Karl George Lievense was working in his suite at a quiet Naples business park in 2018 when he was gunned down. The 81-year-old’s murder hasn’t been solved.

The broker — who owed money to many investors and worked with associates who owed him money — was seeking investors for associates’ alternative investments, including two Michigan mobile home parks, a movie to be filmed in Collier County, a Louisiana chemical company and some Texas energy interests.

This month marks seven years since Lievense’s murder on April 9, 2018, and the Collier County Sheriff’s Office has assigned Investigator Ralph “Butch” DiFonzo, a retired FBI agent, to review the cold case. It’s hoping the business community, especially those in the former Castello Professional Center, may remember something or come forward now.

DiFonzo called the murder “overkill.”

“Being shot multiple times could suggest a person’s anger and it also could mean that they knew one another,” DiFonzo said of the theory an angry investor or associate shot Lievense. “… If he was in the business of making people mad, he sure as heck didn’t secure himself well.”

Lievense’s new, white Mercedes was parked outside his door at The Integrated Companies at 5129 Castello Drive, Unit 4. DiFonzo said there was no buzzer and the office wasn’t locked.

“The gene pool involved, based off the victim, would be kind of narrow — even though he did rip a lot of people off,” DiFonzo said. “…When somebody kills somebody, usually it affects the person killed, maybe the family members, but when somebody rips off millions of dollars, there could be all kinds of people affected by that.”

He likened the shooting to the Dec. 4 murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, who was shot in Manhattan by masked gunman Luigi Mangione. Mangione believed the nation’s largest insurer was withholding care to boost profits, causing patients to die.

“What happened there is you had people online praising the guy that did it because they felt that this person was evil,” DiFonzo said of Thompson. “My point is that this person that did this may feel that he represented a lot of different clients of [Lievense].”

The criminal profiler is studying the victimology of the crime, considering the investors, associates and the psychological effects of their experience. DiFonzo, a trained crisis negotiator, said something “fired somebody off” that day, prompting the shooter to go to Lievense’s office.

Most people would hire a lawyer to sue, call the police or FBI to check Lievense’s background, he said, adding, “Think about his state of mind at that time. He wasn’t processing that way.

“… Something lights their fire,” DiFonzo said, noting it usually takes 24 to 72 hours before somebody “goes off” on a crisis. “That window may have been even longer and then that match got struck that day and then there’s a reaction to it.”

Crime scene

Lievense was found by an investor and friend, George Ahearn, an energy consultant and retired Exxon chemist and executive. He called 911 at 2:25 p.m. to report finding Lievense dead in his office suite at the business park, now called Synergy Suites Fifty Fifty-One. It was a Monday, the start of his work week, just days shy of his 82nd birthday.

“Who kills an 82-year-old?” asked Jean Chandler, Lievense’s girlfriend of 28 years, who believes a business partner who’d stopped paying Lievense commissions killed him.

A sheriff’s report says Lievense’s head was resting on the bottom shelf of a bookcase and his feet lay under a desk. His glasses, which had been knocked off and were spattered with blood, lay next to his head, where “a lot of blood” was pooled on carpeting around his head and upper body. Crime-scene photos show blood spatter on the bookshelf, brochures, files and copy machine. “Multiple shell casings” surrounded his 6-foot, 210-pound body, but there was no sign of a gun.

Citing the active cold-case investigation, DiFonzo declined to specify the number of bullet casings or the type of gun involved. ​However, crime scene photos show the casings, marked with a “C,” appear to be CCI Stinger .22-caliber LR, 32-grain, copper-plated hollow point bullets, according to a local firearms instructor.

They’re used by “varmint hunters” and small-game enthusiasts who “require precision and performance,” according to manufacturer information, which says the rimfire ammunition can be used with rifles or pistols. “Its copper-plated, hollow-point design ensures the bullet expands upon impact, maximizing damage and reducing the likelihood of over-penetration. This makes it a prime choice … where quick, humane kills are desired.”

Ahearn told detectives he spoke to Lievense at about 11:30 a.m., when they discussed a business article Ahearn said he’d drop off after his eye-doctor appointment. The sheriff’s report says Ahearn entered the office suite at about 2:20 p.m., yelled his usual greeting, “Hey, boss,” but heard no reply, so he looked into the office where Lievense usually sat and didn’t see him. When he looked to the right, he saw him lying in the adjacent office.

