Mr. Bynoe.

Brooklyn is getting a hockey team, you may have heard, which may be good or bad for the borough, but is almost definitely a good thing for the New York Islanders franchise, which will escape the 40-year-old Nassau Coliseum.

"Once they're in the Barclays Center, the asset is going to be much more valuable," said Peter Bynoe, chief operating officer at Loop Capital Markets and a former owner of the Denver Nuggets, at a panel on sports mergers and acquisitions at the Bloomberg Dealmakers Summit at the Pershing Square Signature Center today. Islanders owner Charles Wang, who attended Brooklyn Technical High School in Fort Greene, said yesterday he would move the team to the Barclays Center in time for the 2015 season, after Nassau County voters rejected a $400 million bond proposal that would have refurbished the Islanders' home arena.

So how much is the Islanders' move worth to the team? Mr. Bynoe wouldn't guess when we caught up to him after the panel, but said moving out of the Coliseum and into a new arena gave the franchise an opportunity for a fresh start.

What about the team's plan to keep the Islanders nickname? After all, the city's most populous borough lays at the western end of Long Island, but we don't know many Brooklynites who'd cop to that distinction.

"I'm not a New Yorker," Mr. Rynoe told us, "so I'm going to stay out of that."

Those towers? Still on except for one. (SHoP Architects)

Some good news for Bruce Ratner today, but probably not for the neighborhood or the folks who want to move into the developer's promised apartment towers at Atlantic Yards. The Islanders will mean more crowds roaming the streets of Prospect Heights and Fort Greene before and after games, and more revenue for the Barclays Center, but this will not help speed up construction of the long-delayed apartments, according to Mr. Ratner.

At a press conference inside the Barclays Center's trademark Geico Atrium this afternoon, an NPR sports reporter (rather than all the assembled metro hacks like us) was the only one to ask Mr. Ratner about the impact of the deal on the rest of Atlantic Yards, and what Mayor Bloomberg thought of the project's development, or lack thereof.

"This deal doesn't affect the housing, and I announced at our last press conference opening this place up that on December 18th we will have the groundbreaking for our first building, which is 50 percent affordable," is all Mr. Ratner would say.

The mayor then stepped up to the mic and let 'er rip. "Of course we want to get things done quicker, but given all of the angst that Bruce had to go through, the fact that the housing is a little behind schedule isn't the least bit surprising," Mayor Bloomberg said.

He then proceed to place the blame on everyone but Mr. Ratner, most notably with the locals who sued Forest City to prevent the seizure of their homes. "Those people that tried to stop the project or delay the project are the ones that really caused all of that," Mayor Bloomberg said. "The marketplace also wasn't terribly helpful."

A post on Norman Oder's Atlantic Yards Report reminds us, with this handy graphic, that at the outset of the project not only was the arena due to have opened three years ago but also six of the 13 apartment towers would also be finished. As recently as fall of 2010 Mr. Ratner was promising construction of the residential buildings to have commenced by some time last year. He is finally dead set on this year, but it seems as though he has arrived at that point of his own choosing, no one else's.

Mayor Bloomberg believes that is just fine. "There's a lot of good indicators that say that Bruce will be able to build and get it done reasonably expeditiously," he said. "Would it have been nice if it was done earlier, sure? But the real world is what it is."

After the press conference, reporters tried to ask Mr. Ratner if he had made a final decision on whether the first apartment building would be built modular or not. "We're not talking modular today," he responded curtly. Maybe that is because he still does not have financing for the tower, as Mr. Oder reported.

Welcome to the real world, indeed.

Steven Gluckstern, a politically active investment banker and former owner of the New York Islanders has joined Barack Obama's national finance organization.

"People like me have to be looking well into six figures," Gluckstern just told me in a telephone interview. "There is no question in my mind there will be people who will emerge who will raise well over a million dollars, maybe I will be one of those people."

Gluckstern is best known in Democratic circles for having chaired the Democracy Alliance, a group formed in 2004 with the goal of funding progressive think tanks and advocacy groups. About 100 donors have joined the alliance, each having pledged to contribute a million dollars over a five-year period.

