A woman’s ex framed her for robbery and sent her to prison. Here’s how she got free

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At first, Jerry Ramrattan seemed like a stand-up guy — a neighborhood cop who looked out for everyone and seemed to really care about his girlfriend, Seemona Sumasar. But then things took an unimaginable turn.

In 2012, Ramrattan, who was posing as a police officer, was convicted of raping Sumasar, then orchestrating an elaborate scheme to frame her for multiple armed robberies she did not commit.

Sumasar and her family members open up about their experiences with Ramrattan in a new Netflix true crime docuseries, “Worst Ex Ever,” describing how he deceived and abused Sumasar and ultimately sent her to jail for seven months for a series of imaginary crimes.

“How evil someone can be to do something like this. She has a kid, and she was in jail for so long, and he was out there having the time of his life,” Sumasar’s aunt, Vijay Itwaru, says in the documentary.

Read on to learn more about Sumasar’s experiences with Ramrattan in the episode titled “Betrayed by the Badge” in Netflix’s “Worst Ex Ever.”

How were Sumasar and Ramrattan linked?

Sumasar and Ramrattan met in 2006 when he visited the Golden Krust franchise location she owned in Queens, New York.

“He came by the restaurant. He bought food and struck up a conversation with me,” Sumasar says in the documentary. “He was wearing a suit and he had a holster and he had a gun at his side. He told me he was a cop and a detective for the Brooklyn DA’s office.”

Sumasar says Ramrattan came across as thoughtful, offering to fix her restaurant’s camera system and help her with other tasks.

“He showed up to just do random things for me, if just to take my car to the car wash, little things like that to make my life on a daily basis easier,” she says in the docuseries. “And then I guess we became friends.”

Eventually they started dating and for a while, nothing seemed amiss. Sumasar’s niece, Melanie Sumasar, says in the Netflix documentary that their family “looked up to him” and “liked him” because they believed he “cared for Seemona.”

What was Ramrattan convicted of doing?

Their relationship soured when Sumasar discovered that Ramrattan was married to another woman and had three children. She broke up with him in 2008, but Ramrattan asked if he could stay in her basement for a few weeks.

He ended up staying for months, according to a 2016 lawsuit filed by Sumasar against the Nassau County police officer and detectives who investigated the alleged crimes which led to her indictment.

On March 8, 2009, Ramrattan raped Sumasar, according to the lawsuit. She says he bound and gagged her with duct tape, threatened her with a gun, and held her prisoner in his basement apartment for several hours, according to the 2016 lawsuit.

Ramrattan was charged with rape, and also came under investigation for impersonating a police officer, per the lawsuit. He pleaded not guilty to all charges.

While out on bail, Ramrattan then launched what the 2016 lawsuit called a “campaign of harassment” to destroy Sumasar’s credibility and to convince her to stop cooperating with the rape investigation.

He sent multiple people to Ramrattan’s restaurant to try to talk her out of continuing with the case. And when she did not back down, he staged a series of imaginary crimes in an attempt to frame Sumasar for armed robbery, per the lawsuit.

Six months later, Ramrattan launched a new attempt to frame Sumasar. According to court documents, he enlisted the help of two other associates, Terrell Lovell and Luz Johnson, to report imaginary armed robberies to the Nassau County Police Department in Long Island, New York, and to share details about the imaginary crimes that would lead police to Sumasar. Ramrattan told Lovell he would pay $20,000 to help frame Sumasar.

These reports culminated in Sumasar’s arrest in May 2010.

“I said, ‘No, like, clearly you made a mistake. I shouldn’t be here,'” Sumasar said in the Netflix documentary, recalling her arrest and interrogation.

She immediately suspected Ramrattan had something to do with the claims brought against her, but says when she mentioned his name, the police didn’t take her seriously.

“‘If you think I did something, then he’s behind it. I didn’t do it,'” she recalls telling officers after her arrest, but says they “brushed that off, like, ‘No, this has nothing to do with him.'”

Despite maintaining her innocence — and despite presenting an alibi showing she had not been in New York during one of the supposed crimes — Sumasar was indicted in June 2010 on multiple counts of robbery in the first, second and third degree, grand larceny in the fourth degree, criminal use of a firearm in the first degree, and criminal impersonation, among other charges, according to court documents.

She faced up to 25 years in prison.

“This is when I really started to panic,” she says in the documentary. “I’m absolutely freaking out because I’m trying to figure out if they have all these things, they concocted all this falsified stuff, what is going to be my defense?”

Her bail was set at $1 million, which she could not meet, so she remained incarcerated.

Sumasar was imprisoned for about seven months, during which time she was separated from her then-12-year-old daughter, Chiara.

“Every day seemed like a lifetime, when you’re in a place like that,” she says in the docuseries.

She was finally released in December 2010, after an informant called the Nassau County District Attorney’s office saying Sumasar had been framed, according to court documents.

What happened to Seemona Sumasar after she was freed?

In 2011, Sumasar and her daughter, Chiara, sued Nassau County and the police detectives involved in her arrest, according to the Netflix documentary.

The lawsuit was settled for $2 million in 2017.

“Any settlement they would have given me, I probably would have just said yes to, just for it to be over,” Sumasar says in the documentary. “So yes, that was a relief, and I couldn’t have asked for a better outcome.”

She also said that the settlement wasn’t just about money, but about vindication, and about not having to relive her experiences in a trial.

“I never said, ‘Oh, I wanted X amount. I never relayed that to anybody else,” Sumasar says in the documentary. “I just wanted to win, I think. I admit that you all were way out of line and wrong, because I didn’t want to have to go to testify.”

She also reflected on the anger she felt after she was exonerated.

“When I found out that he was found guilty, to me, it’s like, ‘I told you so.’ I was more angry about it, you know what I mean? Like, why couldn’t anybody listen to me? Why did it have to take seven months for us to go through this?” she says. “For me, I knew it all along.”

Where is Jerry Ramrattan now?

Ramrattan, now 52, ​​was convicted in January 2012 on charges including rape in the first degree, perjury in the first degree, and tampering with a witness in the third degree, according to court documents.

Three of Ramrattan’s associates, Lovell, Johnson and Rajive Mohanlal, were subsequently charged with lying about Sumasar’s supposed crimes. They pleaded guilty to perjury and were sentenced to six months in jail plus four years of probation.

Ramrattan is currently incarcerated in the Eastern NY Correctional Facility, a maximum security level facility for males, according to his inmate record from the New York State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision.

He will be eligible for parole in December 2031, after having served a minimum sentence of 21 years, five months and two days.

His earliest possible release date is April 24, 2032, and his maximum release date is Nov. 22, 2040.

During his time as an inmate, Ramrattan has filed multiple lawsuits. In 2012, he brought a complaint against the New York City Department of Corrections, claiming that he had experienced religious discrimination while incarcerated at New York City’s Rikers Island between 2010 and 2011. These claims were ultimately dismissed.

In 2021, he filed a complaint against the State of New York, alleging that he had not received adequate accommodations for his visual and hearing impairments during a period of time at the Eastern NY Correctional Facility. These claims were also dismissed.

Ramrattan also filed an appeal against his original conviction, which was denied in 2015.

This article was originally published on TODAY.com