The sign at the entrance to Suneagles golf course on the grounds of the former Fort Monmouth in Eatontown. (Photo by Brian Donohue. Click to enlarge.)
By BRIAN DONOHUE
It looked like a business deal with odds of success as certain as a gimme putt on the 18th hole.
Six years ago, developers Salvatore Martelli and Warren Diamond – both frequent faces in Monmouth County social pages and key players in several high-profile Red Bank projects – entered into a 50/50 partnership to run a golf course that’s part of the first major redevelopment project on the former Fort Monmouth in Eatontown.
The $30 million plan: to restore and run the 100-year-old Suneagles golf club, including its course, clubhouse and restaurants. Martelli’s development company would add 75 townhomes, including 15 affordable units, with fairway views.
Six years later, the partnership has devolved into a bitter legal battle, with dual lawsuits that read like a script for a series the streaming giant Netflix might produce at the studios it’s building just down the road.
Each side accuses the other of financial misconduct and other wrongdoing related to the project.
“As if drawn from the script of a Martin Scorsese film,” Martelli’s attorney described his allegations in a November court filing. “Plaintiffs are forced to bring this application to execute a ‘business divorce.”
Construction is still underway on some units at the Ridge at Suneagles in Eatontown.
The competing legal filings contain a series of sharply disputed allegations from both sides.
Diamond filed the first legal salvo last March, accusing Martelli in state superior court of reneging on a deal to sell him two units in the currently half-built townhome complex, The Ridge at Suneagles.
He also filed legal notices clouding the title of all other condos in the complex, some of which were already under contract to be sold to other parties.
In a letter to the judge in November, Diamond added more allegations, alleging that Martelli forged certificates of occupancy, allegedly sold several condos with no certificates of occupancy, skirted affordable housing laws and engaged in what he calls a pattern of civil racketeering.
Martelli denied the allegations. On January 30, Monmouth County Superior Court Judge Mara Zazzalli-Hogan dismissed Diamond’s complaint, ruling he had failed to turn over required discovery. Elements of the case, including counterclaims by Martelli, remain active, and a settlement conference is scheduled for next month.
In the meantime, Martelli has filed his own lawsuit against Diamond.
In a complaint filed in September and subsequent filings, his attorneys describe Diamond’s lawsuit as an attempt to obfuscate and destroy the project after Martelli demanded Diamond live up to his terms of their operating agreement.
In the lawsuit, Martelli alleges Diamond and his wife took $700,000 from the project, used the business’s accounts “as a personal ATM machine” to pay for luxuries, including private jet trips, and funnelled money into other companies Warren owns, including the one involved in two Red Bank projects.
Martelli alleges what he describes as a “reign of terror,” claiming Diamond concealed his 1986 federal racketeering conviction and legal battles with previous business partners; punched the chef of Ember & Eagle restaurant in the face; bribed and harassed employees; and twice assaulted Martelli, including running him over with a golf cart.
In a November 12 filing, Martelli’s attorney calls Diamond’s actions “a series of unlawful and disturbing events” carried out with “a mix of audacity, calculated maneuvering, and a blatant disregard for obligations imposed by law and contract, which require imminent intervention to save a multi-million dollar business and the scores of jobs associated with it.”
“There is serious and imminent threat that Martelli will individually be subject to reputational damage and financial ruination the longer he is tied to this heinous character,” Martelli’s sworn statement reads.
In an interview with redbankgreen, Diamond’s attorney, Tim Moriarty, called Martelli’s allegations “demonstrably false.”
In a 235-page answer filed in federal court on February 29, Diamond denies Martelli’s accusations. In that filing, he also counters with allegations that mirror his initial lawsuit, alleging Martelli engaged in the “misappropriation of funds, falsification of documents, obstruction of investigations.” He also accuses Martelli of stealing truckloads of topsoil from the golf course, according to the lawsuit.
Martelli denies the allegations.
For now, there seems to be only one thing the two agree on: the dispute now threatens the future of the entire project.
“Everyone’s livelihood will soon be in grave danger because of his improvident actions,” Diamond wrote in an August email included in Martelli’s court filings. “If things do not change soon, we will have to make some very serious cuts real soon.”