Gluckstern said that while he thought highly of the entire Democratic field, he chose Obama because "he has a way about him. There is a natural sense of leadership. I believe leadership comes from the nature of the person who provides it. It's not necessarily something you learn."

As for the challenge of raising money from Democrats in Hillary's home region, Gluckstern said he welcomed the challenge.

"Given that this is her home town, there are a lot of people who are there and who are committed to her. But I have a lot of faith in people, that they will make their own judgments, and I welcome the challenge. I think it is clear someone like Senator Obama will do better in Chicago than he will in New York. People like to support people where they are from. It doesn't discourage me at all to think of New York. I think New York is going to be an important place for the Senator."

--Jason Horowitz

And on Oct. 24, as Mets pitcher Rick Reed opened Shea Stadium's first World Series game since 1986, Fred Wilpon and Nelson Doubleday sat on opposite sides of the infield, each presiding from his own plexiglassed owner's box.

About the only thing the Mets co-owners share these days, it seems, is their barely concealed distaste for one another. Since they became equal partners in 1986-in a hostile takeover of sorts by Mr. Wilpon-the two men have been engaged in an on-again, off-again struggle for power over the team, dividing the front office into warring camps and fighting proxy battles over hirings, firings and trades.

The stakes in their feud are high, and go beyond the impending free agency of several stars. After the Subway Series looms the question of where the Mets will play their future seasons: in the concrete horseshoe of Shea, or in a $500 million reincarnation of Ebbets Field, to be built adjacent to the current stadium.

Mr. Doubleday, 66, has been mostly out of the picture since the mid-1990's, as Mr. Wilpon, 63, built a pennant-contender. He returned to Shea in mid-summer, saying that he had been gravely ill but after a liver transplant had experienced a "100-percent recovery." Then, in an interview with the Associated Press in late September, Mr. Doubleday tossed a bomb. "I don't see a great deal of taxpayer money to build the New York Mets a new stadium," he said, suggesting that for "one-tenth of the money or one-hundredth of the money," Shea Stadium could simply be renovated. "I kind of like this place," he said of a ballpark that has few other admirers.

His comments were read by many as a direct rebuke of Mr. Wilpon, a real estate developer who has been engaged in painstaking negotiations with Mayor Rudolph Giuliani over public financing for the new stadium. "Nelson Doubleday made those statements much to the surprise of the city and Wilpon," said one person who spoke to the Mets front office immediately afterwards. Mr. Wilpon's terse reply to the AP story was: "If that's what he said, that's what he said."

Whether by accident or design, the immediate effect of Mr. Doubleday's comments was to jump-start the Mets' negotiations with the city. Mr. Wilpon and his son Jeff were seen leaving meetings in City Hall. Mr. Giuliani announced that the city would pay for a third of the stadium, while the state would pick up another third.

By the time the Mets beat the St. Louis Cardinals in the National League Championship Series, Mr. Wilpon was giddy enough to say a stadium deal could be announced during the World Series. He quickly backed off that prediction, but Mr. Giuliani says he hopes to resume negotiations with the team soon.

Now, amid the flashbulbs and Subway Series hoopla, the September flare-up between Messrs. Doubleday and Wilpon is mostly forgotten. When the Mets won the pennant, it was Mr. Doubleday, wearing thick glasses and his trademark sweater around his neck, who accepted the trophy. Mr. Wilpon bounded onto the television screen a few moments later, his blue Oxford shirt soaked with champagne. The two men did not exchange words.

Mr. Wilpon's allies maintained that the stadium controversy was just a misunderstanding. Mr. Doubleday, they say, simply did not know the status of Mr. Wilpon's negotiations. That may be true, but Mr. Doubleday apparently hasn't changed his mind. "I'm not particularly interested in seeing a whole lot of taxpayer money going into a New York Mets fancy-dancy stadium," Mr. Doubleday told The Observer while watching batting practice before Game 3 on Oct. 24. "We could [renovate Shea Stadium] over three years, section by section. This is a pretty nice place to play ball."

