Ex From Hell - 663

Audible subscribers can listen to all episodes of Generation Y ad-free right now. Join Audible today by downloading the Audible app. How you doing tonight, Aaron? Good. How are you? I'm doing okay. You know, Aaron, we're known for just getting to the point. And one of my pet peeves when I listen to other YouTubers, podcasters, online creators is if they don't get to the story quickly, I get upset. We have people that praise us for getting to the point and not just dilly-dallying around and telling random stories, right? Like people seem to appreciate that. Yeah, but I would also say there are probably people who aren't listening anymore because we don't do that. But I know that when we've gotten praise for not doing it, it's because they say it gives us more credibility because we're not making the show about us. We're really highlighting the cases we cover. And so that's really stuck with us over the years. Well, here's a story for you. You know, just some random thing in my life, because to me, it's a waste of time to tell. But if you want an example of why we don't tell a little story before an episode, hey, here it is. Like the other day, I asked my mom, are you hungry? Do you want to go out to eat? And my mom says, yes. And I'm like, oh, normally she doesn't know where she wants to eat. She's like, Lobster Fest is going on, Justin. I'm like, oh my God, Lobster Fest. Lobster Fest is like Lollapalooza or any music festival to my mom, okay? She wants to go because this is her thing. This is the one time of year she gets out to go to Lobster Fest at Red Lobster. And I say, you know, whatever you want, mom, I'll take you to Lobster Fest. So we get in my car. It's nine degrees out. My mom doesn't leave the house if it's under 60. And we go to Red Lobster. And as we enter this magnificent, nostalgic building that's playing music from the early 90s, all I smell is death and butter. We sit down at our table and my mom is just giddy with happiness as she peruses the Lobster Fest specific menu. And she went with the dual lobster tails, which that's a good solid pick. If you're going for Lobster Fest, you get the most lobster, most bang for your buck. I ended up going for the boil-in-the-bag lobster with the Cajun seasoning where I got two lobster tails and a dozen shrimp all in a bag that looked like it was pulled out of a dumpster. But before they brought the boil-in-the-bag out, they had actually brought me almost like latex gloves and a bib that I had to wear before eating this. I was ready to give a prostate exam or something. And everyone in the whole restaurant looked at me while I wore this ridiculous bib and pair of gloves. And then my mom was presented her lobster and I've never seen a bigger smile on her face. And we ate and we loved and we enjoyed. You love the food. What about the cheddar biscuits, man? Cheddar biscuits are always there, man. I mean, that goes without saying, right? The cheddar biscuits. I've never had lobster in my life. Not once. I don't even know that I've ever smelled lobster. I've seen lobsters in tanks. That's about the extent of it. The cockroaches of the sea are the most amazing, delightful thing when they hit your mouth and tongue with a little bit of drawn butter, Aaron. Well, I've not truly lived, man. So there you have it, folks. That's what I hear when I listen to most podcasts is some crazy asinine story that has nothing to do with anything. And all I want is for them to just get to the point. Do we have any announcements before we start today's episode, Eric? Well, all I can tell you is if you want more of these stories from Justin, maybe he'll drop in some more. Just make a request on this post by commenting or share your lobster story. What makes you happy? What gets you out of the house, people? That's what I want to know because usually there are things to get me out of the house like shopping especially if I need some groceries but yeah let's get to the story here Justin because this is one that you were inspired by you said Aaron I just heard about the craziest story it really seems unbelievable or whatever you got to look into it so I started looking into it and I thought god yeah it feels It's really crazy, but at the same time, of course this happened. Yeah. So there's a couple series on Netflix. One is called Worst Roommate Ever, and the other one is called Worst Ex Ever. And I just was binging these shows. I just was infatuated. But there was one episode on Worst Ex Ever. It was called Betrayed by the Badge that I just wanted to burn it all down by the time the episode ended. I was so upset and I just said, Aaron, we need to talk about this case. So with that, what are we talking about tonight? Yeah, you weren't watching The Pit like everyone else, huh? No. No, tonight we're going to be talking about a woman named Simona Sumazar, a very successful woman who had dreams of owning her own restaurant, but she discovered love and then she discovered betrayal. And when you hear what happened to Simona, it might make you think twice before you start dating someone, especially if they have some pretty tall stories. She and her family had moved from Guyana, South Africa. I think she was 10 or 11 at the time. And they moved to Queens, New York. And she was the oldest of three. And she mostly grew up in Long Island and she was a financial advisor at Morgan Stanley. Very successful financial advisor, I should say. And that was