Martelli, in the same November filing, put it more bluntly, saying Diamond’s behavior and the spat he says it created could “lead Suneagles to ruin.”
Warren Diamond (eighth from right in blue shirt and black pants) stands among a group of dignitaries at the groundbreaking for Thrive Red Bank in July 2025. Diamond is the owner of the property on which the apartment building for neurodivergent adults is being built. (Photo by Brian Donohue)
Warren Diamond is a longtime CEO of American Self Storage known locally for his prolific philanthropy, including a $2.5 million donation to Monmouth Medical Center for the construction of the Cheryl Diamond Cancer Care Center named in honor of his late wife, who died from cancer in 2001.
In 2024, the Red Bank’s Count Basie Center for the Arts opened a members-only/VIP lounge named after Diamond and his wife, Faith Perlmutter Diamond, both major donors.
While he now lists his permanent address as Boca Raton, Florida, Diamond has been a familiar face in Red Bank development circles in recent years.
The former home of Mi Lupita’s restaurant at 78 Bridge Avenue, where Warren Diamond gained approvals in 2023 to build 20 condominiums. The restaurant has moved to 193 Shrewsbury Avenue.
In 2023, he gained the Red Bank Planning Board’s approval to turn several lots he purchased on Bridge Avenue, including the former home of the popular Mi Lupita’s restaurant, into 20 condos. He later sold the property without starting construction.
The same Diamond-owned company, American Opportunity Fund LLC, also owns the property at the corner of Drs. James Parker Boulevard and Shrewsbury Avenue, where the nonprofit Thrive Red Bank broke ground in July on a housing project for neurodivergent adults. Thrive officials say he has no role in the organization other than owning the land on which it’s being built.
A rendering of the 20-unit building Warren Diamond got approvals to build on Bridge Avenue in Red Bank before selling the project to another developer who plans to complete the project.
Diamond has been involved in multiple legal disputes over the past several decades, according to court records.
According to press accounts and legal filings in at least three lawsuits, Diamond, then named Warren Weissman, was convicted in 1986 of racketeering in a federal case that also involved people prosecutors alleged were connected to New York’s Bonanno crime family.
In an interview with redbankgreen, and in his court filing last month, Diamond’s attorney, Tim Moriarty, acknowledged the conviction and subsequent name change.
But he said as a young businessman running a moving/trucking business in 1980’s New York City, avoiding entanglement with organized crime – or cooperating with law enforcement and then facing mafia retaliation – was almost impossible.
“It’s a 40-year-old conviction that is presumably inadmissible,” Moriarty said, adding, “Since that time, Warren has donated millions upon millions to charities.”
In 2014, Diamond and his son Scott were sued in federal court by their business partner, Jacob Frydman, who alleged a pattern of fraud and theft that he said drained millions from their partnership in a building near the Lincoln Tunnel in Manhattan. During a dispute over finances, Frydman alleged, Warren Diamond threatened to burn the building down and smashed his Mercedes with a baseball bat, according to the lawsuit.
“Abusing their partners is a sport at which they excel,” Frydman’s complaint reads.
Diamond denied the allegations. The lawsuit was voluntarily dismissed by Frydman in November 2015 and the case was closed, according to court records.
In 2015, another Diamond business partner, John Del Monaco of Middletown, initiated arbitration seeking to remove him from management of self-storage companies they co-owned, alleging Diamond intimidated employees and misappropriated more than $2 million in company funds.
An arbitration panel ultimately removed Diamond from management and ordered him to repay $2 million in misappropriated funds and roughly $1.6 million in legal fees and costs, according to court records.
Diamond’s own son would be the next to engage in a bitter legal battle with him.
The dispute arose from a 2014 agreement over ownership stakes in several self-storage real estate companies and led to multiple lawsuits in which Warren sought to enforce transfers of business interests. Scott later accused Warren of using a forged document and abusive litigation to seize control of assets worth up to $12–15 million.
Scott’s 2023 lawsuit was ultimately dismissed with prejudice by a New Jersey court. A Florida attorney who represented Warren Diamond was disbarred after admitting she notarized a false certification submitted as evidence in the case.