Mr. Wilpon, through Jeff Wilpon, declined comment on the stadium talks.

Numerous individuals contacted for this story maintained that Mr. Doubleday's reluctance to endorse Mr. Wilpon's stadium plan had to be understood against the history of antagonism between the two men. None of the individuals would speak for attribution.

When asked whether the two men disagreed on matters other than the stadium, one source chuckled:

"Yeah, every day."

"It's not a close personal relationship," said another person who knows both men well, "but that's been true for years and years. They've always been able to work together. In most things related to baseball, Doubleday has deferred to Wilpon over the years." The same would hold true for the stadium, he predicted.

"These aren't two people that were business partners and had a long social relationship prior to their becoming the owners of the Mets," said Marc Ganis, president of Sportscorp, a Chicago-based sports-facility consulting firm. "The two are very, very different. One is a hard-nosed long-term real estate developer. The other has done well with family business. It's a very different approach."

Wilpon's Rise to Power

In fact, the relationship between the two has changed dramatically over the 20 years since the two men bought the team for a then-record $21.1 million, with Mr. Wilpon rising from a minority partner to equal partner and then to controlling partner. When the team went on the market in 1980, Mr. Wilpon was a successful real estate developer, but he hardly had the kind of wealth necessary to buy a team. He approached his friend John Pickett, then the owner of the New York Islanders, about mounting a bid. Mr. Pickett declined, but he did match him with another member of the Long Island aristocracy: Mr. Doubleday.

In the beginning, Doubleday Publishing owned 95 percent of the team. Mr. Doubleday gained a reputation as a hands-off owner who let general manager Frank Cashen make all the baseball decisions. The strategy paid off in 1986, when a Mets team filled with young players cultivated by Mr. Cashen won the World Series. But around the same time, Mr. Wilpon was outmaneuvering Mr. Doubleday, parlaying his 5 percent stake into half-ownership. At the time, Mr. Doubleday was selling the publishing company that owned the Mets to the German firm Bertelsmann A.G. But Mr. Wilpon had a right of first refusal in the event of any sale of the team, and his lawyers made it clear he was ready to exercise it. In a settlement, the two men agreed to become equal partners, paying Bertelsmann $81 million for the team. It has been said that Mr. Doubleday never forgave Mr. Wilpon.

Others said, however, that the true shift in the balance of power between the two did not come until 1993. It was the dark days of the overpaid, underachieving Mets, who had become a baseball laughingstock. In August 1993, Mr. Wilpon addressed the team for the first time ever. The message was, essentially, shape up or ship out.

Then, in the spring of 1994, a book about the ouster of baseball commissioner Fay Vincent by a group of owners led by Bud Selig and Jerry Reinsdorf quoted Mr. Doubleday, a Vincent ally, telling league presidents Bobby Brown and Bill White: "It looks like the Jewboys finally got you." A former employee told Newsday that Mr. Doubleday had said similar things in his presence, but only "when he was drinking." Mr. Wilpon, who is Jewish, stood up for Mr. Doubleday, saying: "It's not like Nelson to talk that way."

After that, one person familiar with the team said, Mr. Doubleday disappeared from the scene and Mr. Wilpon took charge, with a more hands-on approach. He has installed loyal subordinates who have frequently come into conflict with executives loyal to Mr. Doubleday.

Last year, Mr. Doubleday was ready to sell 80 percent of the team to Cablevision for $400 million-a deal that could have shielded his children, who are uninvolved in the Mets' affairs, from huge estate taxes. But Mr. Wilpon scuttled the deal, out of a concern that, as a minority partner once again, there would be no assurance that he would still run the team. Jeff Wilpon, who is closely involved with the day-to-day planning for the new stadium, is said to be eager to take over the team one day.

The stadium is Mr. Wilpon's dream. Architecturally, it is an homage to the Ebbets Field of his youth, and Mr. Wilpon would like to leave the stadium to the city as his legacy.

