Ed Ahmad requests postponement of jail sentence to next year
Edul Ahmad
Guyanese-born New York-based businessman, Edul Ahmad, has asked a New York court once again to postpone sentencing, as he wants to benefit from time he served as a cooperator witness against a disgraced senator.
Yesterday, in a letter to Judge Dora Irizarry of the US District Court, Eastern District of New York, Brooklyn, Ahmad’s lawyer, Steven Kartagener, reminded the court that his client was set to be sentenced on November 15.
“With consent of AUSA Alexander Solomon (prosecutor), I respectfully request that (the) defendant present sentencing date be adjourned to a date after January 18, 2017,” the lawyer said in his application yesterday.
Ahmad’s legal team argued that adjournment request was due to the fact that the businessman is awaiting the sentencing of John Sampson, a former New York State Senator. Ahmad’s testimony was key in sinking Sampson, a powerful political figure in the New York scene until he was charged.
Sampson has Guyanese roots also. Sampson had appealed his sentencing but failed and he has a new date- January 18, 2017.
Ahmad wants to be sentenced until after this date.
“To reiterate, by granting this adjournment, the court would be permitting the defendant to get the benefits of his hundreds of hours served as a cooperator, which will undoubtedly be chronicled at length in the government’s 5K1 letter, which we have not received as of this date.”
A 5K1 motion is filed by the Government when a defendant provides substantial assistance in the solving of other cases and the Government seeks a reduction in what otherwise would be his sentence.
Ahmad had luckily received several respites this year, as Sampson faced delays in his sentencing.
Kartagener, since last year, had successfully asked for postponements of the sentencing, saying in the first instance that he was set to undergo a total hip replacement surgery.
While back on the job, the lawyer said he is performing limited duties and his post-surgical healing is not progressing as quickly as hoped.
Ahmad’s sentencing would come more than three years after he pleaded guilty to a mortgage fraud charge in the US.
Prosecutors had managed to use Ahmad as a star witness in a witness tampering case against the businessman’s former friend, ex-Senator Sampson. Sampson was found guilty earlier this year.
The sentencing had been delayed for Ahmad, a well-known businessman in both New York and in Guyana, but prosecutors moved in immediately after Sampson was found guilty, instituting proceedings to bring the matter to closure.
In February 2012, Ahmad reportedly wore a wire, recording Sampson during a meeting. In July, he gave testimony during a four-week trial.
Ahmad is well known to tens of thousands of Guyanese living in the New York area, as he was connected in the Real Estate business.
A former policeman in Guyana, he 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 has advised him that there is 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 had said 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, ultimately resulting in them losing their homes in foreclosure proceedings, while Ahmad and his co-conspirators made millions of dollars.
Ahmad’s attorney had signaled intentions to challenge the financial loss attributed to him.
Prosecutors have advised a term of between 121 and 151 months (10 to approximately 13 years) of imprisonment for Ahmad.
Ahmad’s case has attracted much attention from the media in Guyana and in New York.
With regards to Sampson, he had exhausted one last bid for a retrial under a recent Supreme Court decision.
In September, Judge Irizarry refused to grant the disgraced Democrat another trial because he wasn’t convicted of bribery, the argument he was using.
“The bottom line is that the defendant neither was charged with nor convicted of any bribery offense,” the judge wrote in siding with prosecutors on the issue.
Sampson was found guilty last year of obstruction of justice and lying to the FBI as part of a mortgage-fraud investigation – but cleared of six of the nine counts, including the most serious charge of conspiracy to obstruct justice.