Diamond’s attorney, Tim Moriarty, called the previous disputes irrelevant to the Martelli lawsuit and a by-product of Diamond’s business acumen. “He does all the financing, he’s very good at it, and then people get greedy and don’t want to live up to their obligations,” he said.
Martelli’s attorneys, however, include their mention in lawsuit filings as evidence of what they describe as “a common scheme of embezzlement and forgery that the Diamonds appear to be recreating” in the Suneagles partnership.
Martelli says he knew nothing about Diamond’s previous legal fights when he decided to take him on as a partner in the Fort Monmouth project – an assertion Diamond denies.
“Regrettably, I did not perform a background check on the Diamonds, which remains a major and obvious regret in my management of the Suneagles project,” he states in his October affidavit.
Martelli is a longtime developer whose company, Martelli Signature Homes, has built hundreds of homes across Monmouth County since 1980.
State business records also list him as the manager of Monarch Excavation, a company awarded a $3.7 million contract in July by the Borough of Red Bank for the ongoing remake of Marine Park.
Monarch Excavation equipment on the job site at Red Bank’s Marine Park. (Photo by Brian Donohue)
Martelli says he met Diamond in the fall of 2018, a year after Martelli had secured the rights to buy the historic Suneagles golf course for $5 million.
By March 2020, they had agreed to be equal partners in a half dozen entities tasked with revamping and managing the course and at least two restaurants, Tillinghouse and Ember & Eagle. 
Suneagles Golf Club on the base of the former Fort Monmouth in Eatontown.
Among other financing, the jointly owned corporation Mulligan Golf secured a $13.9 million loan from BCB Bank in December 2022, court records show. That same year, Martelli’s company broke ground on the Ridge at Suneagles townhomes, with records showing Martelli owning 100 percent of that project.
“However during this time, Warren was often unable to regulate his emotions, commonly made threats against me, principals of JCR who contractually managed the Suneagles Property,” Martelli states in an affidavit.
He also charges Diamond repeatedly missed capital calls and sent “horrific” emails to BCB officials who eventually froze funding to the project. Martelli also alleges Diamond’s felony conviction could put the business at risk of losing its liquor license.
Diamond denies those allegations. He says he was the one duped by Martelli, whom he now accuses in filings of engaging in “a multi‑year pattern of fraud, forgery, self‑dealing, misappropriation.”
“I took several hundred thousand of my OWN. money back. (cq) Which I was allowed to do,” reads a June 18, 2025 email from Diamond included as evidence in Martelli’s lawsuit. “EVERYONE READ THIS AND DONT LET MAGIC MARTELLI AND HIS FAST TALKING FOOL YOU. HE IS THE KING OF MISDIRECTION.”
On April 26, 2025, Martelli said he attempted to speak with Warren outside the Suneagles clubhouse.
“It was at this time that Warren intentionally drove a golf cart into me causing me to fall and sustain a concussion and head injury that required immediate medical attention,” Martelli’s sworn statement reads. “I specifically recall several patrons and employees coming to my aid as Warren drove off in his golf cart.”
Diamond denies the allegation, with his attorney writing in his latest filing that a video of the alleged incident “clearly shows otherwise.”
The filing also states Diamond acted in self-defense in his alleged tussle with the chef. No criminal charges related to either incident were mentioned in the filings.
Townhomes in the Ridge at Suneagles development.
Martelli filed his suit weeks after the alleged chef incident, seeking to have a court disband the partnership and ban Diamond from Suneagles. Initially filed in state superior court in New Jersey, Diamond’s attorneys successfully requested a move to federal court, citing his full-time residence in the state of Florida.
Through his attorney, Layne Feldman, Martelli issued the following statement last month:
“Our goal has always been to ensure that SunEagles operates responsibly, efficiently, and in a way that best serves its members and the broader community. After extensive efforts to resolve ongoing operational issues, we have taken legal action against a business partner whose conduct, we allege, has hindered the course’s stability and long-term success. This step was not taken lightly. SunEagles and Mr. Martelli remain committed to protecting the integrity of the business, supporting its employees, and preserving a community asset that so many families rely on and enjoy.”
All charges in both cases remain unproven.
redbankgreen editor Brian Donohue may be reached via email at [email protected] or by calling or texting 848-331-8331.
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