"I think that Fred Wilpon, who I know fairly well, is a very astute and very knowledgeable businessman in the world of real estate, and I think he's trying to transfer that into the world of sports," said Robert Gutkowski, the former head of Madison Square Garden, now the chief executive of Magnum Sports and Entertainment.

The Subway Series may give him an opening. Yet Mr. Wilpon still has to win a few more victories: Mr. Giuliani is negotiating a harder financing bargain than the team-which envisions paying its share out of naming rights and other one-time windfalls-would like. And the Mets will probably have to wait for George Steinbrenner, who has been jealously watching the progress of their negotiations, to decide where he wants to locate the Yankees.

But Mr. Wilpon's hardest pitch may be the one he makes to his partner.

On the heels of a court-ordered audit of Douglas Elliman's books, which found more than $90 million in interest-free loans from the company to Howard Milstein's private ventures, Philip Milstein has asked a Delaware judge to strip his cousin of ownership of the businesses, placing them in the hands of a family trust.

The lawsuit marks a dramatic escalation of the family feud, which has paralyzed one of the city's richest families, with holdings worth a reported $5 billion. And along with recent filings in another case over the Milford Plaza, it gives the fullest answer yet to the questions that have lingered over the whole mess since it burst into public view last spring: What caused a long-standing division of power between the two sides of this powerful New York family, headed by brothers Paul and Seymour Milstein, to break down? And why now, with the family's investments more profitable than ever?

Philip Milstein, Seymour's son, says he has gone to war to keep Howard Milstein from doing to the rest of the family businesses what he did to Douglas Elliman. Philip Milstein says Howard Milstein has been attempting to liquidate pieces of the family assets he controls, freeing himself and his younger brother, Edward, to pursue their own business ventures. Howard Milstein sold Douglas Elliman last year for about $70 million, a substantial profit-but not with the permission of the company's stockholders, all family members, and not before he used the company as a piggy bank, Philip Milstein says. An audit "confirmed Philip Milstein's growing suspicion that the defendants had been engaged in systematic mismanagement, waste of corporate assets, self-dealing and appropriation of money belonging to the companies for their private ventures," according to a complaint filed in Delaware Chancery Court in July. A lengthy auditor's report, filed along with the lawsuit, purports to show that Howard Milstein raided the cash-rich business to finance, among other investments, his personal stake in the New York Islanders hockey franchise, his unsuccessful bids to buy the NFL's Cleveland Browns and Washington Redskins, and his purchase of a half-share of the Chicago commercial brokerage, Miglin-Beitler.

Howard Milstein subsequently renamed the Chicago brokerage Douglas Elliman-Beitler and expanded into New York, operating free of his family's control.

On paper, all the loans appear to have been paid back, though the auditors said Douglas Elliman's bookkeeping was so sloppy that it was impossible to know for sure. Philip Milstein is not claiming that any money was stolen. But he has now turned his attention to the Milford Plaza Hotel, where he expects auditors to find similar "misconduct," according to an affidavit filed in New York State Supreme Court in Manhattan.

"None of the allegations are true," said James Quinn, an attorney for Howard Milstein. Mr. Quinn has yet to file an answer to Philip Milstein's complaint and said he had no further comment. In response to previous suits, Howard Milstein has pointed to the flush balance sheets of the companies he controls, and has contended that Seymour and Philip Milstein have thwarted his efforts to sell, develop or otherwise profitably dispose of family assets.

The lawsuits, he suggests, are part of an effort to smear him and gain leverage in an overall dispute over the control of family assets, including a property on 42nd Street at Eighth Avenue, and Emigrant Savings Bank, which Philip Milstein heads. Howard Milstein and his father, Paul, are suing to have him removed for alleged mismanagement.

Paul and Seymour Milstein have been meeting periodically to work out a "global resolution" to the disputes, according to court documents. Several sources close to the Milstein family say John Zuccotti-a former deputy Mayor and family lawyer who is now a top developer himself-is mediating the talks.

Recent developments, however, make a resolution look unlikely. "You may not realize this," Howard Milstein wrote in a June 21 letter to his cousin, "but two can play the same game you're playing."