In an interview with The Naples Press, Ahearn said blood was coming from Lievense’s ear and chest. Ahearn ran to his car and immediately called 911.

“I thought it was murder,” Ahearn said, speculating Lievense saw the gun and fled. “He probably ran into that office and fell …That front door was always open. It was all glass and you could see outside. He must have known this guy was coming.”

DiFonzo said people in the building heard Lievense speaking loudly and aggressively and cursing on the phone at about 11 a.m., saying that person owed him money, demanding payment and threatening to sue. But no one heard gunshots.

“There’s somebody else who knows something out there,” DiFonzo said, adding the perpetrator could be in jail or dead, making a tipster more likely to come forward.

Differing theories

Friends, investors and business associates have varying theories, from an angry investor who wanted his interest payment or full reimbursement, to a business associate hushing Lievense up after he demanded payment, to an inventor angry at Lievense for telling investors that an invention didn’t work, harming the deal.

Many investors now believe the investments were Ponzi schemes in which newer investments are used to pay earlier investors.

“It’s like a chain,” DiFonzo said. “He connected with one person, who connected with another person, who connected with another person … I’m not saying it was a Ponzi scheme, but it seems like it was.”

And Lievense was in a tough spot because at least one business associate had stopped paying him a 10% commission and other payments – so he was unable to pay investors’ interest payments on time.

Crime scene photos of his desk show scribbled notes, articles, business cards, names of business associates and investors. He was analyzing risks of deals, “small offerings” and break-even points to reap $1 million to $3 million, and what appear to be April payout dates, each linked to a name. One business card belonged to a former Ohio broker with a history of fraud at the time. By 2020, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority permanently suspended him after he was criminally prosecuted for selling unregistered securities in Florida and Ohio.

A Louisiana chemical company CEO that Lievense was working with didn’t return a call seeking comment, nor did several other investors and associates.

One local business associate, Esteban “Steve” Ramirez, who was seeking investors for mobile home parks, said he was “a small part” of Lievense’s dealings. He believes a Texas man was the shooter because he was upset Lievense told investors his invention didn’t work as intended.

Filmmaker Curry Walls, who met Ahearn at the county’s Naples Accelerator, where Ahearn was board chairman, said Ahearn introduced him to Lievense, who said he’d line up investors for a movie he planned to shoot in Naples. There were many meetings at Lievense’s office, but no investors.

“He conned me and George,” Walls said. “He conned us into thinking he was doing something.

“It must have been somebody who knew him who probably was there trying to get his money and said, ‘Well, you got the money yet? You’ve had enough time. Bang, you’re dead,’” Walls said. “People like that don’t have a conscience.”

Of the shooting, Walls said, “The only thing that makes any sense is that he was a scammer, a flim-flam man, and some people were bad people. He shouldn’t have messed with them — and they let him know it.”

At the time, Lievense was behind paying Ahearn and others interest on promissory notes, some of which ranged from $10,000 to $300,000. Ahearn had signed four notes totaling $102,500 with Ramirez and had only received $1,000 in interest. Court documents show Ramirez needed investments to purchase mobile homes for a Flint, Michigan, mobile home park, which he planned to upgrade and expand, then sell or refinance it to repay investors.

“The reason he was killed was because he was owed money by the guy who did it,” Ahearn said of his belief a business associate was the shooter.

Chandler, Lievense’s girlfriend, also pointed the finger at that business associate, saying he was supposed to pay Lievense a 10% commission for each investor but stopped paying Lievense to pay his daughter’s college tuition. And, she noted, he drove a vehicle that matched what a witness saw by the building during that time frame.

“He was a crook,” Chandler said. “He has a history that was not very good.”

As a result, Lievense was unable to pay investors’ interest payments on time. “He owed me money, he owed everybody money because he didn’t get paid,” Chandler said.

Friends, investors and associates describe Lievense as “extremely bright,” kind, an easygoing, gentle, honest man who never raised his voice. He loved to golf, take twice-yearly cruises with Chandler and take her out to dinner.