by 2006 and she wanted to open up a restaurant. It's called the Golden Crust, which is Jamaican cuisine, which if I'm ever up and see a Golden Crust, I'm definitely going to eat at one of these restaurants because that sounds amazing to me. Yeah. So she'd had this successful career, but by 2006, she was really looking to enjoy having this restaurant that she got a franchise of. And in 2010, she has a daughter named Kiara who lives with her. She actually had primary custody of her. But yeah, let's get into 2006, Justin, because she opens her restaurant, but then soon because of this restaurant, she meets a guy. She was a financial advisor at Morgan Stanley. She has this restaurant. She has a daughter. She's not dating. She's not looking for anyone. She's dedicated to her family, her own life. And she meets this guy named Jerry. This is June of 2006. This guy comes in. He's nicely dressed. He's wearing a suit. He also has a gun holstered. He comes in. He buys her food. He introduces himself as Jerry, and he says he's a cop and he's a detective for the Brooklyn DA's office. And that happens to be located right down the street from her restaurant. So this is very close to where he works. And he's like, I love this place. I'm going to be stopping by and eating here all the time. But something devastating happened to Simona. Her father would end up taking his own life in March of 2006, and this devastated her and the entire family. They had a lot of ethnic traditions and funeral prayers, and all of this actually delayed the opening of her restaurant because of this massive loss. So, you know, it's this weird roller coaster of emotions for her of trying to open this restaurant, live out her dream, and then her father is gone. She's not in the best place. And then you have this man walk into her life that seems well put together, perfect, handsome, and very talkative. Yeah, I'm going to talk a bit more about this because, like you said, she wasn't looking for a guy. But here's this guy. He's wanting to talk about what happened with her father. He's offering her comfort. He's also offering to go get her car washed and to get her things and be that steady person in her life who's always there, always ready to talk and lend an ear. And he's also, you know, beyond being an investigator, he says he also has his own security company. So she's thinking, this guy's really successful. He's being really good to me. And he's available because he told her that he was divorced and he had a child. So everything seems to be just working out where they're spending more and more time together. It's like they just fell into one another. He gave her pointers on security at her restaurant. And he's like, oh, your cameras are pointed in the wrong way. Let's get full coverage here. She's a single mom. She has a lot of family around her, but she's running this restaurant. She's there by herself a lot. So her family really likes Jerry. Her family is seeing him as a protector, and they very much appreciate his presence and his involvement in her life. And Jerry would even walk her home at night, and then he ends up spending the night with her. And this leads to a lot of time of him being at her house. Now, this house that she lives at was her parents' house, and she bought it. And she wanted to keep this house in the family. This house was very important to her. It was her home. So he's there walking her home, and he's there listening to her confide in him about the death of her father because she's a busy woman. She doesn't have friends or a lot of friends. It's hard to talk to your family members when they're grieving too. So this is her outlet. This is the one person she can confide in and trust. But she gets some bad news. She finds out that this man, Jerry, well, he's actually still married and has three children. And Sumizar, as much as she was into Jerry and she was enjoying her time with him, this is all off limits for her. She is thinking, no way I am going to continue to see this man. And so, of course, she confronts him about it. And this happened because she got a random phone call. This is 2008. And this woman says, I'm Jerry's wife. She says, Jerry's a liar. You know, he's got two kids. And Simona, she's like, who is this Jerry guy? And this woman on the phone says, oh, did he tell you he's a detective or a cop? Yeah, that's a lie too. He doesn't work in law enforcement at all. This woman confirms where she lives and that Jerry lives at his mom's house mostly. And Simona, she feels duped. She feels stupid that she's been conned by this man. And she goes to Jerry and says, I just got a phone call from your wife. And Jerry said, oh, don't believe her. She's a liar. He tried to explain that he was only married to get this woman a green card. And that was it. And Simona's like, but you have two children with her. So it's not just this green card marriage. And by some accounts, three kids. Yeah. It's funny, if you're gonna get someone a green card, how do you have children, whether it's two or three, how do you have any kids with them? And why did you say you were divorced if you're still married? So right there is a big red flag She even calls Jerry out She like and you not even a cop And he says well it complicated And maybe he tries to explain it with he a confidential informant or this or that, but he would wear uniforms and have a badge on him and a gun on him. That's not a confidential informant that