Philip Milstein says his suspicions were first aroused in the spring of 1998, when Howard stopped passing on financial information about Douglas Elliman. He asked his cousin to call a board meeting and was ignored. At the end of the year, he says, the company failed to distribute profits to its shareholders.

The real estate market had just entered its current bull cycle, and Douglas Elliman had netted a profit of $10 million for the year. At the same time, "no doubt related to the increase in available cash," Philip Milstein's suit says, Howard and Edward Milstein began chasing their owner's-box dreams. In February, 1998, they headed a group which bought the Islanders for $195 million. (He unloaded the team this year for a $5 million loss.) Through the spring and summer of 1998, they chased the Browns. Frustrated in Cleveland, they turned their attention late in the year to the Redskins, mounting a league-record $800 million bid for the team.

After Douglas Elliman was sold, Philip Milstein sued to get access to the company's books. A Delaware judge ruled that his cousin had "stonewalled" him and ordered the books opened to a forensic audit.

Auditors from the firm of FTI/Kahn found that while Howard and Edward Milstein were chasing sports teams, they had advanced $24.6 million to the Islanders, $1.2 million to Cleveland Sports Ventures and $5.1 million to Washington Sports Ventures, all from Douglas Elliman accounts.

Hats and Vases

The company's chief financial officer and its office manager were sent to work on these and other projects, the lawsuit says. Everything from travel expenses to Redskins hats to Tiffany vases-wedding presents for Islanders' players Ken Belanger, Jason Dawe, Scott Lachance and Tom Chorske-were charged to Douglas Elliman, company records show.

According to the audit, Howard Milstein also loaned company money for a number of other personal business ventures: $23 million for various real estate developments; $5.4 million in venture capital financing for two Internet start-ups, News Alert and Data.bid; $4.8 million toward a now-stalled redevelopment initiative in Niagara Falls N.Y., along with $300,000 for a Boxing Hall of Fame he plans to put there; and $1.5 million towards Douglas Elliman–Beitler.

Mr. Milstein put a law firm, Wiel, Gotshal and Manges, on a $10,000 a month retainer, though it seems the firm never did any work for Douglas Elliman (before defending the company against Philip Milstein's lawsuits), according to the audit. And the audit detailed $5.2 million in rent and lease payments on behalf of another law firm, Constantine and Partners, along with $200,000 in payments for unspecified legal services. Mr. Milstein's wife is a founding partner in the firm. "It is unclear," the auditors wrote, "how or if these obligations were retired."

In fact, the auditors said, "unusual and unconventional accounting practices" made it difficult to figure out exactly who owed what to whom. Even if all the interest-free loans were repaid, however, the auditors estimate that Douglas Elliman could have made $10 million simply by investing the money in the stock market.

To put the size of the loans in perspective, the auditors noted that over three years, Douglas Elliman paid out a total of $90 million to the brothers' private ventures. It spent $68 million on everything else.

Howard and Edward Milstein's pursuit of the Washington Redskins collapsed in April 1999, amid questions about the solidity of their finances. Around the same time, the brothers' debts to Douglas Elliman reached about $15 million.

That May, Howard Milstein closed the deal to sell Douglas Elliman to the Insignia Financial Group. Philip Milstein contends that his cousins lied to Insignia and perjured themselves in forms filed with the Delaware Secretary of State by stating that shareholders had agreed to the sale. He notes that the brokerage has seen a 25 percent increase in revenues since it was sold, and wonders whether it could have secured a higher price if shopped around longer. The sale, the lawsuit says, "had everything to do with [the] need to raise cash quickly."

Afterwards, Howard Milstein held onto several million dollars, the auditors said-including Philip Milstein's $10 million cut-which they continued to plow into their own ventures. In November, the amount of the outstanding loans reached close to $16 million. That's when Philip Milstein filed suit to get access to the books.

"In the months subsequent to [Philip Milstein] filing suit in Delaware in November 1999, a novel event for the partnership occurred," the report said. "The outstanding balances due from the [Howard Milstein] ventures to the partnership were reduced as a result of funds received from unknown sources."

