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CSI And Law & Order Fan's Elaborate Plot To Frame Ex, Dupe Cops
By
Jen Chung
Published Jul 26, 2011
Modified Jul 26, 2011
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By
Jen Chung
Published Jul 26, 2011
Modified Jul 26, 2011
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You may recall the rather Kafka-esque story of a woman who was arrested for armed robbery... only for prosecutors to realize that she was being framed by her ex-boyfriend because she had accused him of rape and refused to drop the charges. Now the woman, Seemona Sumasar, tells the NY Times, "From the beginning I was presumed guilty — not innocent. I felt like I never had a chance... I can never have faith in justice in this country again."
Her ex-boyfriend, Jerry Ramrattan, who now faces charges of conspiracy as well as rape, is described as a kind of Queens Tom Ripley, "He said he was a police detective, but never seemed to go to work. He seemed obsessed with 'C.S.I.,' 'Law & Order' and other television police dramas," and after he was arrested for allegedly raping her, "Drawing on his knowledge of police procedure, gleaned from his time as an informer for law enforcement, he accomplished what prosecutors in New York called one of the most elaborate framing plots that they had ever seen."
In a nutshell, the plot involved hiring people to claim that Sumasar robbed them at gunpoint (prosecutors say Ramrattan showed them pictures of Sumasar, a former Morgan Stanley analyst who was running a restaurant at the time, and drove them past her car so they could describe it). Even though Sumasar had an alibi at the time of one of the alleged robberies—surveillance video of her at the casino at Mohegan Sun—Nassau County police didn't look into it and arrested her. She says cops yelled at her, "You know you did it. Just admit it." She was in jail for months, held on $1 million, kept from her 12-year-old daughter and her home went into foreclosure.
Then, weeks before her trial, an informer told prosecutors that Ramrattan was setting her up and Ramrattan's phone records showed him talking to the supposed robbery victims. The Nassau County DA's office said last fall, "He's a cop wannabe. He knew police procedure. He prepped the witnesses so well. He told one to give partial plates in order to be good, but not so good, so he seemed credible. He picked people he knew, but who didn't know each other. And he used different phones to contact them all. It was very clever."
Ramrattan, who proclaims her innocence, is being held without bail and his trial is this fall; Sumasar told the Times she checks the Rikers Island website to make sure he's still behind bars.
Tagged
armed robbery
cop wannabe
elaborate plot
frame
jerry ramrattan
plot
rape
seemona sumasar
Jen Chung
Jen Chung is a former WNYC and Gothamist editor.
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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