law-enforcement sources said.
EMTs and Nassau County and Old Brookville cops furiously tried to revive ReiJane Huai, 52, of Carlisle Drive in tony Glen Head after he fired a single shot from a handgun into his chest at about 9 a.m. He collapsed near a Mercedes-Benz SUV parked in the driveway of the $2.5 million home, the sources said.
“We saw them doing CPR on him in front of the house,” neighbor Bryan Waiksnis said. “He was just laying there on his back. It’s unbelievable.”
The once high-flying SUNY Stony Brook alum was pronounced dead at a local hospital. Cops recovered a handgun and a note at the scene. They would not reveal the note’s contents.
The married dad was facing a federal class-action lawsuit and a Security and Exchange Commission probe over allegations of financial funny business at FalconStor, a data-storage firm he founded.
His friends — billionaire New York Islanders owner Charles Wang and Huai’s longtime legal adviser, Roy Reichbach — arrived at the scene of the gruesome suicide yesterday.
“They had a close working relationship for years,” said a source close to Wang. “These men were very close, both professionally and personally. Mr. Wang is shocked.”
Wang, whose Computer Associates in 1996 paid $1.2 billion for Cheyenne Software Inc., one of Huai’s former companies, surveyed the scene from behind the tinted windows of a black BMW, while Reichbach went into the mansion.
Neighbors told cops they didn’t hear a shot, and it was unknown if anyone else was in the 10-room, 6,654-square-foot home where Huai lived with his wife, ShuWen.
The couple had several grown children.
Huai had been president and CEO of FalconStor in Melville until he abruptly resigned under pressure in September 2010 as his legal woes mounted.
He was slapped with a federal class-action lawsuit over allegations of insider trading, including a charge that he and other top execs dealt 125,000 shares of stock at an artificially inflated price of $545,000.
The SEC then jumped into the act, launching a federal probe of FalconStor’s allegedly shady accounting practices.