After putting up an initial fight against the fraud and embezzlement charges, former Chief Executive Officer of EZ Jet, Sonny Ramdeo has entered a Guilty plea and will now be sentenced on January 13th, 2014.

He appeared in court on Tuesday morning before Judge Kenneth Marra in the West Palm Beach District court and formally entered the guilty plea. His decision to enter a guilty plea came close to a year after his indictment was first opened and he was charged and it means he will now dodge the possible 90 year jail sentence that was hanging over his head if he went ahead with the trial and was found guilty.

The Guyanese born businessman who owned and operated the low-cost airline EZ Jet was arrested in December 2012 in New York in an FBI sting operation in connection with a multi million dollar fraud scheme. He was later extradited to Florida where he was charged in connection with a US$20 Million wire fraud.

According to the indictment, from as early as 2005, defendant Ramdeo was employed as the payroll supervisor at Promise Healthcare Inc. (Promise Health Care) and Success Healthcare Group (Success Healthcare), both of which owned and operated hospital facilities throughout the United States. As the payroll supervisor for these two companies (the companies), Ramdeo was responsible for overseeing the payment of bi-weekly wages and related payroll taxes for more than 3,500 employees.

To execute his scheme, Ramdeo allegedly incorporated PayServ Tax Inc. and thereafter represented to officers and employees of Promise Healthcare that PayServ Tax would handle the transfer of local, state, and federal payroll taxes to the proper agencies on behalf of Promise Healthcare and Success Healthcare. In fact, however, Ramdeo kept the money paid by Promise and Success Healthcare to PayServ for his personal use.

It is believed that Ramdeo used the money he embezzled from the health care providers to start-up his own airline, EZ Jet  which operated flights between Georgetown and New York.

Just before Ramdeo’s arrest in 2012, the airline’s operations came crumbling down when both the United States and Guyanese aviation authorities revoked his operations license.

The Guyana and New York offices were forced to shut down their operations and it was at that time that it was revealed that Ramdeo ran the airline by himself. There was no board in existence and even his staff members were unaware of its full operations.

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