is impersonating a police officer. So at this point, as you said, Simona, she's like, I'm done with you. I hope you have a good life, but we're going our own ways. If only, because Jerry is basically seeming to agree, but then he says, hey, would it be possible if I could live in the basement of your house for a couple weeks? But he doesn't leave after two weeks. But she sees some things about him. She sees that he's carrying a gun. She also ends up seeing that he has a bulletproof vest in the trunk of his vehicle. he also has a police badge and a badge in his wallet so she'd heard that he's not a real cop and of course there's this whole is he just a confidential informant what's he doing with a badge what's he doing with a vest yeah but it gets worse from there because he's at her house he's staying he's not leaving and on march 8 2009 he does something terrible she's essentially telling him you need to go and i need to get the keys back from you and apparently at this point she's kind of kicked him out and she doesn't want to let him back inside. So he comes to the house, he's outside the door and he's saying, let's just talk, let's just talk. And she's like, no, it's over. Give me the keys. And he says, well, I'll come in and I'll give you the keys. So she opens the door and as she turns around to lead him inside, he shoves her to the ground. And as she's trying to turn over, she hears duct tape being pulled and she goes to scream, but he puts duct tape over her mouth to silence her. And apparently he continues to plead with her to not leave him. And of course she can't respond because she's being held down on the ground with duct tape over her mouth. And when she starts crying and trying to scream, he drags her over to the basement door, drags her down the stairs, and then rapes her on the basement floor. After this, he proceeds to cry and plead with her to not report this, to not turn him in. And he will get up and leave. And of course, she's so terrified that she is just going to run to the front window, watch to see him get into his car and leave. And then she calls the police. Yeah, and I want to add in here, Justin, that one of the things he did while he was holding her prisoner like that, he was also threatening to take his own life. I can't even imagine what she went through with all of that, but it's terrifying. Because he always has his gun on him. So there's never a moment this gun isn't on his hip or on a shoulder holster. So this is horrifying. But I want to talk about another player in this story, Aaron. There's a guy, he's only referred to as Jerry's friend or Jerry's ex-friend because, you know, obviously they're not friends anymore. But this man, Jerry's friend, he talks about when he first met Jerry, they would go out drinking and partying a lot. He said, Jerry did security work for bars and clubs. It seemed that Jerry had a lot of connections with bar owners, city managers, and knew a lot of cops. He said that Jerry walked around with a badge inside of his wallet. So he wouldn't flash a badge all the time. He would just pull his wallet out and you could see this raised imprint, I guess, or outprint of a badge inside of his wallet. Jerry's friend said that one day they were driving around and he had expired tags. Jerry's in the passenger seat. The cops pull him over for the expired tags. and Jerry pulls out his wallet, flashes this badge inside of his wallet to the cops and they let him go. They just say, oh, have a nice day. So even Jerry's friend assumes that Jerry's a cop, assumes Jerry's telling the truth about all of this. Both Jerry's friend and Simona report that Jerry would have these phone calls with police officers, phone calls with the DA's office, they assumed. Well, beyond that, Justin, And he even took Simona one day over to the DA's office and signed in and then visited with people in there and talked with them as if he belonged there all the time. So it wasn't like she never saw anything. It's just later she gets that call. And then, of course, Jerry's wife is saying, yeah, don't believe him. He's not a cop. But he's built up all these relationships. That's real. Yeah. He seems to have things backing it up. So, of course, people are going to believe it. finally Jerry's friend says that Jerry asked him to do something Jerry asked him to call the police and report a crime that didn't happen well before we get to that Justin well I that's all I'm going to say about that is his friend said I want you to do something for me I want you to report a crime that didn't happen and Jerry's friend wasn't down with that and he got kind of scared and wigged out by Jerry's ask. And that's about the time Jerry's friend parted ways with Jerry. I'll leave it at that. Well, so Jerry was arrested. He was charged with rape. He was indicted by a queen's grand jury. So the NYPD, they are looking into investigating this guy further because there are all kinds of things on the table here. Now they're going after him because they're investigating him for sexual assault and for impersonating a police officer. And so the police at this point have been told about what is in his possession and about what he's been up to and about the crime he's committed. And so it's not as though they don't know about this, but after his arrest, he starts harassing her because he makes bail. So he starts telling her, you need to stop. But because he knows so much about police work though, he