Three members of a Richmond Hill family have been convicted of defrauding a total of nineteen individuals, mostly members of the borough’s West Indies community. More than $1.8 million over a nearly six-year period, was bilked from individuals who were either promised assistance in obtaining “federally seized” properties in Florida and Queens at cheap prices, or gaining legal status in this country.
According to Queens DA Richard Brown, the family represented the father as an ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) agent on loan to the FBI or JTTF (Joint Terrorism Task Force) and as a devoutly religious Pandit.
“The jury has rightfully branded the defendants as con artists who preyed upon and unscrupulously exploited members of their own immigrant community who were in need of assistance,” said Brown. “Instead, the victims were betrayed by the defendants who turned their American Dream into the
American Nightmare.”
The defendants were identified as Shane Ramsundar, 52, his wife, Gomatee Ramsundar, 47, and their daughter, Shantal Ramsundar, 23, all of 101-35A 120th Street in South Richmond Hil.
The Ramsundars were convicted of second- and third-degree grand larceny, first- and second-degree money laundering, first-degree criminal impersonation and first-degree scheme to defraud following a nearly three-month jury trial before Queens Supreme Court Justice Kenneth C. Holder.
Sentencing is set for January 11, 2012, at which time the Ramsundars face hundreds of years in
prison.
District Attorney Brown said that, according to the trial testimony, the three Ramsundars said that Shane was a federal agent – complete with a real-looking gun, a badge and false ID card – and a deeply
religious Pandit, who could obtain cheap governmentally seized real estate properties in Florida and the
Ozone Park/Richmond Hill/Jamaica areas of Queens.
The two elder Ramsundar’s claimed that the government allowed their special agents first option to buy the properties seized from tax evaders and drug dealers cheaply prior to their public auction. Shane Ramsundar then told his victims that he would purchase properties and obtain mortgages for them with his special government connections and then transfer the deeds over to them and they could live in the residences or re-sell them at great profit. Checks were laundered through eleven different bank accounts – eight belonging to Shantal Ramsundar and three belonging to the family’s race car repair company, Baba Boost Racing, Inc., of Long Island City, of which Shantal Ramsundar is the president and Gomatee Ramsundar is the manager.
In total, the Ramsundars received a total of more than $1.5 million from eleven victims.
It is further alleged that in carrying out the immigration portion of their scheme, Shane Ramsundar
again posed as an ICE/FBI agent and convinced victims that he could use his insider access to get people
green cards, have them removed from deportation lists and even get them off “terrorist watch lists” in
exchange for sums of money. Gomatee Ramsundar aided her husband by convincing some of the victims that he could obtain the necessary immigration documents and was present when some of the victims turned over their money. Shantal Ramsundar also aided in the scheme by holding her father out as an FBI agent and by cashing checks and laundering substantial amounts of the proceeds through bank accounts in her name.
In total, the Ramsundars received more than $300,000 from twelve victims, some of whom were
victimized in the defendants’ real estate scheme.
Court-authorized search warrants executed at the family’s residence and storage locker resulted in the recovery of contracts and five realistic looking air guns. The case against the Ramsundars was initiated when its victims read press reports in August 2009 about the sentencing of Port Authority janitorial worker Nazim (Tony) Hosein who had defrauded five members of the West Indies community by promising to expedite and produce legitimate green cards and other U.S. documents after collecting a total of nearly $100,000 from them.
As a result of that unrelated case, the victims in the instant case contacted the Port Authority police with information about Shane Ramsundar, who was arrested in September 2009 on similar charges and has been remanded in lieu of a total of $5 million in bail since that date.
Gomatee Ramsundar and Shantal Ramsundar have been remanded in lieu of $2 million and $1 million, respectively, since their Supreme Court arraignment on March 17, 2011.
