The Palm Beach Post from West Palm Beach, Florida • Page 9

THE PALM BEACH POST SUNDAY, MAY 22, 1994 9A His businesses not for timid investors, Greyling says Jfll' I41IMJ.IJIIJMI I II 1 Ml can companies. It is America's great salesmen and motivators who inspire him, Greyling said. He embraces, and often speaks of, the principles of Norman Vincent Peale's The Power of Positive Thinking. That may be one of the reasons things have not always gone as well as he had hoped in the New World. "I'm far too easygoing, far too GREYLING From 1A led to a lawsuit.

Iran-Contra middleman Adnan Khashoggi and Master of the Deal Donald Trump are among those whose names have become linked with his. i Palm Beach is a long way from Greyling's beginnings in a steel rtiill town in South Africa. His Mansion, the Rolls-Royce he 1 hi 1 f-' ninfilfifflMfTiln Leslie Greyling doesn't register properties in his name. His companies buy them, including 710 S. Ocean in Palm Beach.

trusting, always believing that everybody's going to do the right thing," Greyling said. "I'm constantly overpaying or paying a record price or a record penalty for being so trusting." No apologies Leslie Greyling had a party in his mansion May 14 for his 42nd qnves, his vorld travels jgive him the air af wealthy sophistication. He speaks in the $rong, cultured language of an international salesman. But scratch and Naturalization Service requires a different kind of visa for a foreigner to conduct business in the United States, Greyling launched into his new ventures with vigor, trading stock and running a long list of businesses. Those included a retail company in Richmond, restaurants in Coral Springs, travel companies, loan services and even an auto auction company.

Greyling was arrested in 1988 after a Boca Raton rent dispute revealed an Ohio warrant for a felony bad-check charge. Landlord Maliq Petrela says Greyling stayed in his house eight months but only paid the initial deposits. "He's a con man," Petrela said. "All I got was $2,000, and he took furniture when he left." Greyling remembers a different story, one in which Petrela cashed a post-dated check which bounced and he was being forced out despite a six-month lease. "He was a very nasty man, and it was the worst experience I ever had with a landlord in my life," Greyling said.

Greyling said that the arrest was a mistake and that the matter was dropped after local authorities realized the Ohio complaint had been cleared up years before. Again, Greyling says he had written a post-dated check, this time for about $10,000 for a car lease. The lease ended early, but the company tried to cash the check anyway, he said. By the time he ran afoul of the SEC in 1991, he had lived and worked in the United States for six years, and his visitor's visa had expired. Immigration records recently indicated Greyling is here on an expired visa, but Greyling said last week that he had been granted two new visas one in December 1993 and one that legally allows him to run his numerous Ameri Where does all the stock come from? The bulk of it is issued from the NASDAQ-traded company he heads, Members Service Corp.

Since Greyling began working with the company in August, Members Service has gone from having 6.4 million shares on the market worth between $33 and $72 each, to having 65.8 million shares, worth 3 cents to 6 cents each, according to a lawsuit filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court in New York. Greyling in recent months has announced two "reverse stock splits" designed to reduce the number of shares on the market, increasing the price per share. In essence, Members Service is replacing every 2,000 shares that were on the market with one share. The New York lawsuit alleges Greyling and his officers manipulated Members Service stock for their personal benefit.

The company repeatedly issued news releases saying deals were in the works or final, only to have the transactions fall through after a flurry of stock trading, the suit alleges. Asked about the allegations just before the filing, Greyling maintains these allegations are false. "I think that every time Members Service Corp. ever made a press release regarding a transaction, a transaction was concluded and Members Service had paid over a substantial amount of cash or stock in order to make the transaction," Greyling said. The company is in the midst of a Securities and Exchange Commission investigation that Greyling says is being settled.

While declining to discuss what the SEC is after, Greyling said it related to transactions from before he took over the company. This isn't Greyling's first brush with the SEC. In 1991, without admitting guilt, Greyling signed a settlement promising never to engage in fraudulent securities sales. He had been accused by the SEC of making false claims to brokers about a company called American British to pump up the stock price. Greyling said he wanted to fight the lawsuit, but the SEC threatened him with difficulties becoming an American citizen.

So he signed the settlement, he said. "It's just a fact of life if you're going to be in the securities business, you're going to have some kind of problem with the SEC for something," Greyling said. Humble beginnings Leslie Greyling married his high school sweetheart and had four children with her. He describes a large family four brothers, a sister and his parents, all still living in South Africa who get together across continents for such holidays as Christmas and Easter. He was born on May 14, 1952, and grew up in a small industrial town southwest of Johannesburg called Vanderbijl Park home to a steel mill but best-known as the scene of the bloody Sharpeville riots of 1960.

Greyling describes his father as a sometime opera singer. His mother was Dutch, a strict woman who believed in family values. Although his family wasn't wealthy, education and culture were stressed in the home. As an amateur athlete, Greyling says, he won local titles in gymnastics and participated in tennis, rugby and horseback riding. Greyling enjoyed history and languages, but his formal education stopped with high school.

