Guyanese businessman Ed Ahmad was the “associate” who wore a wire for the US feds to gather incriminating evidence against indicted Brooklyn state senator John Sampson, according to sources used by the New York Post.
This new development may explain why Ahmad has not yet been sentenced after pleading guilty to mortgage fraud conspiracy in New York in October last year. Ahmad faces over 10 years in jail and US$15M in restitution and fines for this plea but no sentence has yet been handed down and there has been no explanation.
Reporting on Sampson’s case today, the NY Post said Sampson (D-Canarsie) turned himself in to feds in Brooklyn yesterday and was charged with embezzlement, obstruction of justice and witness tampering, among other charges that could put him away for up to 120 years.
The report said that sounding more like a mob boss than a Senate minority leader, Sampson, 47, boasted to the close “associate” charged with mortgage fraud in 2011 that if his informant in the Eastern District US Attorney’s Office learned the names of federal cooperating witnesses against the “associate”, then “Sampson could arrange to ‘take them out,’ ” a nine-count indictment charges.
“The fact that he was trying to become the top state prosecutor in this borough shows the extreme arrogance and hubris,” said Brooklyn US Attorney Loretta Lynch, whose office is prosecuting Sampson. “It’s all about him.
“And when the defendant felt that his self-dealing would be exposed, this defendant, this state senator, this attorney at law counseled a witness to lie, hid evidence, and worked to reach inside the US Attorney’s Office to obtain non-public law-enforcement information.”
The NY Post said that Sampson allegedly urged Ahmad to withhold financial documents from federal investigators that could incriminate the former Ethics Committee chairman in crimes dating back 15 years.
The report said that Sampson “instructed” Ahmad not to disclose to prosecutors a check register page that revealed payments Ahmad made to the senator to cover money that Sampson had embezzled, according to authorities.
“That’s a problem . . . I mean for me,” Sampson allegedly told Ahmad, referring to the register, which he had inspected himself.
The NY Post said its sources say that Ahmad wore a wire to gather information against Sampson for prosecutors, who also were recording the senator’s cellphone calls.
“I can’t talk on the phone,” Sampson told Ahmad during a meeting in November 2011, the indictment alleges. “From now on, our conversation is, ‘I don’t have no contacts, you don’t know nothing.’ When we talk, that’s how we talk”, the New York Post reported today.
Another Ahmad loan to another legislator NY Rep. Gregory Meeks also caused problems for Meeks.
Ahmad’s mortgage fraud conspiracy case has been watched closely here as the realtor also had a close relationship with former President Bharrat Jagdeo and there are unanswered questions about a container of goods that Ahmad had sent to Jagdeo and which had been parked on the grounds of State House for a while. Ahmad also set up his hardware business on the Industrial Site property of the holding company that had printed the semi-official newspaper of the PPP, the Mirror. The Mirror is no longer printed there.
