Originally published: January 9, 2011 1:42 PM

http://www.newsday.com/news/region-state/former-nj-penny-stock-kingpin-to-be-freed-1.2597534

BELMAR, N.J. - (AP) — On a desk in a vacant Belmar storefront window sits a clue that one of the state's most infamous characters has resurfaced.

A caricature titled "Wheeling and Dealing" pictures a grinning Robert E. Brennan, the notorious penny stock kingpin of the 1980s and '90s who was accused of defrauding investors of hundreds of millions of dollars. He also led the government on a years-long cat-and-mouse game involving a gambling boat, a horse farm and millions in cash stashed offshore.

Brennan, whose nearly 10-year prison term for bankruptcy fraud and money laundering was set to end Sunday, is depicted sitting at a desk labeled with his name and prison number — 23444-050 — from the federal lockup in Fort Dix.

The nameplate reads: "Still here."

Brennan, now 66, was seen using the desk in the empty storefront at the shopping center along Route 71 in Belmar, according to people working at the center Thursday.

Brennan was assigned to a federal halfway house in Newark as his term wound down, according to prison officials. For about six months, Brennan had been working at RKE Athletic, which sells sports apparel and goods, said Ted Maciejewski, the store's owner.

Brennan's plans for his life after prison remain a mystery. He has declined an interview through prison officials and declined to meet a Record reporter at RKE Athletic on Thursday — his last day there. Attorneys who have represented him could not be reached.

Maciejewski said Brennan was spending time Thursday checking RKE's inventory of Little League uniforms — a stark contrast to the life portrayed in his well-known television commercial for First Jersey Securities, in which Brennan, standing in front of a helicopter, invited investors to "come grow with us."

Brennan was accused of running boiler room operations in which his associates would cold-call investors and sell investments with essentially worthless publicly traded companies with stock prices of maybe a dollar.

Brennan's firms — First Jersey in the 1980s, then Hibbard Brown and L.C. Wegard through the '90s — were accused of selling the stocks, inflating the price and then selling shares before the market realized their true values.

It was a classic "pump and dump" scheme, said Jeffrey Herrmann, a Saddle Brook attorney who helped bring a class-action suit against Brennan and won a $55 million judgment on behalf of former investors. (Less than half of that has been recovered, Herrmann said.)

"It was a long and fascinating case," said Herrmann, who described the gregarious Brennan as "one of New Jersey's more celebrated swindlers."

At his peak, Brennan operated two racetracks and owned the cleverly named Due Process Stables horse farm in Colts Neck. He donated millions to Seton Hall University and St. Benedict's Preparatory School, both of which he attended. Seton Hall named its recreation center after him but later removed his name.

In 1995, the Securities and Exchange Commission won a $75 million judgment against Brennan (the SEC has collected $29 million and intends to collect the rest, an agency spokesman said).

The same year, the state Bureau of Securities sued Brennan in what officials then described as New Jersey's largest securities fraud case ever. Brennan also filed for bankruptcy.

During the protracted bankruptcy, authorities accused him of hiding his assets from creditors by moving tens of millions into offshore accounts in such places as Gibraltar. In 2000, a federal grand jury indicted Brennan and the next year, a jury convicted him of bankruptcy fraud and money laundering.

Much of Brennan's funds were seized, as was a gambling boat in Florida called the Palm Beach Princess. But some of Brennan's overseas funds were thought to have been transferred to the Caribbean.

Authorities believed about $5 million was moved to an account on the island of Nevis, according to a government attorney who was involved in the case.

The state Attorney General's Office last week filed a motion to reopen Brennan's bankruptcy. The state's motion cites the Caribbean trust and said its assets could be distributed to Brennan's investors. A hearing is scheduled in federal court in Trenton for Jan. 31.

The state won a $45 million judgment against Brennan, but only about $5 million has been paid, said Jeff Lamm, a spokesman for the Attorney General's Office.

"If we can find assets, Lamm said, "we intend to use those assets towards satisfying the judgment and distributing restitution."