In 1976 he served his mandatory one year with the South African Defense Force. After marrying, he went to work as a real estate agent and invested heavily in single family homes. Greyling says he soon had 11 offices and 400 sales associates the largest real estate brokerage in South Africa. He describes himself as the first South African to get involved in time shares and says he eventually paid a record price to move next door to Harry Oppenheimer, the nation's leading gold and diamond merchant. The two largest newspapers in Johannesburg said they could find no articles about Greyling.

In the early 1980s, Greyling said he tired of South Africa's deflating currency and the fact he was restricted from taking large sums of money out of the country. He officially came to America on a visitor's visa on Dec. 14, 1985. Although the Immigration birthday. His Palm Beach neighbors notice these things.

It's a small town. The neighbor who had Greyling investigated has passed the information which points out he has no property in his name and uses his companies to purchase homes to police, newspapers" and almost anyone who will He's suspicious. Greyling believes the smalltown atmosphere is probably the root of some of his problems: "Thej nature of Palm Beach being what it is, a small town, very affluent people, all the society creates that sort of situation." J. He's tired of people suing and complaining about deals gone bad. He makes no apology for being in a high-risk business and says that' investors who can't take the heat should put their money with blue-' chip companies.

"At the time they make the; investment, they say 'Yeah, I'm at' big boy, I'm wealthy, I'll take a' gamble, I'll roll the Grey-. ling said. 1 Sometimes they lose. Staff writer Erik Milstone and staff researcher Michelle Quigley contributed to this report. Your last week to carry off Elizabeth Arden eight great essentials that take Oie charming Greyling jeneer, and he cusses like a sailor, find him short of cash in a business deal, and he'll offer you a trade.

Jeweler sues over deal On Christmas Eve, Leslie Gj-eyling walked into the House of Kahn in Palm Beach just as it was closing. The staff was eager to head home to their families, but this client zeroed in on several of the store's premier pieces. By the time he left, he was carrying $128,000 in jewelry for his wife and friends, paid for in part with a promise to settle the balance the following week with stock in his company, Members Service Corp. Adele Kahn is still waiting. The stock transfer never happened, and she is suing to collect the $82,000 balance.

Greyling says he hasn't paid because the jewelry appraised for far less than the purchase price. Kahn defended the value of the jewelry and pointed out that she doesn't just hand out jewels to anyone who walks in off the street. Greyling had been renting office space from her. "He was introduced as a wealthy South African by (real estate agent) Robert Wyner, and tte 'Shiny Sheet (Palm Beach Daily News) said he just bought a $jS million house," Kahn said. lBut no public records verify that he bought the oceanfront mansion.

And the reason for that? "It's nbt in the form of a mortgage; it's ljke a stock transaction," said Qreyling, who wouldn't elaborate because of a confidentiality agreement with owner Brookshore Ltd. of New York. Stock is the preferred coin of Greyling's realm, and while it didn't work for the House of Kahn, it has worked well for some of his partners. He has a long record of including friends and associates in deals, making some officers of his Various companies or giving them lucrative consulting contracts paid in cash and stock. Many companies, deals At any one time, Greyling has about 10 companies active, although in Florida alone, he has Seated about 40 companies, most which are active for a few months or a year, until the deal is done.

Among the deals involving large amounts of stock: Greyling's failed attempt to Buy the Chesterfield Hotel in Palm pleach. T-H Court a New York partnership that owns the hotel, sued Greyling for $250,000 and 7.3 million shares of Members Service stock after the deal fell through. Greyling attracted great interest after he floated Trump's name as a possible partner, but Trump said he wasn't interested. In November, Greyling sold Trump a house in Palm Beach to Trump's Mar-a-Lago mansion. In January, Members Service fold Trump its option on a Missou-rfriverboat gambling site.

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of Houston and Hallmark Trading Co. Ltd. Both companies sued, saying Greyling owes them $2.88 million and $575,000, respectively, and that they didn't receive all the stock they were promised. Though Greyling says the suit has been settled, Lone Star recently hired a credit collection agency to go after him. The hiring of Khashoggi, the notorious Saudi Arabian arms dealer identified as a middleman in the Iran-Contra scandal, as a consultant.

Khashoggi's agreement $rjth Members Service includes at feast 400,000 shares of stock and a $50,000 expense account. As part the deal, Khashoggi will use his plentiful Middle East contacts to try to get cash and partners for Members Service. But most important, Greyling says, is Khashoggi's role in helping his most ambitious project, tportsworld 2000, a theme park wants to build on 405 acres Cgar Disney World. It was Greyling said, who came pp with the idea of bringing in children from disputing Middle Eastern countries to play on teams together on neutral territory. gift wUh purchase 1 THE FLORIDA STORE".