understands at some point that he can't keep this up because there's a restraining order that goes into place. So he starts sending people to harass her and say, you better stop or we're going to make your life miserable. And of course, she tells the police this and they go, did he contact you? No, no. It was people that know him. And they're like, well, we don't have restraining orders on them. So Jerry was given a $150,000 bail, which his mom would end up paying the whatever, 15,000 and bailing him out. And even his mother would call Simona and say, please drop the charges. You know this didn't happen. You know this wasn't how it went down. Trying to gaslight her and trying to get her to drop this rape charge against Jerry. And that's really disgusting. And the fact that $150,000 is a lot of money, but to have a alleged rapist be bonded out and not immediately have a restraining order set up, forcing Simona to do this on her own. I have problems here with the way the system works. I'm sorry. Well, yeah, and it seems like it's not airtight either. If all of his people can come and bother her, that's not a restraining order at that point. So the DA tells Simona the hearings are going to start in August of 2010, which again, this is going to be months, if not close to a year later. So she has to just live her life with the fear that Jerry's out there. She has to live her life knowing that this man who claims he goes to the DA's office every day could be walking by her restaurant every day. And she just has to live with this. I can only imagine how stressful that is. But two months before Simona's trial is supposed to begin, something terrible happens to her, right, Aaron? And I guess you're bringing up her arrest? Yeah. Yeah. Well, you had mentioned something about a friend being asked to talk about a crime that happened to him. And he was like, I'm not doing that. But Jerry had more than one person to talk to in this regard. Yeah. So Simona, she's asked by a friend to make a dish. And he said, hey, can you make this for me and bring it over? She said yes. And so she's driving to, I guess, this school where her friend works to deliver this dish. And a police officer pulls her over. The cops come up to her car. They ask her to step out of the car. Now, Simona thinks she might have ran a stop sign or something. She doesn't understand why she's being pulled over. They pull her out of the car. They place her into another police car. And they start driving away. and they're going to tow and impound her vehicle. Simona keeps asking them what's going on and they're not telling her anything. They said, it's just, you'll find out once we get to where we're going. And they take her to the fourth precinct in Long Island and she's left in an interrogation room for a little while. Finally, two detectives, Detectives Charles and Detectives Nill come in. They just start with, is there anything you want to tell us? Is there anything you want to confess? They said, you know, if you tell us now, it'll be a lot easier on you. And of course, Simona, she's like, what do you think I did? Like, I don't know what you're asking me about. I don't know what the problem is. And they keep saying, you know what you did. And if you tell us, we're going to go easy on you. And this goes on for hours. And at one point, Detective Charles opens up a file on the table and there's a picture of Jerry in it, which is interesting. Now Simona immediately asks, does this have something to do with Jerry? She says, if you think I did something, it's because of something Jerry did. And she starts explaining like her whole relationship with this guy, the rape and how Jerry likes to impersonate police officers, but the detectives, they just blow her off and they say, this has nothing to do with Jerry. Yet they have this file with him in it. Hours go by and the fourth precinct will contact another detective, Marissa Vowell, and she works for the NYPD police impersonation unit. Now, Marissa shows up and she's investigating two crimes of robbery by someone who was impersonating a police officer. And these people are describing this as a dark-complected female who is probably of Indian descent. One is in Nassau County. One is in Queens. So Marissa, she goes to the fourth precinct where Detective Charles says, yeah, we have this person in custody. The complainants have picked her out of a photo lineup. We know we have the right person. Well, Marissa goes into the interrogation room and starts questioning Simona. This is after like four or five hours of Simona being in here. And she's crying. She's distraught. And this is the first time it's explained to Simona what she's been arrested for. And Marissa explains, there's two robberies out there of someone who impersonated a cop, and they say it was you. And Simona says, oh, you mean like Jerry impersonates cops? And again, Simona says, this is my story. And she talks about Jerry and the rape and how Jerry impersonates police officers. And Officer Marissa, she's not expecting this response from somebody who's been accused of armed robbery. And we don't know anything about these armed robbery yet. We'll get to that in a minute here, Aaron. But she said that Simona presented herself very well. And she could verify that Jerry was going to trial for the rape of Simona. And she very much believed Simona's story. And so as Marissa leaving the interrogation room she meets with Detective Charles