Philip Milstein isn't sure of the source of the funds, but he's trying to find out. If the Delaware lawsuit goes forward, Howard Milstein's numerous private ventures will likely be subjected to audits themselves as part of the discovery process. And back in New York, Philip Milstein has sued to get access to the books of the Milford Plaza Hotel.

Philip Milstein has been trying to get a look at the hotel's financial records for months, first by asking, then by suing. A scathing exchange of letters over the summer provides an unexpurgated view of the rancor between the two sides of the family.

Nasty Letters

"I am sorry you find it necessary to harass us with useless correspondence," Howard Milstein wrote on June 21. He went on to note that the hotel had doubled in profitability over the past five years, pulling in $21 million a year. "I hope you will think better of this silliness and see if the current initiatives to resolve the friction between our families can bear fruit."

On June 23, Philip Milstein responded: "It is not a question of profitability (bank versus hotel or otherwise) but rather a question of accountability to your partners."

On July 20, Howard Milstein extended an invitation to review the records "anytime after Labor Day." Soon after, Philip Milstein sued.

In an affidavit filed in connection with that suit, Philip Milstein made his suspicions clear. "Given Howard's pattern of conduct, I am concerned that, absent scrutiny by his partners, he may misuse the partnership's assets or engage in [unauthorized] transactions."

Philip Milstein also elaborated on a series of clashes with his cousin, all of them following the same pattern: Howard trying to develop or divest, Seymour and Philip trying to thwart him. At 42nd Street, Howard's negotiations with potential tenants for a 35-story office building were quickly followed by letters to the tenants from Seymour, saying Howard was not authorized to develop the site.

In 1998, Howard negotiated a sale of the Milford Plaza for $253 million to an undisclosed buyer. On Aug. 10 of that year, his father Paul sent a memo reminding him to consult his uncle. "I wouldn't be in such a rush," he wrote. The next day, Seymour Milstein sent a memo of his own, written in capital letters: "Please consider this as notice that you do not have my approval."

Seymour later relented, but by that time the opportunity had slipped away, according to a counterclaim filed by Howard Milstein. In August 1999, Howard claims, his cousin scuttled another deal, this one to lease the hotel for $18 million a year.

Howard Milstein claims Philip "maliciously sought to interfere with [the] deal with the intent to harm the partnership and particularly his cousin, Howard Milstein." He's asking for $250 million in damages.

At a hearing held Aug. 10, Howard Milstein's attorney questioned Philip Milstein's motives in bringing the suit in the first place. "The purpose of these things is to get these things into the paper, to say negative things about our client," he argued.

Supreme Court Justice Barry Cozier ordered that Philip Milstein be allowed access to the financial record within 30 days, but threatened sanctions if he brought more "unnecessary litigation." Philip Milstein's auditors are currently examining the hotel's books. Their report is expected in a few months.

Barring an unexpected breakthrough, the family now faces a series of long and embarrassing court battles. The damages the fight has already caused the Milsteins are incalculable. The 42nd Street site, which Paul and Seymour long hoped to develop, will be auctioned off sometime soon in a bidding process overseen by an impartial referee, Manhattan attorney Judah Gribetz. The family name, which Howard Milstein had hoped to burnish with his sports-team purchases, has suffered.

Worse yet, the battle may have just begun.

What you shouldn't do, though, is give an overenthusiastic account of your life and resources.

That may explain why Mr. Largue has yet to find a team to call his own, despite constant overtures to the National Hockey League. The league has had some bitter experience with would-be investors claiming to have great wads of cash on hand. Last year, a Dallas businessman named John Spano nearly bought the New York Islanders by lying to a bank to get an $80 million loan to finance the purchase. The deal fell apart at the last minute when Mr. Spano turned out to be something less than what he said he was, and he eventually pleaded guilty to fraud charges. The league, which had approved the deal, vowed never to get conned again.

