NEW YORK TIMES- For years, a self-made real estate magnate named Edul Ahmad personified the collective dreams of Richmond Hill, Queens, which is populated by many immigrants fromGuyana, inSouth America. Mr. Ahmad drove a yellow Lamborghini, sponsored a cricket team and held white-glove parties at a lavish banquet hall that he owned.

At a prominent intersection near the border ofRichmond HillandSouthOzonePark, his smiling face looked down from a large billboard that promoted his real estate services. Many residents responded, taking out high-risk mortgages that they were told they could readily afford.

In July, it all came crashing down. Agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation arrested Mr. Ahmad, charging him with masterminding a $50 million mortgage fraud that seemed to exemplify a nationwide phenomenon of celebrated immigrant brokers who were accused of preying on their own.

Now, scores, if not hundreds, of Guyanese immigrants are facing financial ruin because of loans said to have been arranged by Mr. Ahmad, and the repercussions from the case have extended from Queens toWashingtontoGuyana.

Mr. Ahmad is currently engaged in intensive plea-bargain negotiations with federal prosecutors, according to court documents, but it appears that the impact of the loans will endure for years.Richmond Hillhas been hit harder by the foreclosure crisis than most other neighborhoods in the city, officials and analysts said.

Mr. Ahmad’s case has also ensnared two politicians whom he considered friends: United States Representative Gregory W. Meeks, a Queens Democrat, and John L. Sampson ofBrooklyn, the Democratic leader of the State Senate.

A House ethics panel is investigating Mr. Meeks for failing to disclose that he received $40,000 from Mr. Ahmad. Mr. Sampson worked as Mr. Ahmad’s lawyer and was disciplined by theNew Yorksecretary of state for notarizing a document for Mr. Ahmad without a license.

Guyanais a small nation borderingVenezuelawhere the largest ethnic group is of Indian descent.After Mr. Ahmad’s arrest, the ruling party inGuyanahad to explain why his contact information appeared on a flier promoting a fund-raising dinner with the president at the time, Bharrat Jagdeo; the party said Mr. Ahmad was a friend of Mr. Jagdeo’s, but not a campaign donor.

Mr. Ahmad, 44, is charged with luring buyers into subprime mortgages, inflating the values of their properties and concealing his involvement by using straw buyers, like his wife and the Guyanese-born captain of theUnited Statescricket team, Steve Massiah.

Mr. Ahmad pleaded not guilty and posted $2.5 million in bail in July. Reached by telephone recently, he would not comment.

Since 2009, more foreclosures have been filed inQueensthan in any other borough, according to the Neighborhood Economic Development Advocacy Project. Five of the hardest hit ZIP codes inQueensare within a 15-minute drive of the office of Mr. Ahmad, who community leaders say once held about 75 percent of local real estate listings.

Paban Saha and Syed Husain, friends and former business partners, said they contacted him in 2006 after seeing his newspaper advertisements. They said he earned their confidence at their first meeting, when they watched him write a check to a charity.

“He set up an atmosphere where you forgot about everything,” Mr. Husain, 56, said.

Mr. Ahmad and one of his brokers offered Mr. Husain and Mr. Saha a three-family house for $880,000 but warned of another bid, Mr. Husain said. Mr. Ahmad demanded that they close within a week, insisting they use his lawyer, his appraiser and his mortgage officer, who pushed to finance 95 percent of their home at a 12.5 percent rate, Mr. Saha and Mr. Husain said.

Within two years, their finances were devastated, they said. The property was on the brink of foreclosure, the souvenir store that their families owned together went bankrupt, and they depleted savings they had accumulated since emigrating fromBangladeshin the 1990s.

“You can only imagine two households trying to keep one property afloat,” said Mr. Husain, who has filed a civil lawsuit against Mr. Ahmad. “It sucked everything dry.”

Some Guyanese people, describing their foreclosures linked to Mr. Ahmad’s services, said they were so terrified by his powerful ties that they did not want their names publicized. One man said that at times he felt suicidal.

“I don’t even trust myself to make decisions anymore,” he said. “I’ve lost everything.”

Housing experts say these cases have cropped up in immigrant enclaves across theUnited States, often because immigrants can be too trusting of business leaders from their own communities who hold themselves up as examples of classic American success stories.

In September, a Bolivian-born woman became the third member of her family inSan Franciscoto be charged with defrauding Latino immigrants in a multimillion-dollar mortgage scheme.

Los Angeles’s Thai community was victimized, community leaders said, by a prominent loan officer who cheated so many immigrants that after he came under scrutiny, he fled toThailand.

Mr. Ahmad worked as a police detective inGuyanabefore joining a Guyanese immigration wave toNew York Cityin the early 1980s. A private portion of his Facebook profile, accessible by more than 250 of his friends on the Web site, states that he earned degrees fromBaruchCollegeinManhattan. However, the college has no record of him.

Even today, after the arrest of Mr. Ahmad and at least 12 Guyanese real estate workers, most of whom were accused of running similar but smaller-scale schemes, there are more than 30 real estate businesses on the main thoroughfare,Liberty Avenue.

Mr. Ahmad created a public brand, plastering his photo in advertisements in ethnic newspapers and buying television infomercials. Residents flocked to him.

“It’s personal,” said Paul Sanders, a Guyanese journalist who covers the community. “Ed was one of us.”

When Mr. Ahmad opened a new office, the police blocked traffic as about 300 people, including Representative Meeks and Senator Sampson, attended a ceremony and listened to a calypso singer offer a tribute: “Ed Ahmad! Ed Ahmad! That dynamite businessman. Ed Ahmad! Ed Ahmad! A sexy, handsome young man.”

As he accumulated wealth — one former friend said he was worth at least $20 million in liquid assets — he poured money into charitable and other causes, including the mosque where he prays. He also raised money for politicians like Mr. Meeks and Mr. Sampson.

