A Brooklyn, New York jury yesterday handed down life sentences to two men found guilty of a series of insurance killings some of which were committed in Guyana.
According to Newsday.-com the sentences were handed down to former postal worker Ronald Mallay and former insurance agent Richard James who were convicted in July of taking out life insurance policies on four unsuspecting victims, then having them shot or poisoned.
The report said that the federal jurors started deliberating yesterday on whether the two would be given lethal injections or life without parole. Within hours, they had chosen prison. The defence had argued that Mallay and James were framed by Guyanese immigrants who testified with promises of U.S. residency. Two persons were killed in Guyana and two in Queens, New York.
In July last year the federal jury had deliberated for three days before finding the two guilty of committing murder in the aid of racketeering, conspiracy and multiple other charges.
James, 46, and Mallay, 61, were charged with orchestrating the poisoning and shooting deaths of four victims, two in a close-knit Guyanese community in Queens and two in Guyana since the early 1990s. The defendants treated their victims “like meat”, Assistant U.S. Attorney Robert Capers had told the jury during the trial. “They put prices on their heads.”
Prosecutors had said that Mallay took out a US$400,000 insurance policy on his own brother-in-law before hiring a `hit-man’ to gun down his relative in Queens in 1993. Mallay’s nephew, a witness for the government, testified that his uncle later said he was happy the victim was left “dying in the street like a dog.”
Among the murdered, according to prosecutors, was 42-year-old Basdeo Somaipersaud, who was found dead in 1998. Subsequent autopsy results showed that the man died from lethal doses of chlorpromazine injected into his system.
In another case, $300,000 was collected from the death of Mallay’s own nephew in Guyana, Hardeo Sewnanan. Sewnanan was poisoned in June 1999. He died after drinking what investigators believe was alcohol and ammonia during a dinner with Mallay at a restaurant in Berbice. The other two victims were Vern `Dilly’ Peter, the husband of an accused co-conspirator, and Alfred Gobin.
The evidence included a secretly recorded audiotape of James offering a bribe in a failed bid to kill another down-and-out victim in Harlem.
“Complete bum, if you look at him, you will laugh,” James had said on tape. “I will give you 25 grand.”
The government had stated that MetLife Inc. discovered the scheme after noticing that 21 death claims had been filed on policies written by James within a few years.
The rate “was approximately 318 percent higher than expected (and) … a large number of deaths were violent or under unusual circumstances,” court papers had stated. The insurance company fired James in July 2000 and notified authorities. The defendants were arrested in 2002.
