Way paved for Ed Ahmad sentencing

Jan 19, 2017 News

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…as former senator he secretly recorded for FBI gets 5 years

A former New York senator, who has roots in Guyana, was yesterday jailed for five years, in a case that implicated politicians and powerful businessmen. The sentencing now paves the way for prominent Guyana-born businessman, Ed Ahmad, to be sentenced on real estate fraud charges.

John Sampson will spend five years in prison for lying and obstructing justice to cover up his misuse of escrow money as a private lawyer.

Brooklyn U.S. District Judge, Dora Irizarry, also imposed a US$75,000 fine on the former Democratic leader from Canarsie, whose 2015 conviction was one in a string of corruption cases that have rocked Albany, New York, according to a Newsday report yesterday.

Sampson, 51, had allegedly misused US$440,000 held in escrow to help finance a political campaign for District Attorney in Brooklyn, then did favours for Ahmad, who gave him US$188,000 to help cover up the misuse of funds.

He was not convicted of those charges, but was convicted of lying to the FBI and recruiting a childhood friend, Sam Noel, who worked for the Brooklyn US Attorney’s office, as a mole to keep track of an investigation of Ahmad, whom he feared might become an informant.

The ex-legislator said his greatest regret was ruining the career of Noel, who was his buddy growing up in a rough Brooklyn neighbourhood and struggling to succeed, and expressed remorse.

“My parents raised me better than this,” he told Judge Irizarry. “They did not sacrifice for me to be in this predicament. I apologize for my actions, but most of all I apologize for not respecting others.”

SKIN CRAWLER

The judge said that Sampson’s abuse of his friendship with Noel “made my skin crawl,” calling the damage to two lives a “tragedy” that she understood, because she had also risen from humble origins, in the South Bronx.

“You, yourself,” Irizarry said, shaking her head. “Destroyed. Destroyed.”

The judge also lashed Sampson for his selfishness, revealing that his wife earned annual income of US$750,000 at an accounting firm, and wondered why Sampson had to resort to crime.

“What level of greed do you have to have to engage in this conduct?” she asked.

Sampson faced up to 20 years in prison. Defence lawyers, citing Sampson’s good works as a legislator from 1997 to 2015, asked for a sentence of 366 days in prison or, alternatively, 18 months with half served under house arrest, but prosecutors urged a sentence of 87 months under federal sentencing guidelines.

Prosecutors asked for 87 months in prison. They said that in addition to Sampson’s crimes, he improperly continued to engage in the practice of law in family court after his licence was suspended due to his conviction, and urged the judge not to give him credit for his work as a Senator.

“It doesn’t matter that he served the public some of the time,” prosecutor Alex Solomon said. “He should have been serving the public all of the time.”

The five-year term matched the sentence handed down last year to former Republican Senate majority leader Dean Skelos, convicted of using his legislative power to shake down businesses to give work to his son Adam.

Defence lawyers said they plan to appeal Sampson’s conviction.

Brooklyn U.S. Attorney Robert Capers praised the sentence. “Mr Sampson was an attorney and a state senator who abused every position of trust he held for his own good,” Capers said.

Sampson was ordered to begin serving his prison sentence on April 21.

The former senator was found guilty in July 2015, but had appealed.

As a result of his felony conviction, Sampson immediately lost his seat in the Legislature.

During the three-week trial in 2015, federal prosecutors argued that Sampson had embezzled state funds when he was appointed to oversee the sales of properties in foreclosure and then covered up the embezzlement. The embezzlement charges had been thrown out by Judge Irizarry, who said the statute of limitations had passed.
The defence had argued that the government had entrapped Sampson, and that one of his former friends, Ahmad, agreed to cooperate with prosecutors after he (Ahmad) was charged with mortgage fraud.
Ahmad testified that Sampson threatened to silence anyone who was helping investigators. Prosecutors played video and audio recordings of a visibly distraught Mr. Sampson taking a check register that Ahmad indicated could be proof of the embezzlement and putting it in his jacket pocket.
Sam Noel, another friend of Sampson, who for 22 years was a paralegal at the United States attorney’s office for the Eastern District of New York, was also ensnared in the investigation. Sampson asked Noel to look up information about Mr. Ahmad’s case and any case being pursued against Sampson.
Noel testified that he used confidential law enforcement databases to do so. Sampson’s lawyers argued that the senator had never directly asked Mr. Noel to break the law.
Though Mr. Noel did not find much information, he was charged with a federal crime, lost his job and described feeling betrayed by Sampson, “a man I view as my brother.”
With regards to Ahmad, he was, until his fall from grace over five years ago, well known to the tens of thousands of Guyanese living in the New York area, as he was well connected in the real estate business.

A number of his New York businesses have been closed and monies seized.

FRAUD SCHEME

A former policeman in Guyana, Ahmad appeared in a New York court before Judge Irizarry in October 2012 and pleaded guilty to count one of the ten-count criminal complaints against him, and told the court that his attorney had advised him that there was no viable defence to the charges against him.
In admitting guilt, Ahmad told Judge Irizarry that between January 1995 and January 2009, within the Eastern District of New York and elsewhere, together with others, he knowingly and intentionally conspired to defraud several lending institutions, in a mortgage fraud scheme that lasted almost 15 years.
The United States Attorney’s office alleges that Ahmad was part of a scheme that defrauded American lending institutions of approximately US$50 million, obtaining approval for mortgages on various properties by falsifying documents submitted to the lending institutions, using a string of straw buyers, and other illegal practices.
In detailing the allegations against the Queens businessman with strong political connections, Judge Irizarry had outlined a scheme which had as its victims not only financial institutions, but also many ordinary New Yorkers, most of whom were Guyanese immigrants, pursuing the American dream to own their own home, only to find themselves trapped in a real estate scheme. This ultimately resulted in them losing their homes in foreclosure proceedings, while Ahmad and his co-conspirators made millions of dollars.
Ahmad’s case has attracted much attention from the media in Guyana and in New York, fueled by his strong political connections in Guyana and the U.S. He reportedly has properties in Guyana and had shipped containers of building materials to former President Bharrat Jagdeo prior to 2011. He had once made an application to open a casino and hotel on a plot of land overlooking the army headquarters, Thomas Lands.

Ahmad was supposed to have been sentenced since 2015, but appealed to the New York court several times, successfully, to delay the ruling until after Sampson would have been sentenced.

Ahmad’s lawyer argued that his client had spent hours helping to gather evidence and testifying against Sampson and therefore deserved to be sentenced after the former senator.

Earlier this month, Ahmad’s lawyer again successfully got the court to shift the sentencing to a new date – March 16^th.

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