and says what going to happen to her And Detective Charles said well if she didn commit these crimes we going to set her free And so Detective Marissa, she was sure that Simona hadn't done the crimes in Queens. So she just assumed that they were going to let Simona out. But instead, Simona spends the night in custody and she's taken to the courthouse first thing in the morning. A judge reads off all the charges and now Simona's hearing the full extent of what she's being charged with and she's immediately transported to the Nassau County Correctional Facility. And Simona's family, they don't initially know what's happened to her. They don't know she's been arrested. They have no idea where she is, why she didn't show up for work. But once she gets to the correctional facility, She's able to call and now her family knows that she's been locked up for an alleged armed robbery or multiple armed robberies. Obviously, the family's not believing this. Simona was facing 16 felonies and up to 50 years in jail and her bail was set for a million dollars. Now, Aaron, apparently a rapist's bail is $150,000, and you can come up with $15,000 and be released and you're fine. But if you're accused of a couple armed robberies, well, that's way more serious. And even though nobody was raped or murdered, you're going to get a million-dollar bail set. And the fact of the matter is, at this point, we have no evidence or proof that Simona has broken any crime and she's completely innocent. Well, I want to say here that she had two reported crimes against her in Queens, and then she had several reported crimes against her in Nassau County. And so all of these involve basically allegations that it was her and two men who would pull people over and then rob them at gunpoint. and she seemed to be the ringleader. And so because they happened in two different places and at similar times, like around one something in the morning, they were finding that this was all too real for them, the authorities. And this is why they hauled her in. And they just, I guess, assumed that since there were all these different people calling in and reporting this and giving partial or full license plates and descriptions of vehicles, namely a Jeep Cherokee, that they had the person they were looking for. They were very confident. You know, these are the calls. There's one, September 15th, 2009, there was a man who reported a dark skinned woman posing as a police officer with a badge and gun who robbed him. There wasn't much detail on this one. So the police didn't have any leads. March 2nd, a man named Terrell Lovell, he called 911 and he's the one that gave a partial plate number claiming he had been robbed of money and jewelry. And then May 19th of 2010, Luz Johnson reported she was a victim of an armed robbery in Inwood, New York. She gave the same description. It was a dark-complected woman, stole $1,400 in cash and possibly some jewelry and other possessions. And she's the one that gave the full plate number. And she was shown a photo lineup and she picked out Simona from that lineup. And apparently Terrell did too. Yeah. These, these cases that they figured they could tie to her all happened between March and then into May. And so again, that's why you had Detective Nill working this case And they really thought, well, this is the person we're looking for. And on May 21st, 2010, Detective Nill, he ran a computer national comprehensive report search for Simona Sumazar. And it revealed where she lived and that her sister, Lalani, owned a 1999 Jeep Grand Cherokee. Now, this is the one that was basically reported as being seen as being a part of these robberies. So when these descriptions of the vehicles came in, they could actually tie them to people that she knew or that she drove. And so it was just tying everything together into this beautiful little knot, I guess, this bow. And so she's arrested two months before the trial of Jerry, whom has raped her. She's gone into custody, but she's going to go testify at a grand jury. Now, if you remember, Luz Johnson called 911 at 1.30 a.m. And that was on May 19th, 2010. Well, Simona happened to be 100 miles away at Mahegan Sun Casino in Connecticut. Simona was there with family members. She was there using her phone. And there's video evidence of her at this casino. I think it's at a craps table where she's throwing dice and they have a photo of her at this table. They have cell phone tower pings from her phone. And she's been behind bars for months now. And she thinks this is my way out. I have a solid alibi. And so she testifies at this grand jury. She has proof. She has eyewitnesses. She's also testifying that she's being set up by her ex-boyfriend Jerry. But alas, Aaron, what happens at this grand jury? Yeah, no, they decide that this isn't good enough. Someone else could be using her phone and that the video evidence isn't clear enough to really prove it's her. It just looks like it could be her. So the video footage is too grainy, too unclear. Anyone could have had her phone. We have covered other cases where some 40-something-year-old guy claims he went home and visited his mom at 1.30 in the morning, and that's enough of an alibi to take him out of the loop of an investigation. I mean, I've seen weaker alibis just get someone cleared that then turn around, you know, and they're actually the perpetrator of the crime. And this one, to me, is one of the most solid alibis I've