Judge to scammer: ‘You broke a young woman’s heart’

WEST CHESTER >> An East Fallowfield man who opened fraudulent credit cards in his fiancée’s name and used them to buy, among other things, her engagement ring, begged a Common Pleas judge on Thursday to allow him to delay the start of a prison sentence for his crimes. The judge was not sympathetic. “You broke a young woman’s heart,” Judge Patrick Carmody told defendant Tyler Alan Ramaley before ordering sheriff deputies to take him into custody, handcuff him, and lead him from the courtroom while his former girlfriend watched.

“This is egregious conduct under any scenario. It’s a despicable crime. It’s creepy,” the judge said.

Ramaley, 30, had pleaded guilty earlier this

year to a single count of felony theft by deception for opening multiple credit cards in his girlfriend’s name while they were living together in West Chester, all without her permission or knowledge.

He then ran up more than $31,000 in expenses on the cards over a period of months. According to the testimony in court, one of the things he purchased was the engagement ring to prove his love for the woman.

Carmody sentenced Ramaley to 8 to 23 months in Chester County Prison, plus an additional three years of court supervised probation. He ordered him to pay his former girlfriend $31,000 in restitution, even after Ramaley argued that he had paid her back more than the $1,000 she told the judge she had received.

Ramaley, who was representing himself in the proceeding, asked Carmody repeatedly to allow him to report to the prison after the Easter weekend, in order to give him time to spend with his family and his new girlfriend, whom he said was several weeks pregnant with their child.

“It has completely changed my outlook on everything,” to have a child on the way, Ramaley told the judge. He wanted to be with his aunt and cousins over the weekend to scatter his grandmother’s ashes, he said. “It has scarred me and hurt me.”

Carmody, who regularly warns defendants who are facing prison time to be ready to report to jail the day of their sentencing, was having none of it. “Why do you need (to have a child) to realize that what you did was horrible?” he wondered. “You used her credit to buy her the engagement ring.”

His former fiancée, a 27-year-old event planner from West Chester who appeared in the courtroom with her parents, spoke briefly about what the crime had done to her.

Julie Fox said she had to take on extra jobs to pay off the debts that Ramaley rang up in her name.

The woman told West Chester police Detective Scott Whiteside in March 2018 that she had met Ramaley, a former collegiate baseball player and auto finance account director, in 2014. They began dating and eventually moved in together in the borough.

In 2016, Fox was contacted by a debt collector about an American Express credit card that was past due, a card she said she had never authorized and knew nothing about, she told police.

After some research, she said she was able to track down four credit card accounts in her name that had been opened without her permission — the AmEx card, two Chase Bank cards, and a Bank of America account. At the time of her report to police, the balance on all four accounts was $31,516.

Fox was eventually able to determine that Ramaley had opened the cards using her credit information in 2015. He was able to keep them secret from her by paying the card minimums and intercepting the bank statements from their mailbox.

The woman told Carmody that she was aware of Ramaley’s past, which included two convictions for passing bad checks at area golf courses — $3,500 at the Ingleside Gold Club and $2,700 at the Downingtown County Club — offenses for which he received only probation.

She said when she confronted Ramaley about the thefts from her, he told her he did it so they could have a nice wedding. “He said he was trying to help us,” she said.

“I would like him to go to jail,” Fox said. “He’s done this before and he’s never had to go to jail.”

That sentiment was echoed by Assistant District Attorney John McCaul, who prosecuted the case. He argued that the nature of Ramaley’s crime, and the fact that it was not his first brush with the law, deserved a sentence of nine to 23 months in county prison, plus probation.

“This is an opportunity to stop this defendant in his tracks,” McCaul said. “Probation hasn’t worked.”

McCaul also noted that prior to his arrest on the West Chester charges, he was arrested for a scheme to defraud his employer in Lancaster County — the Exterior Company — of commission on sales he fabricated. He claimed to be using the money he had earned from that scheme to pay restitution to his one time fiancé.

“He is finding new ways to steal,” McCaul said. “He’s robbing Peter to pay Paul.”