Carroll jailed for 21 years
'Black Clothes' cops were enforcers -judge
By Patrick Denny
Stabroek News
June 14, 2002
Former Economic Affairs officer at the US Embassy in Guyana, Thomas Carroll, was yesterday sentenced to 262 months (21 years, ten months) in jail by a federal court in Chicago, Illinois, USA.
In sentencing Carroll, US District Court Judge Blanche Manning cited the involvement of several members of the Guyana Police Force's Target Special Squad (TSS), who Carroll recruited as enforcers to protect his scheme and to force his customers to pay up.
The government has denied knowledge of the activities of the policemen implicated but following recent revelations by the US court, President Bharrat Jagdeo said the matter would be investigated.
Carroll and his Guyanese accomplice, Haleem Khan, pleaded guilty to selling US non-immigrant visas after they were arrested in 2000. Carroll was arrested at his parents' home in a Chicago suburb, and Khan in Miami, Florida.
Khan, a West Demerara businessman, comes up for sentencing later but federal prosecutors say that they would be asking for leniency on the court's sentencing guidelines. They said Khan cooperated with the federal authorities in their investigations into his and Carroll's activities.
Upholding the US government's motion for a sentence on Carroll above the usual sentencing guidelines, Judge Manning said she found that Carroll, although he had pleaded guilty, had attempted to mislead the court.
She said that among other things, he had knowingly misled the court and the Probation Department in claiming that he purposely misstated his assets; he was "the organiser or leader of a fraudulent visa scheme which operated over two years, netted millions of dollars" and involved a number of participants.
It was Carroll's attempts to recruit US embassy officer Benedict Wolfe to continue the fraudulent scheme that brought it out into the open.
US Assistant District Attorney, Carolyn McNevin told Stabroek News yesterday from Chicago that the late TSS officer Leon Fraser admitted his involvement with Carroll to federal investigators before he was killed earlier this year by criminals. Another TSS officer Eustace Abraham was a material witness in the matter. Hargobin Mortley, who was also a member of the force, pleaded guilty and served a reduced sentence in return for his cooperation.
Judge Manning said that to protect his operation from interference and force customers to pay, Carroll enlisted several Guyanese police officers, who were members of the feared paramilitary arm of the police force, often referred to as the "black clothes" and the "death squad" because of their black uniforms.
She cited the evidence of Mortley who said that Fraser had "a Mr Shabazz," arrested because he threatened the operation by calling Carroll at the embassy; planted evidence at the home of a person who had called Carroll's boss at the embassy about his activities, and destroyed articles at another person's house valued at US$300 as a warning not to interfere in the scheme.
Another US embassy employee mentioned by Judge Manning was Eton Cordis, whose testimony showed that "Carroll accepted 50 rather than 11 bribes". Cordis was detained by the local police and is now before the courts on several charges related to his activities.
Judge Manning found too that Carroll's fraudulent visa scheme disrupted both trade and travel between the US and Guyana; caused the temporary closure of the non-immigrant visa section as well as the embassy and several embassy employees were shot at and were required to take extra security precautions.
She said too that because Carroll issued some 3,600 visas, the government could not possibly track down all the persons to determine if they had any criminal intentions. "In fact persons who entered the country with Carroll's visas have since been arrested and charged with rape and drug possession with intent to deliver." Also, "at least one United States citizen who was in Guyana and had warrants for his arrest in the United States was able to get back into the United States undetected by using a false name and a fraudulent visa supplied by Carroll."
Carroll is likely to serve 80 per cent of the time he was sentenced to if he earns the maximum 20 per cent off for good behaviour.