heard in a while. She's at a casino with friends and family, and she's using her phone, and there's video evidence, and this is just thrown out. Dismissed. Disregarded. There's an important thing that also happens here that's pretty devastating to her, and that's that there's law enforcement, Detective Charles in particular, who talks with the assistant district attorney and tells them, when they started the interview with Sumazar, she started talking about her financial problems. She was saying that her business wasn't doing well, right? And so this got fed into the whole deal. But the thing is, while the detectives are saying this is motive for her to commit these crimes, in actuality, this never appeared in the notes. So when the detectives were taking notes while they were talking to her, particularly Detective Charles who interviewed her, this was not in their notes. And so, wow, they just get to say it happened. They just get to say it happened. And maybe she wasn't doing too well financially because she's been raped by her ex-boyfriend and she's distraught and suffering from PTSD. And I don't think that's going to make somebody go out and buy a gun and a bulletproof vest and a badge and then drive her sister's car around to rob people. I mean, they just make it up as they go. And at this point, Simona, she's been sitting behind bars for months. Her restaurant is going to go bankrupt, essentially. She's going to lose her restaurant, her house. She's not able to pay the mortgage. This is her family's home. This is the one thing she loves and thinks is going to be in her family for the rest of her life and it's getting foreclosed on. She's completely helpless. There's, to her knowledge, zero investigation going into Jerry and Terrell and Johnson and all these people. I mean, you could easily check the phone records of all of these people because none of them should know each other. All these random victims who were allegedly robbed at gunpoint by Simona, they shouldn't know each other. So Simona's lawyer, he's trying to get one year's worth of phone records between all of these people because he wants, that's his defense. You know, the whole defense is she's being set up and I need to prove that. But the judge denies his motion and this leaves her with no defense because they've already disregarded her alibi that she was at a casino a hundred miles away. And now they're denying all the motions by her lawyer to gather evidence. Yeah. And there's a lot more here, especially when Detective Charles would tell the assistant district attorney that Sumazar was very calm and kind of leads this attorney to believe that Sumazar was obviously guilty. Now I'll give a little credit here to the assistant district attorney because they actually do attempt to talk to these detectives, Charles and Nell, and ask, is there any connection? Can you look and see if there's any connection with Ramratten with these reports and some of this other stuff, you know, these allegations? Can you look and see? But see, the thing is, is Ramratten, even on his own website, remember I brought up that he also had his own security company? Well, he had a website. And on that website, Justin, he's dressed in police gear. So it's even on the freaking website, according to what this attorney found. But see, of course, then Charles and Nail are saying, oh yeah, don't worry about this guy. Sumazar is the guilty party here. You don't have to worry about it. Jerry Ramratten says he runs a security agency where he's literally dressed and impersonating a police officer. And now we have crimes that are committed by someone impersonating a police officer. And they're all claiming it's Simona, who by all accounts appears to be a single mom running a restaurant with her family, a good Samaritan. Nothing would indicate that she would have access to guns and all of these things. Nothing would indicate that this is in her pattern of behavior. But yeah, we're just going to leave this all alone. So it feels like all hope is lost, but we have one person, that friend of Jerry's, that friend who stopped hanging around him when Jerry asked him to do a made-up crime. And he happens to see a news article about Simona's arrest and that she's behind bars. This is kind of shocking to him. So eight months before Simona was arrested, Jerry's friend remembers Jerry asking him to call 911 and tell them that Simona pulled you over and robbed you wearing a gun and a badge. They ended up going and meeting another man named Rajiv and Jerry's friends. Like he asked this guy to do the same thing to report this fake robbery. And that's when Jerry's ex-friend, this guy, we can't, we won't name his name. He wants to stay anonymous. He thinks this whole thing is insane. And that's when he stopped hanging around Jerry. But now we're months after Simona's arrest. Jerry sees this article and now he runs into Rajiv at a bar and he confronts him. And he says, hey man, you need to tell the truth about Simona. You need to call the police and tell them what really happened. You need to tell them this robbery never happened. There's an innocent woman sitting behind bars. And he even threatens Rajiv. He says, if you don't call them, I will. and I'll tell them that you're lying. Well, Rajiv, he ends up making a call to Jerry and Jerry will call that fourth precinct and he'll report that his ex-friend is witness tampering. His ex-friend is threatening people. So Jerry's