CHICAGO (AP) -- Slobodan Lunic found the good life in America -- custom-made suits, a Porsche and a Mercedes-Benz in the garage and a glistening 40-foot Sea Ray yacht named "Never Enough."
The 6-foot-4-inch executive was the image of life in the fast lane, piloting one of his company's planes or hitting the town with a 27-year-old model on his arm while his wife and kids stayed home.These days, it's anyone's guess what happened to the money that bankrolled Lunic's lavish existence. The 41-year-old Serbian disappeared June 19, two days before he was to go on trial charged with swindling 2,000 investors of more than $37 million. The move cost his own mother her two homes, which were put up as legal security.
"Slobodan Lunic has skipped the country -- that's what I think," said attorney Steven Gustafson, who claims one of his clients went broke after paying $700,000 for bogus letters of credit from Lunic.
Authorities said $30 million is still missing, and federal prosecutor Marsha McClellan said some of the money investors paid to Lunic businesses was traced to Switzerland.
The FBI has alerted Interpol in hopes that Lunic might slip up as he tries to cross an international frontier.
Only a year ago, Lunic was anything but the target of a manhunt.
From a 22nd-floor suite in the AT&T Corporate Center in Chicago, "Dan" Lunic and partner Scott Holmberg invited investors to become do-it-yourself telecommunications tycoons. Thousands bought -- or thought they had bought -- pay telephones from the two men.
The price tag was up to $7,000 for each telephone -- an investment the brochures apparently claimed was all but guaranteed to pay 12 percent annually, authorities said.
Investors also were lured with the promise of a hefty tax break under the Americans with Disabilities Act for owning "disabled-access telephones."
Prosecutors claim it was nothing more than a Ponzi scheme: money pumped in by new investors was used to pay "profits" to other investors. There were no profits, prosecutors said: The 1,400 phones bought in Florida, Illinois and Wisconsin were operating at a loss.
Meanwhile, the two entrepreneurs siphoned off cash for luxuries ranging from Harley-Davidson motorcycles to a $100,000 account at Caesar's Palace, FBI agents testified.
Holmberg, 34, was arrested Sept. 15, trying to buy phony passports from an undercover FBI agent. He pleaded guilty to racketeering conspiracy and wire fraud charges and faces a sentence of five years in prison.
When Lunic was arrested in October, he insisted that he was innocent and blamed Holmberg for everything. Unimpressed, prosecutors prepared their case.
Then Lunic's 66-year-old mother pleaded with the judge to release her son on bond. Asked if she would put up her home as security for the bond, Spomenka Lunic said, "I would sign my life for him."
Lunic was jailed anyway. But on Jan. 21, U.S. District Judge Harry Leinenweber ordered him released provided that his mother post her two homes in suburban Berwyn as security for a $500,000 bond.
Prosecutors warned that Lunic might flee to his native Serbia, which has no extradition treaty with the United States. The judge ordered Lunic to wear an electronic home-monitoring bracelet.
Late on June 19, federal monitors detected tampering with the ankle bracelet. Police and FBI agents raced to the four-bedroom suburban Wheaton home where Lunic lived with his wife and two children.
The bracelet was still there, but Lunic was gone.
Late last month, with Lunic still missing, a judge gave federal prosecutors permission to go ahead and confiscate the two houses put up by Lunic's mother. She must now move.
"I've lost everything," she wailed to the judge. "I've lost my son."