SHAME ON YOU: Shantel Ramsundar, 24, and mom Gomatee (right) helped swindle 19 families out of nearly $2 million in life savings. (Photos: Ellis Kaplan)
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A seething Queens judge walloped three members of a crooked Richmond Hill family yesterday, sending them upstate to serve a combined 418 years for a brazen immigration and real-estate scam.
The mom, dad and daughter — dubbed “The Ramsundar Gang” by Queens Supreme Court Justice Kenneth Holder — paid a shocking price for defrauding 19 families of $1.8 million over six years.
Holder said his harsh sentences are nothing compared to the street justice the Ramsundar family would have faced back in their native Trinidad.
“You and I know, that if you did this fraud and paraded and strutted it in your own country, you would have probably been hacked to death,” Holder told the family, which immigrated from Trinidad in the ’90s.
Shane Ramsundar, 53, wife Gomatee, 47, and their oldest daughter, Shantel, 24, were found guilty of grand larceny, money laundering, criminal impersonation and other charges during a three-month trial.
Holder had no sympathy for any of the grifters. The tough judge even had one victim, who suffers from multiple sclerosis, stand up in court, so Shane could see him. Holder said the family’s crimes nearly killed this victim, who lost so much money he couldn’t afford medication.
“Now it’s your turn to hear your return on your investment for these crimes,” said Holder, before sentencing the ringleader dad to 78¹/ years to 235 years in prison and fining him $1.8 million.
Wife Gomatee was sentenced to 51 to 153 years in prison and fined $221,090. Daughter Shantel was sentenced to 10 to 30 years and fined $182,180.
The courtroom was packed with victims and even jurors wanting to hear Holder scold the trio for swindling neighbors out of their life savings — to fuel their lavish lifestyle of cars, travel and diamonds.
Dad Shane pretended to be an FBI agent and swindled 12 victims out of $300,000, promising to get them removed from a “terrorist watch list” and a deportation list, while also scoring them green cards.
Mom and dad Ramsundar also claimed their ties to feds allowed them to buy cut-rate properties seized in Florida and Queens from tax evaders and drug dealers. The couple then convinced victims to give them money, promising to obtain mortgages for them.