THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, March 22, 1996 TAG: 9603220584
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A4 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: THE NEW YORK TIMES
DATELINE: SOMERS, N.Y. LENGTH: Medium: 60 lines
If he did what the prosecutors say he did, what happened to the $323 million?
That was the question Thursday from neighbors of Edward J. Reiners, who seemed to be living an ordinary suburban life until the most extraordinary things started happening this week.
Federal prosecutors arrested him Tuesday and said he had used the lowest tech of swindles in a high-tech age to separate some eight financial institutions from $323 million.
Reiners owned the local video rental store here, sometimes drove a Toyota wagon and lived with his two young daughters and his wife in a tasteful four-garage house up on Londonderry Lane worth around $600,000.
But Reiners, 51, also seems to have had another life: he drove a burgundy Jaguar and, neighbors here remembered, often seemed to disappear for long periods. He had a penchant for buying and selling expensive homes and new cars, according to public motor vehicle and property records.
Property tax records in New York City show he bought two condominiums on East 69th Street in Manhattan last year, including one from Donald Trump, for a total of more than $10 million last year.
Reiners, owner of the Video Forum on Route 202 here, was arrested, prosecutors said, after conducting a meeting at the Rye Brook offices of Philip Morris Companies with some bankers who had developed suspicions about the man they had been led to believe was the tobacco and consumer products company's ``chief operations officer.''
The prosecutors said Reiners, with the aid of a female accomplice, talked the banks into believing that he was working on a secret Project Star to develop cigarette alternatives for Philip Morris. They issued loans.
Philip Morris said that there was no Project Star and that Reiners, who once worked in its information systems division, left Philip Morris four years ago.
At the Heritage Hills Shopping Center here, where the Video Forum occupies a corner spot, past pronouncements from Reiners that once seemed ordinary were suddenly being scrutinized for clues. John Cucchiarella, who runs a pizza shop there, remembered running into Reiners recently. ``Busy, busy, busy,'' Cucchiarella recalled Reiners telling him.
But busy with what?
``He never said what he did,'' said Luke Migano, owner of the hair salon next to Reiners' video shop.
He was rarely around the shop or, for that matter, around at all, some people said. He hired a manager and a group of local young people to work for him at the video store. In what looked like shock, they declined in unison to talk Thursday.
He did have good taste, people here remembered. At the flower shop, Posies, Donna Daros said Reiners would buy his wife nice arrangements and have them delivered to their house, where a housekeeper would answer the door. ``The more expensive flowers,'' Daros said. by CNB