“Ed used to go around saying he’s befriended politicians, and if he’s ever caught, they’ll help him get off,” said Chuck Mohan, who is the president of a Guyanese civic group in Queens and a friend of Mr. Sampson’s.

Mr. Meeks has said the $40,000 that he received from Mr. Ahmad was a loan, which he paid back, he said, three years after he received it, after the F.B.I. began questioning Mr. Ahmad. Mr. Meeks’s office did not respond to a phone message.

At one point, Mr. Sampson used a staff member to aid in his legal representation of Mr. Ahmad, potentially violating ethics laws, according to state records. Asked for comment, Mr. Sampson’s office would say only that he and Mr. Ahmad remained friends.

In Queens, many people who once jockeyed for Mr. Ahmad’s attention, like radio and television talk show hosts, are keeping their distance. But his defenders questioned why the government was prosecuting immigrant brokers even as it bailed out banks.

“We are innocent victims of the economic frenzy and implosion that America is going through,” said Kawal Totaram, a real estate lawyer and friend of Mr. Ahmad’s.

Some housing advocates disagreed that Mr. Ahmad was in trouble because of forces outside his control. Mamta Gurung, a manager at Chhaya, a Queens-based housing organization that caters to South Asians, said half of her foreclosure clients were Guyanese, including some who had loans from Mr. Ahmad.

She said most of her clients could not identify their mortgage documents. Some could not spell their names. “It’s quite scary,” she said.

Mr. Saha and Mr. Husain, who took the 12.5 percent loan arranged by Mr. Ahmad, said their lives remained in turmoil. They have been unable to start a new business because of a lack of capital, Mr. Husain said, and Mr. Husain’s three children are supporting him financially.

That, Mr. Husain said, is not how life should turn out.

“When you purchase a property, you think, ‘This is it!’ ” he said. Instead, he said, he felt overwhelmed by “depression and anger issues, and hopelessness.”

Brooklyn State Senator John Sampson (center) and his attorney Zachary Carter (right) leave Brooklyn Federal Court on Monday. (New York Daily News photo)

They've been charged with taking bribes, lying under oath, even trying to buy their way into office — but until now, there has never been a political corruption case in New York like this.

State Sen. John Sampson was charged Monday with embezzling $440,000 and using some of it to bankroll a bid for one of the highest law enforcement jobs in the city, Brooklyn district attorney. And when he feared getting caught, he told an associate he could track down informants and “take them out,” according to an indictment unsealed Monday.

Brooklyn U.S. Attorney Loretta Lynch called it “one of the most extreme examples of hubris and arrogance we have ever seen.” She said Sampson even pressed a high school friend working in her office, paralegal Sam Noel, to uncover information that might ease his mounting legal troubles.

For Sampson, 47, it was an incredible fall from grace. He was once one of the most powerful politicians in New York, as Democratic conference leader of the Senate. After surrendering Monday to the FBI, Sampson pleaded not guilty — but he already had incriminated himself, according to the indictment.

In July, when FBI agents questioned Sampson in the driveway of his Flatlands, Brooklyn, home, they told him he was lying. His response was self-destructive. “Not everything I told you was false,” the indictment said.

According to the indictment, Sampson’s crimes began in 1998 when he started embezzling money from foreclosure sales he oversaw as a court-appointed referee. Sampson, a lawyer, then siphoned some of the money into his 2005 Democratic primary campaign against Brooklyn District Attorney Charles Hynes, the indictment said. But Hynes prevailed, beating Sampson, 41% to 37%.

The following year, a worried Sampson got a Queens businessman, Edul Ahmad, to “loan” him $188,500 so he could put some of the money back, prosecutors said. But the loan allegedly had no written terms and Sampson never repaid it.

Things got worse for Sampson in 2011 when Ahmad was arrested on mortgage fraud charges. Worried Ahmad would reveal the secret “loan,” Sampson offered to track down witnesses against Ahmad and “take them out,” the indictment said.

What Sampson didn’t know is that Ahmad was already cooperating with the feds and recorded the conversation.

The FBI later discovered a handwritten list of informants against Ahmad on the desk of Noel, the paralegal who was Sampson’s mole in the U.S. attorney’s office. Noel was fired and is now cooperating with investigators.

Officials said they found no evidence that Sampson ever followed through on his “take them out” threat.

Sampson was charged with embezzlement, obstruction of justice and lying to FBI agents. He was offered a plea deal calling for 36 to 47 months in prison, but entered a not-guilty plea in federal court. He faces up to five years in prison if the case goes to trial.

He was released on $250,000 bond and declined to comment. His lawyer, former Brooklyn U.S. Attorney Zachary Carter, said the charges had nothing to do with Sampson’s official duties. “The senator does not stand accused of any offenses of misuse of his office,” Carter said. “This is an ordinary case that has been given an official corruption coat of paint, and I think that’s unfair.”

Sampson joins a parade of New York politicians brought down in recent weeks by the feds. Since April 1, prosecutors have charged Sen. Malcolm Smith (D-Queens), Assemblyman Eric Stevenson (D-Bronx) and City Councilman Dan Halloran (R-Queens) with bribery-related charges.

Monday’s charges follow the revelation last week that Sampson was secretly recorded by a former colleague, ex-Sen. Shirley Huntley (D-Queens), who has pleaded guilty to stealing from a nonprofit she controlled.

The leader of the Senate Democrats, Andrea Stewart-Cousins of Westchester County, stripped Sampson of his committee assignments Monday. Asked if Sampson should resign, she said, “When you’re faced with this level of allegations and these serious accusations, I don’t know, frankly, how it really is possible to serve your constituency in the way they need to be served.”

130506 Sampson Indictment