A business partner of slain slumlord Menachem “Max” Stark is terrified that whoever left his pal’s body smoldering in a gas-station dumpster will now come after him.
Israel “Sam” Perlmutter fears for his life because of his close business dealings with Stark, which date back at least a decade and have involved multimillion-dollar deals that went south, said a source close to the victim’s family.
Perlmutter is “loaded up with security guards,” said another source in the Satmar Hasidic community. “Everyone was talking in the synagogue that he’s afraid he’s next.”
Two beefy men in suits watched over Perlmutter’s Williamsburg home from inside a black Ford Expedition on Sunday, just blocks from the house where Stark’s family is in mourning.
Perlmutter’s mom said that he was “shocked, shocked, shocked” by the Stark’s murder.
“His wife is very uncomfortable,” the mom, Hannah Perlmutter, said. “You don’t feel comfortable that such things could happen in your business. It’s very scary.”
She said that Stark and her son were both “good friends and business partners” but that Sam, 42, “doesn’t know why this happened,” even though Stark was an infamous slumlord and loan shark who — along with his Perlmutter — was in big debt after defaulting on a $29 million loan in 2008.
One Stark-owned building was so bad, the city declared it “hazardous to life,” and sources said he was living in fear of his creditors.
Still, “We all don’t know [why it happened],” Hanna Perlmutter said. “My son was very infrequently in the office.
Jerry Lebedowicz of Queens — who sued Stark, Perlmutter and a third man, Eugene Mendlowitz, in 2010 over an unpaid, $3.5 million debt — described Stark as “more like the manager” and the most “hands-on” of the trio.
“They were all together; they’re in the same business,” said Jerry Lebedowicz, an ex-NYPD cop.
According to court papers, Lebedowicz, an ex-NYPD cop, and his wife sold the three men a former sweater factory in Greenpoint for $8.25 million in 2005, of which $3.5 million was on credit.
“I did business with them, not in a good way,” said Lebedowicz, who added that both sides “squared away” the lawsuit. Mendlowitz could not be reached.
A law-enforcement source said surveillance video shows that Stark, 39, fought for nearly five minutes with the two assailants who attacked him as he left his Rutledge Street office during Thursday night’s blizzard and shoved him into a light-colored Dodge minivan.
“You see [him] struggling for his life. He knows he’s dead if they get him into the van,” the source said.
A broken handcuff and plastic ties were found at the scene.
A source said the snowstorm made it impossible to see the thugs’ faces, noting, “If they didn’t do it on purpose at that specific time, then they were very lucky.”
Stark’s past included the alleged groping of a woman’s buttocks aboard a crowded Manhattan subway car in 2011, but his lawyer, Michael Farkas, told The Post that the charges were dropped and that Stark even got a settlement from the city over the case.
Additional reporting by Aaron Short, Larry Celona, Laura Italiano