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After A Woman Told Her Ex To Move Out, He Framed Her For A Series Of Armed Robberies
“He resolved to do whatever he could to discredit her and in Jerry’s world that was bringing false charges against her. And he did it in a very, very clever and really masterful way to pin these crimes on her," said a prosecutor in the case against Jerry Ramrattan.
Jerry Ramrattan took the concept of revenge to a whole new level.
After his ex-girlfriend Seemona Sumasar asked him to move out of her Queens home, Ramrattan bound her in duct tape, held her captive for hours, and raped her. Before leaving the house, he apologized and begged Sumasar, a financial analyst and restaurant owner, not to report it, according to "Dateline: Secrets Uncovered," airing Wednesdays at 8/7c on Oxygen.
She called 911 anyway shortly after Ramrattan left.
As the legal case against him moved forward, Ramrattan sought his revenge by cunningly framing her for a series of armed robberies — not only challenging the single mom’s credibility in the rape case but also landing her behind bars as her own trial loomed.
It would take months before authorities were able to unravel the bizarre plot that almost cost Sumasar years of her life.
“It’s like a bad dream,” Sumasar told "Dateline."
Sumasar was a 34-year-old immigrant from Guyana when she met Ramrattan, a regular customer at her Golden Krust restaurant in Queens.
The hard-working single mom started each day early, logging in hours at her job as an analyst at Morgan Stanley from 5 a.m. to 2 p.m. before getting off, heading to the restaurant and working late into the night.
Ramrattan, who described himself as a former police officer now working in security, had been “charming” and “confident.”
“You know, he could make things happen,” Sumasar remembered.
He seemed like the perfect guy and a romance between the pair soon blossomed.
“I did whatever I could at the time, whatever I could to help her,” he told "Dateline" correspondent Lester Holt. “We did everything. Go out to the movies, family events, everything.”
Ramrattan moved into Sumasar’s home in Queens and they talked about marriage — until Sumasar got a call from another woman claiming to be Ramrattan’s wife and the mother of his three children.
“That was a shocker. I doubted her at first,” Sumasar said.
Initially Ramrattan denied it, but eventually admitted he was married, although he claimed to “Dateline: Secrets Uncovered” that he had been separated at the time.
The incident was enough to shake Sumasar’s trust in the man she had come to depend on and the relationship unraveled. She asked him to move out of her house by February 20, 2009 — but the date came and went and Ramrattan still living at the home.
Two weeks after the deadline, Sumasar said she was fed up and confronted Ramrattan. As the argument escalated, she said Ramrattan attacked her.
“He got my hands behind me, next thing I’m hearing duct tape unrolled,” she said, adding that she was pushed face down into the bed as he taped her wrists together.
He let her sit up in the bed, ordered Chinese food, watched TV, and even tried to win her back as she remained duct taped.
“I just let him have it and I called him every name I could possibly call him,” Sumasar remembered.
She said Ramrattan also pulled out a gun, at one point pointing it at his own head. The situation escalated even further when she tried to get off the bed. She said he dragged her into the basement and raped her.
“I’m trying to fight him off but I can’t,” she said. “I can’t breathe and I really felt like I was going to pass out. He started to cry again and apologizing that he didn’t mean to do this and he hopes that you know, I don’t, I don’t report it.”
Ramrattan then grabbed his belongings and left.
While speaking to “Dateline: Secrets Uncovered” he emphatically denied the rape allegations and insisted the sex had been consensual.
“We were having sex all the time,” he said. “There was never a rape.”
But investigators sided with Sumasar and Ramrattan was charged with rape.
More than a year later, as the case against Ramrattan was still working its way through the legal system, Sumasar was driving near her restaurant when she was pulled over by plainclothes police detectives, handcuffed, and taken to a Nassau County Police precinct in Long Island.
“Seemona’s arrest was a nightmare,” her attorney Nick Brustin told “Dateline: Secrets Uncovered. “She’s not given any information about why she’s being arrested, has no idea what’s happening. It’s just a terrifying, shocking experience.”
What she’d eventually learn is that police believed she was involved in a bold series of armed robberies.
Over the course of six months, three separate individuals had called 911 to report being robbed at gunpoint by a male and female posing as police officers.
All three callers gave similar details, describing the female as Indian-looking and providing the same vehicle description of a gray Jeep Cherokee.
“Uh, they had, like, badges,” one caller, Terrell Lovell, said. “I was at the light and they told me to pull over.”
The final victim, a woman named Luz Johnson, provided one final vital clue: the vehicle’s license plate number. Authorities soon tracked the vehicle to Sumasar’s house and all three victims picked her out of a photo line-up, creating what appeared to be a solid case for investigators.
She was charged with armed robbery, possession of a firearm, and impersonating a police officer. The stunned financial analyst was unable to post her $1 million bail and remained behind bars — away from her 12-year-old daughter — as the case against her moved forward.
Queens Assistant District Attorney Frank Di Gaetano, who was the prosecutor on her rape case, told “Dateline: Secrets Uncovered” that authorities in Long Island believed that Sumasar had carried out the robberies because of her growing money concerns.
“She was arrears on her taxes. They eventually came to believe that her restaurant was failing and that she was in desperate financial straits,” he said.
Ramrattan also insisted his ex-girlfriend had a “lot of money issues” and had been struggling so much she ultimately sold the restaurant to him — a claim that was later disproved in court.
Sumasar even had an alibi for the night of the final robbery. She had been away with family in Connecticut. Her cell phone pinged off towers in the area and she even provided security camera images captured at a casino that appeared to show her on the casino floor that night, but authorities believed the images were too blurry to properly identify who was in the photos.
“It became difficult, you know all the negative light because of my arrest, a lot of embarrassing things that, you know, my family had to go through,” Sumasar said.
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It wasn’t until Ramrattan’s new girlfriend came to the district attorney’s office with new information that authorities took a deeper look into the case.
The informant told authorities that there had been no armed robberies and that all of the evidence —i ncluding those 911 calls — had been faked in an elaborate plot by Ramrattan to frame her.
To support her claims, she provided cell phone records that linked all three supposed victims to Ramrattan himself.
“He resolved to do whatever he could to discredit her and in Jerry’s world that was bringing false charges against her,” Di Gaetano said. “And he did it in a very, very clever and really masterful way to pin these crimes on her.”
All three victims later confessed to the hoax, pleaded guilty to perjury, and went to jail. The Nassau County District Attorney’s office dropped all the charges against Sumasar and she was released from jail after seven long months.
“It was just a moment, unbelievable. I had to pinch myself,” Sumasar said.
For Ramrattan — who had never actually been a police officer, but was simply a fan of crime procedurals — it meant conspiracy charges in addition the rape charge already lodged against him.
Authorities decided to try the charges together, and in 2011, he was found guilty of 11 counts including rape and conspiracy.
Ramrattan, who continues to insist he is innocent, was sentenced to 33 years in prison.
Sumasar, who lost her home, job, and time with her daughter while behind bars, later sued New York Police, two detectives there, Nassau County, and one of its detectives. The city settled for an undisclosed amount and the county defendants settled their claims for $2 million.
