Georgetown: Embattled Chief Executive of EZ Jet Sonny Ramdeo in a clear attempt to avoid an embarrassing trial and a sterner sentence has admitted that he is guilty of fraud. Sonny Ramdeo, 36, formerly of Sunrise, pleaded guilty to wire fraud and money-laundering in connection with the scheme prosecutors said he concocted while working for Promise Healthcare. Much of the money went to bankroll a charter jet company he founded that provided service from New York City to Guyana. When confronted by company auditors in October 2012, he fled to New York where he was arrested. He is to be sentenced Jan. 13.
He admits that too to money laundering and that he used several million dollars without authorization from his former employer to fund his fledgling airline business which landed in the Guyana market with excitingly low fares at the time. Ramdeo declared in a stipulation presented to a Federal Court in West Palm Beach today that he did what was stated in a superseding indictment filed in April this year. Ramdeo who was expected to go to trial this month October cut the deal with the Feds and is now asking for a reduced sentence. The low-cost charter was started in December 2011 amidst much fanfare in Guyana. But there were questions by players in the industry who wanted to know the source of his funding. Ramdeo had said the monies came from his savings and mortgage taken from his Florida home. However, the airline was flying the Georgetown/New York route and had introduced flights to Canada and Trinidad as well. But the seeming success crashed late last year after Promise Healthcare, a hospital chain for which Ramdeo was managing the payroll, claimed he stole over $20M starting in 2005.
Ramdeo, according to court documents, disappeared after an audit and in November 2012, the US Department of Transportation suspended EZjet after the plane company which operated the flights, claimed he owed them hundreds of thousands of dollars. The suspension left hundreds of passengers stranded in Guyana, the US, Canada and Trinidad. But by that time, Ramdeo was in hiding. The FBI managed to track him via calls he made from a phone. He was cornered in a New York basement in what investigators later said appeared to be locked storeroom. He gave up without a fight.
Ramdeo initially appeared before a court in New York where he agreed to be transferred to Florida to face charges of fraud. Court documents claimed he created a payroll company and made it appear, using fake emails, as if it was a legit one with links to another similar, established one that had been doing business with the hospital chain. Prosecutors said, in court documents, that Ramdeo appeared to be moving thousands of dollars around, instructing staffers to make payments and deposits in a manner and amounts that would not have raised the curiosity of the US authorities. They are still investigating where the monies that the accountant allegedly stole is hidden.
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