friend, he gets contacted by the police, specifically the Nassau internals affair department who inform him that Simona is guilty. And they accuse him of working alongside her and threatening witnesses. And they end up arresting Jerry's ex-friend. And they tell him witness tampering you can serve up to 25 years So if you just tell us that you working with her we go easy on you Well he knows he telling the truth and he fighting for Simona He fighting for himself now too So he ends up hiring a lawyer. He's losing money because now he's been jailed and he's super depressed because his life has been ruined. Simona, she's been rotting in jail. It's been like 180 days. She says that she's losing her hair. She's unable to eat. She's having all of these health issues. She essentially feels like she's dying. And she doesn't even know that Jerry's ex-friend has now been arrested too. Like her only salvation that she didn't know was there has been arrested and threatened with witness tampering. Yeah. I mean, it's like, how could this get worse at that point? So it's December 2010. There's a woman named Sophia Lewis. And Sophia Lewis is an ex-girlfriend of Jerry. She walks into the Nassau's DA's office and she asked to speak to somebody about Simona's case. They're all kind of taken aback like, who is this person? And she comes in and talks about the whole conspiracy that she was dating Jerry at this time. And Sophia was with him when he drove Rajiv around and told about this whole robbery conspiracy to get Simona in trouble. She even said that Jerry had a gun out when he told his friend Rajiv to make this phone call and act like he'd been robbed at gunpoint by someone impersonating a police officer. He even chose Nassau County as the location for this fraudulent robbery because he knew that Nassau County had stricter laws and policies. He knew that they would arrest somebody, keep them overnight, and essentially put them in a corrections facility the next day. Yeah, that's absolutely correct. And the reason is because there were those two robberies that happened in Queens that were reported, and those did not result in an arrest. And so that's how we ended up, I guess, with these multiple robbery allegations here, because like you said, they were going to move as quick as they could and figure this out. And they did. She claims that Jerry offered two other people $20,000 to make these fraudulent reports. And that would be Love Johnson and Terrell. You know, what's interesting is I looked this up and as far as I can tell, it seems like he offered Terrell 20 and offered Luz like three, which I wonder how they feel about that when they find out the amount. But you know, let's be honest though. This guy wasn't going to pay them this money. Yeah. They weren't getting paid either way. They weren't getting paid. So the amounts don't really matter. I mean, it might as well be a penny or a million dollars at that point. So thank God for Sophia Lewis coming in and telling the truth here. I'm actually shocked that they didn't arrest her on the spot for creating a false police report or obstruction, but they actually listened to her. And this information gets passed on to Simona's lawyer. And it's December 2010. Simona's been sitting behind bars for 194 days. She gets a call. They pull her out of her cell and she doesn't know what's happening because it's not visitation time. It's not anything. She thinks she's going to get charged with more crimes or she's going to be told that, you know, she's up for execution now because somebody died in this fraudulent thing. She's thinking the worst of the worst. But she gets downstairs and her lawyer informs her, you're getting released. The DA has flipped the three conspirators and the ex-girlfriend, Sophia Lewis, and they're all providing evidence that Jerry was behind everything. They're dropping charges against Simona and Jerry's ex-friend who had been arrested and charged with witness tampering. They're also dropping charges against him. And now we have Jerry who is already being charged with rape and impersonating a police officer. Well, the DA is now going to lump in all of these conspiracy charges. He's going to lump in all of this other stuff that Jerry's done into the same trial, which I kind of love. I'm glad it wasn't separate trials here because I think the context really matters of how evil and disgusting this man is. So they're finally going to go forward with the trial and Simona is going to take the stand and testify against Jerry. She's going to talk about her rape. She's going to talk about the hell she has been put through. And it's said that by the end of the trial, it didn't take long for any deliberations and they find Jerry Ramratten guilty. They give him 25 years for the rape and seven years for the conspiracy, totaling 32 years. I personally don't think that's enough. What do you think, Aaron? Well, no, that's what he got. I mean, it's just interesting that they're not more perturbed that someone was impersonating law enforcement and then accusing someone else of doing the same and framing them. I mean, this is a huge amount of damage. There's no way to ever make this right. We know because one, they won't ever pay you enough to make it right. If there's such a number, they don't even attempt to get there. But yeah, it seems like he's allowed to do all this damage and they probably feel like they're hitting him hard with this. They probably