(HOUSTON, Texas) – James Maceo Ramey, 60, Houston, Texas, has been sentenced to the maximum prison term under the federal sentencing guidelines for passport fraud and obstruction of justice, United States Attorney Don DeGabrielle announced today.

Ramey, who was convicted by a jury’s verdict in April 2007 of three counts of passport fraud and three counts of obstruction of justice, was sentenced to a total of 27 months in prison, without parole, and fined $25,000 this morning at a hearing before U.S. District Judge Lee H. Rosenthal. Ramey was also ordered to serve a three-year term of post-imprisonment supervised release during which he is ordered to return a fraudulently issued U.S. passport. Ramey has been in federal custody without bond since the return of the guilty verdicts.

Ramey’s convictions came after a four-day trial during which testimony and evidence proved Ramey - who had filed 15 bankruptcy cases over the course of several years, including four cases then still active in Texas - had fraudulently obtained a U.S. passport to replace one seized by order of a bankruptcy court. Ramey’s passport was seized upon order of a bankruptcy court directing the U.S. Marshals Service to seize all of  Ramey’s assets and records due to Ramey’s repeated failures to comply with bankruptcy court orders.  

A few days after the seizure, Ramey applied for a replacement passport, swearing in an affidavit to the local passport officials that his previous passport was “lost.”  Along with his false application, Ramey also submitted a business letter on the letterhead of one of his companies to the State Department requesting an expedited issuance of the passport due to impending international travel. The letter contained the forged signature of a real person, a U.S. citizen living overseas, who knew nothing of the forgery. The  replacement passport was issued to Ramey and picked up by him.

Ramey’s original attorney, who became a fact witness in the criminal case and therefore unable to represent him, testified at trial that even after Ramey’s passport had been seized, Ramey told him in the presence of others that he already had at least one new passport and that more passports were easy to get.

In November 2003,  the bankruptcy court issued an arrest warrant for Ramey for additional failures to comply with bankruptcy court orders. When deputy U.S. Marshals went to Ramey’s house to execute the warrant, both Ramey’s wife and adult son told the Marshals Ramey was out of town. After a 30-minute search of the house, deputy U.S. Marshals found Ramey hiding inside an air-conditioning return air vent that had been screwed shut from the outside. 

After the State Department discovered Ramey’s replacement passport had been fraudulently issued, a search warrant was executed at Ramey’s house for the fraudulently-issued replacement passport, but it was not and has never been found. Today, Rosenthal has ordered Ramey to return the replacement passport. 

The investigation leading to the charges was conducted by the Houston offices of the U.S. Marshals Service,  the U.S. State Department’s Diplomatic Security Service and the Texas City office of the FBI. The case was prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorneys Mike Schultz and Joseph Magliolo.

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