Rock mining wasn't so kind to all involved by Palm

Rock mining wasn't so kind to all involved

By Robert P. King, Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
Monday, June 14, 2004

Fifteen years ago, Jim Comyns found something remarkable amid sugar cane
fields west of Lion Country Safari: Rocks the size of basketballs.

The odd part wasn't the rocks' size. It was their weight -- far heavier than
the relatively fluffy stuff you'd normally find in Palm Beach County. "I
couldn't move it, it was so dense," the Wellington mining executive later
testified in court.

The rock was strong enough to be used for road construction, rivaling that
from the big quarries near Miami. Studies would estimate 100 million tons of
the stuff lay north of 20-Mile Bend.

It was a potential gold mine -- but not for Comyns. Now 73, he's serving two
years in federal prison for trying to evade the IRS while mining the rock.

The criminal case followed more than a half-dozen lawsuits that sprouted in
the late 1990s as part of an ugly feud between Comyns and his former
financial backer, Boca Raton investor Sam Klein.

Comyns and his wife, Carol, accused Klein and his partners of cheating them
out of their share of the profits. The Comynses also leveled unsuccessful
accusations of bribery, burglary, blackmail and wiretapping.

"Jim and Carol have gotten virtually nothing while many others have become
extraordinarily wealthy at their expense," said one of their attorneys, Jack
Scarola.

In turn, Klein complained that rock was vanishing from the quarry under
Comyns' management. He testified that the mine also was losing money while
producing a poor-quality, water-laden rock that drew complaints from
customers.

"The man stole hundreds of thousands of dollars and then turned around and
claimed I hurt him," Klein said in a recent interview.

Comyns had legal trouble before, including a guilty plea to a 1979 forgery
case in New York state.

Comyns found the rock in November 1989 on roughly 3,000 acres of farmland
owned by subsidiaries of Prudential Insurance Co. He and his wife leased the
land to mine it but soon ran into financial trouble, according to court
papers.

So in 1992, Klein said, he received a call from a lawyer who knew Comyns,
asking whether Klein could help.

Klein said he declined to lend any money. Instead, he bought the land from
Prudential for $14 million, according to county property records.

With his son, Michael, and longtime friend Carl Glickman, a former director
of the Wall Street firm Bear Stearns, Klein formed the mining company GKK
Corp. Then GKK hired Jim Comyns to run the mine.

Sam Klein also lent Jim Comyns $634,000 and co-signed a loan for the
couple's $955,000 home in Wellington -- which Comyns would later describe as
" the house you made me buy." Bickering soon soured the friendship.

By 1997, Klein turned management over to Enrique Tomeu.

Tomeu paid $4 million for a fourth of the quarry, including $3 million he
borrowed with collateral from Klein. The other new investor was W.T. "Ted"
Phillips, chief executive officer of the Tennessee earthmoving company
Phillips and Jordan.

The mining business would now be known as Palm Beach Aggregates.

Upset at being locked out, the Comynses filed a federal racketeering suit
against the Kleins, Tomeu and others. U.S. District Judge Kenneth Ryskamp
dismissed it, saying he saw no evidence of racketeering.

But another judge saw the matter differently. In a separate case, Palm Beach
County Circuit Judge Jorge Labarga ruled that Klein had used "questionable"
tactics to keep the Comynses from buying the mine themselves. Labarga
refused to force Jim Comyns to repay Klein's $634,000.

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