And along came Mr. Largue, whose office happens to be in the Islanders' hometown. Mr. Largue, a heavyset 36-year-old with thinning hair, met with the N.H.L.'s commissioner, Gary Bettman, last fall and told him he was looking to buy a team and that he was backed by a wealthy Swiss businessman named Lester Mittendorf. Mr. Bettman let Mr. Largue know that at some point he would have to produce Mr. Mittendorf in the flesh.

In February, Mr. Largue conferred with representatives of the city of Edmonton, Alberta, and of Edmonton's professional hockey team, the Oilers-the team that launched the careers of Mark Messier and Wayne Gretzky. He expressed his interest not only in buying the Oilers, but in keeping the team in Edmonton. The hockey-mad locals live in fear that somebody will buy the team and move it somewhere else, like Texas. So Mr. Largue's promise made him a hero in western Canada.

Mr. Largue arrived in Edmonton on March 2. He got a tour of the Oilers' arena, collected a few autographed goalie sticks and had dinner with the mayor. He announced that a deal was imminent.

All anybody knew of Mr. Largue was what he'd told them: He claimed that he had played hockey for Northeastern University and the Bern Bears, a professional team in Switzerland; that he had an undergraduate degree from Northeastern and a master's degree from St. John's University in Queens; and that his Swiss backer, this Lester Mittendorf, had $100 million to spend on a North American team.

A Few Holes Develop

It all sounded fabulous. But by the time Mr. Largue was ready to leave Edmonton the following day, he had a public relations nightmare on his hands. A slew of reporters from The Edmonton Journal and The Edmonton Sun had discovered a few holes in his story. They learned that Mr. Largue had obtained degrees from neither university, though he had attended both for short periods. Furthermore, there was no record that he had played hockey either for Northeastern or for the Bern Bears. And, most disturbingly, it appeared that Mr. Mittendorf might not exist. Nobody in Switzerland-in either the hockey or business community-had heard of him, and none of Mr. Largue's business acquaintances in the United States had met him. The only Lester Mittendorf the Edmonton reporters could find, here or abroad, was a retired banker living in Metropolis, Ill. (where the newspaper is called, of all things, The Planet ). And this particular Lester Mittendorf knew nothing of Michael Largue.

On March 3, the reporters confronted Mr. Largue at the Edmonton International Airport with some of their discoveries. "That's interesting," he said. "Well, I guess you did your homework." But he reiterated his claims about his hockey background and Mr. Mittendorf. He claimed he had spoken to Mr. Mittendorf the previous day, but when asked for the Swiss investor's number, he said he didn't have it on him. One reporter asked Mr. Largue: "Can you give us a reason why we should believe anything you say?"

"It doesn't matter what you believe,'' Mr. Largue said.

The Edmonton Journal also discovered that Mr. Largue had been convicted of criminal fraud last July in Nassau County. The crime: In 1994, he had bilked fellow shareholders in a Nassau County co-op building out of $39,000. Last November, he was ordered to pay $75,000 restitution and was sentenced to five years probation.

They learned that he had to obtain permission from his probation officer to leave New York and travel to Edmonton. They also learned that Mr. Largue had been bankrupt in the late 1980's. They learned that in the eyes of his estranged wife, Jeanette Largue, he was a "pathological liar." (She declined to speak to The Observer .)

And they learned that their onslaught of bad coverage was getting to him. After a television interview in Edmonton, he broke down in tears, lamenting that newspaper accounts on the Internet had reached his children.

The only problem was, he has no children.

By the time Mr. Largue returned to New York on March 3, he was the laughingstock of Canada.

New Yorkers, however, took little notice. And after having been so gregarious in Edmonton, he grew coy in New York. He would not take or return The Observer 's repeated phone calls to his Uniondale, L.I., office, though a woman answering the phone acknowledged he was there. At his parents' home nearby, where he lives part of the time, his mother would say only that the family had no comment. His lawyer, Cheryl Vollweiler, of the Manhattan firm Wilson, Elser, Moskowitz, Edelman & Dicker, declined to comment, except to say that she was no longer representing Mr. Largue.