do. But it's obviously a dangerous individual who is getting other people to go after his intended victim and to support the frame job against her. I'd say that's pretty damn dangerous. And where does this leave Simona? She's lost her house. Her life has been destroyed. And she wants retribution. So she ends up filing a lawsuit against Detective Charles and that fourth precinct, the people that put her behind bars. And she has a lot of evidence here. During her initial interrogation, she says that they had a file with Jerry's photo in it. These detectives were told by another police officer, Marissa, that she wasn't guilty of the other armed robbery, so they might want to look into her allegations here. They knew Jerry had posed as a police officer himself, but he was never questioned. There was the whole alibi of her being at a casino, her phone pinging off cell towers up there. And at the grand jury, Erin, she talked about this whole conspiracy too, right? Oh, yeah. So it's all on record. It's all there. It takes until 2017 for her civil suit to be settled. It's a claim that she got close to $2 million. I don't know if that's enough or not. It's not. I mean, think about it. All the time that was lost, all the accusations, losing her business, losing her home, her family's home. You know, when we talk about someone who's not necessarily looking for love, they're focused on their family, they're focused on work. She was focusing on preserving her family and their lives. And so it's really sad that this guy comes along and takes everything from her. And $2 million? Now, I would think if there was any justice here, we'd have to look at what's that time worth? I know it's hard to put a number on it, but what else is it worth when you're talking about losing the family's home where she grew up and her business? I don't know. That $2 million? That might cover a little part of that. All she really wanted was for law enforcement to acknowledge wrongdoing. She wanted an apology. She wanted the DA and everyone involved to issue a public apology to her. And you know that's never going to happen. You know, she might get an apology from the city, maybe from, you know, some generic thing from the Nassau County Police Department, but nothing. And that's all she wanted was, you guys arrested me on false charges. You gaslit me. You accused me of things I hadn't done. And you made me sit behind bars for up to seven, eight months. All she wanted was an apology. She barely got that. Her life is ruined. Jerry's ex-friend, his life was ruined. All because of this man who seemingly was known by most law enforcement. Most of the people who associated with him knew he was a liar, a con man, but he got away with it for years. And all he gets is 32 years. He'll probably be out in 25. Come on. Yeah. So she wanted apologies, but you know, when it comes down to it, I think she's kept a positive attitude because she said the truth is out there and everyone knows it. So now everyone knows she was set up and that it was not her that was doing this. So it's a small victory. If this happens again, are there any safety nets? Are there any catches? Are these detectives going to do anything differently? Are they going to actually do their job next time and investigate? Because this just seemed like everybody had blinders on and was just rubber stamping her all the way to the point of her possibly spending 50 years behind bars for armed robbery and impersonating a police officer. 50 years for her crimes where nobody was actually hurt or killed. She was facing more time than Jerry. Yeah, I think all things being equal, this is maybe widespread, but people will say, well, I don't know her, but I know him. And so even though he was just inserting himself in everyone's lives, including the cops. They just got used to him and they're just like, yeah, of course. And so they take him at his word. This is the importance of backing things up with facts. And unfortunately, a lot of people don't like facts because it gets in the way of what should be. You know, hey, we know this guy. Jerry's a great guy. Why would we listen to anything she has to say? It sounds all like a bunch of BS. But this is where we end up because the truth got out. And again, you said it, Sophia Lewis, kudos to her. It's a great thing for these exes to come forward and say, you know what? Yeah, I was his ex too. And let me tell you about him. I mean, she didn't have to do that, but it feels like karma got him. That's what it feels like to me. But that's just a happy ending. I mean, as for Simona, you know, for someone who worked in investments for Morgan Stanley had started running her own restaurant. The latest that I've heard on her is that she was working as a flight attendant, at least as of last year. And it's said that she's been interested in that career since 2014. So hopefully she's happy. Hopefully she's found, you know, some stability. And also it wasn't really mentioned in the show, but she had been back to dating her child's father, Devin, you know, at the time that this all went down. I don't know if she's still seeing him or not. She seems like a very powerful and resilient woman who deserves all the good things that come her way for the rest of her life because nobody deserved what she was put through. Yeah. Thanks everyone for listening and thank you for your support. We appreciate every one of you. Thank you. Thank you. joining Audible.