Ex-penny stock pitchman working at club he once owned

Michael L. Diamond, Asbury (NJ) Park Press

ASBURY PARK, N.J. — Less than three years after he was released from prison, Robert E. Brennan found himself on familiar ground: working at Due Process Golf and Horse Stables in Colts Neck and being named as a defendant in a lawsuit.

Brennan, who gained fame in the 1980s starring in his company’s commercials as a helicopter-flying, penny stock financier, was hired as general manager of Due Process, the private club that he built and then lost when his assets were sold to pay creditors, according to the lawsuit filed in Superior Court in Monmouth County.

The lawsuit was filed last spring by Nunzio Innucci Jr., a member who said Brennan’s employment prevented him from entertaining business clients at the club. He was asking that his $350,000 deposit be returned.

It provided a hint into the life — post-incarceration — of Brennan, a high-profile businessman and philanthropist who has avoided the spotlight since his prison term ended in January 2011. He had been managing the operations of Due Process since November 2012, the lawsuit said.

Brennan, who was dogged by regulators and law enforcement for much of his career, built the ironically named country club in 1992 for upward of $40 million — only to have it taken over by the U.S. Bankruptcy Court and auctioned to help pay off creditors when he was in prison.

The idea that Brennan could somehow make his way back to that club came as a surprise to Donald Conway, the trustee of Brennan’s bankruptcy case, who said it never occurred to him to ask the new owners if Brennan had a spot waiting for him after he was released.

“It would be incomprehensible to me,” Conway said. “I had no thoughts of that whatsoever.”

Brennan, now 69, couldn’t be reached for comment. Mitchell Jacobs, a Matawan lawyer who represented the group named in the lawsuit, didn’t return telephone calls.

In an answer to the complaint, filed in September, Jacobs denied that Brennan was employed as general manager in 2012.

Brennan became a household name in the 1980s through First Jersey Securities Inc., selling stock in little-known companies that he said were set to grow. It helped him build a fortune, travel the world and give generously to his favorite causes, including Seton Hall University in South Orange, N.J., and Jersey Shore University Medical Center in Neptune, where the Brennan Pavilion is named after him.

Counted among his assets was Due Process, a 7,137-yard, par 72 golf course designed by former U.S. Open champion Johnny Miller. It was so exclusive that only 111 men claimed membership in 2004. By comparison, Augusta National in Georgia, the site of the Masters, has about 300 members.

Brennan’s empire began to unravel in 1995, when a federal judge fined him $75 million for defrauding investors. Shortly after, he filed for bankruptcy. He was arrested in 2000 for failing to disclose all of his assets on his bankruptcy petition. He was found guilty a year later of bankruptcy fraud, money laundering and obstructing justice and sentenced to nine years in prison.

Rest is here.

For more commentary and analysis of Robert E. Brennan on this site (I researched Brennan, First Jersey, and penny stock fraud extensively in the 1990s and 2000s), please see here, here, and here.