Father. Mother. Daughter. All thieves.
A Queens judge Wednesday hammered a family of con artists with a combined 418-year prison sentence for duping fellow Caribbean immigrants out of $1.8 million of their life savings.
Supreme Court Justice Kenneth Holder
slammed the Ramsundar family — daughter Shantal, 23, and parents Shane, 52, and Gomatee, 48, — as “the most despicable gang of criminals to ever sit in front of me.â€
“You and I know that if you did this fraud and paraded and strutted around in front of your own people, in your own country, you probably would have all been hacked to death,†Holder told the family, which hails from Trinidad. “But not in this country. Now it’s your time to hear your return on your investment for your crime,†the judge said.
Shane Ramsundar
was slapped with a maximum 235-year sentence. His wife got up to 153 years and daughter 30 years.
They each were found guilty of grand larceny and related charges in November.
Shane Ramsundar, who moved to Richmond Hill from Trinidad, posed as a federal agent who told fellow immigrants he could get their names off terror watch lists or stall the wheels of deportation with precious green cards.
And his wife and daughter backed his devious doings.
“They stole from their own, people afraid of reporting to the police, terrified of being deported back to a place where they had no one to go home to,â€
Assistant DA Catherine Kane
said.
Among the 19 Queens victims was a man with multiple sclerosis who they took $43,000 from. They lied to the man that he was about to be deported.
Aside from promising green cards, Ramsundar conned victims into thinking he could get them dirt-cheap prices on properties seized by the federal government in Florida and Queens.
They used the ill-gotten gains to buy cars, Coach bags, a $2,700 Yorkie and fancy shopping sprees, Kane said.