“I actually spoke to him the day before he passed away,” said Ramirez, who often met with Lievense in his conference room. “I never met anyone who was upset with Karl. He was always in a good mood and never mentioned any disputes … I’m very surprised it was never solved since it happened in the middle of the day.”

He maintained investors weren’t angry until after the murder, and questioned why no one heard gunshots, yet heard Lievense arguing on the phone. “I shoot guns. Those little guns are always extremely loud,” he added.

Lievense disciplined in past

Many investors were introduced to Lievense through friends they trusted. If anyone had checked his background, they’d have learned he’d taken his first broker exam in 1970 and a state securities law exam in 1979, according to FINRA, which regulates broker-dealers nationwide, protects investors and ensures market integrity.

FINRA records show that in 1979, Lievense got into trouble with the Securities and Exchange Commission. By 1984, when the SEC issued a permanent injunction barring him from offering and selling unregistered securities, he’d been disciplined five times at investment firms in Illinois, Indiana, Michigan and Texas.

He also was cited for unlawful and unethical business practices, failure to record transactions and omission of material facts. His dealings resulted in cease-and-desist orders, suspensions, censures, $1,000 fines and an order to return a $40,000 commission. The injunction noted his “lack of knowledge of the securities business.”

By 2004, when he was working for a Miami firm, he’d been employed by six securities and financial planning companies, in addition to opening Capital Funding Solutions in Naples in 1997. To broker deals, state Sunbiz records show, he set up 22 Florida limited liability companies, including the business where he died.

“I can’t imagine anybody legit having anything to do with him,” said Ahearn’s attorney, Christopher Mast.

If anyone had checked Ramirez, they’d have found nine lawsuits as of 2015, many involving loans and failure to pay people promissory notes after borrowing money, in addition to two evictions, a foreclosure and IRS tax liens against him and his wife and business partner, Andrea, totaling more than $88,000; $7,052 was paid off in 2023.

One woman who sued in 2015 settled for $47,500 and was paid in 2017. Ahearn and investor George Spiska, who also recouped his $25,000 investment with interest, sued Ramirez and his companies after Lievense’s death.

Ramirez blamed the earlier lawsuits on the 2008 economic downturn, and said lawsuits filed after Lievense’s death were due to the pandemic, which affected the mobile-home park deals.

Ahearn also filed a complaint with the state attorney’s financial crimes investigator, prompting the Florida Office of Financial Regulation to investigate Ramirez, Green Gin LLC and Myrtle Grove MHA LLC; no charges were filed.

“He was way behind on interest payments,” Ahearn said of Ramirez. “He was under pressure and that’s why he settled with me.”

Mast said Ramirez was borrowing money “all over.”

“He left behind a litany of deadbeat, unpaid promissory notes, mortgages and everything else all over the country,” Mast said. “He conned a bunch of people out of California to loan him money and all sorts of people loaned him money. It was bizarre. I couldn’t figure out why people that were ostensibly sophisticated businesspeople were loaning him money.”

One investor traveled to the mobile home park in 2018 and discovered it hadn’t been upgraded or expanded. Court records show a California company foreclosed on Ramirez’s Green Gin after it failed to make mortgage payments and, last December, it was demolished by Flint Township, which had condemned it and evicted tenants and squatters, branding it a public nuisance — the more than 30-year-old trailers unfit for habitation due to suspicious fires, neglect and no water hookups.

Meanwhile, DiFonzo will continue investigating, he said, adding, “I’m just trying to take one person at a time and then eliminate them.”

Local businessman Tim Dunnigan didn’t meet Lievense but invested $300,000 in Myrtle Grove through Ramirez. He hopes his investment on another of Ramirez’s mobile-home park deals pays off. His loss, so far, is around $1 million, including unpaid interest, he said, and now he’s conducting his own investigation and “living on hope.”

“I’ve been paying almost $2,000 a month interest on it, waiting for this deal to go down,” Dunnigan said. “So I’m in this pretty deep.”

If you have a tip about Lievense’s murder, call the Sheriff’s Office at 239.252.9300 or provide an anonymous tip through Southwest Florida Crime Stoppers, which is offering a $3,000 reward, with an additional $5,000 from the Florida Sheriffs Association. Call 1.800.780.TIPS (8477).