But the fact that Nassau County has transferred oversight of his probation to Queens County indicates he may be spending more time in Queens than with his parents.

"He's a guy who is a finder of situations," said Joseph Sciarrotta, director of Nassau County's Probation Department. "His probation has not been violated. But we're looking into the circumstances" surrounding his business in Edmonton.

In Search of a Team

Mr. Largue worked as a stockbroker from 1989 to 1992. In 1993, he was suspended for two years by the National Association of Securities Dealers and fined $10,000; he agreed to pay $48,337 in restitution. Over the last few years, Mr. Largue has approached numerous professional teams as a potential buyer or investor. He has had conversations with the Buffalo Sabres, the Tampa Bay Lightning, the Montreal Canadiens, the Hartford Whalers (twice) and the Pittsburgh Penguins, in addition to baseball's expansion Tampa Bay Devil Rays and a Canadian football team.

In the course of making overtures around the league, Mr. Largue made numerous contacts with league officials, team executives and lawyers who have relationships with the teams. He used each contact's credibility to enhance his own. For example, he got to know former New York Yankee general counsel and Wachtel & Masyr partner William Dowling. Mr. Dowling had no comment on Mr. Largue's dealings with the Oilers, but he admitted that he had had no idea of Mr. Largue's past. Later, to assuage skeptical new business acquaintances, Mr. Largue would produce a letter from Mr. Dowling in which the lawyer wrote that he was representing Mr. Largue and Mr. Mittendorf in their 1994 attempt to purchase the Hartford Whalers. "My clients are substantial investors with backgrounds in both business and hockey," read the letter, which The Observer obtained. Mr. Dowling described the mysterious Mr. Mittendorf as a former member of the board of directors at Credit Suisse and said, "He has been the owner of a professional hockey team in Switzerland and has worked closely with Mr. Largue in funding significant projects in the United States." A spokesman for Credit Suisse in Zurich told The Observer that nobody with such a name had ever been on the company's board.

In his dealings with the Hartford Whalers in both 1994 and 1997, he was represented by Coleman Levy, a Farmington, Conn., lawyer with a sound reputation in the sports business. Early in Mr. Largue's courtship of the Edmonton Oilers, Mr. Levy vouched for Mr. Largue to The Edmonton Journal , referring to Mr. Largue's backers as "very elite people." Mr. Levy also reportedly said he had a telephone conversation with a man claiming to be Mr. Mittendorf.

Mr. Levy did not return phone calls from The Observer .

In some cases, Mr. Largue got close enough to get a look at a team's financial statements and to garner some positive press. In Tampa and Hartford, no one checked his claims about his hockey background or his Swiss backer. Newspaper accounts portrayed him as he had portrayed himself. He kept those clippings in a scrapbook.

He apparently used each abandoned negotiation as a launching pad for the next, but never in any of his dealings did anyone meet the elusive Lester Mittendorf. Lawyers for another N.H.L. team once received a document purportedly signed by Mr. Mittendorf, in response to demands for financial references. The letter was sent to the team's lawyers by Wilson Elser, Mr. Largue's law firm at the time. But despite their constant entreaties that Mr. Largue set up a meeting with the Swiss investor, and despite constant promises from Mr. Largue that he would do so, Mr. Mittendorf never materialized.

And as Mr. Largue's tales grew more elaborate, even those who had initially extended him the benefit of the doubt began to grow skeptical.

"Can I say categorically that Mittendorf doesn't exist? No," said a hockey executive who has dealt often with Mr. Largue. "Do I believe he exists? No. Would I be surprised if we learned that he absolutely did not exist? No."

When The Edmonton Sun asked Mr. Largue for a publicity photo, he sent along a picture that looked as though it had been taken in his mother's kitchen. "There he was at the kitchen table," said Brendan Dlouhy, a photographer at the Sun . "You know, the plastic tablecloth with the St. Patrick's Day shamrocks, the salt-and-pepper thingy and an overloaded electrical outlet in the background. Not exactly a man with $100 million at his side."