By Dan Christensen, FloridaBulldog.org
Q Link Wireless CEO Issa Asad and his company pleaded guilty on Oct.15 in Miami federal court to bilking more than $100 million from a government program that provides free or discounted cell phone service to people in need. The sentence prosecutors are recommending: five years, which is equal to one year for every $20 million he stole.
Ten years earlier, while the feds say Asad was in the middle of committing his enormous fraud, he got an even better deal in Broward Circuit Court. The Davie man was then facing a possible death sentence following his arrest on a charge of first-degree murder.
What did Asad do? According to a Broward Sheriff’s arrest affidavit, on July 5, 2014 he used his car to run over and crush the life out of a groundskeeper at a Dania Beach office building housing Q Link’s headquarters. The building at 499 E. Sheridan St. is largely owned by one of Asad’s companies.
A witness working with the victim, Michael Kramer, said Kramer and Asad had argued over $65 – the difference between “what Asad wanted to pay for the work compared to what he wanted to pay the victim.”
Asad never stood trial. Instead, the felony murder charge was later cut to a misdemeanor – culpable negligence – and Asad was allowed to plead no contest to that significantly reduced offense. He was also put on probation for a year and ordered to complete anger management classes. Asad, free after posting a $1-million bond, spent a total of nine days in jail.
The court docket offers no explanation for the prosecution’s unusual change of heart. Florida Bulldog filed a public records request seeking the State Attorney’s close-out memo for the case. The office responded, “Close out not located in file.”
Instead, the office provided a copy of Asad’s two-page charging document upon which was handwritten “orally amended to culpable negligence 784.05(2) with approval of Mike Satz and deceased (sic) family – sister Susie Roy.” It was signed by case prosecutor Shari Tate, Satz’s homicide chief at the time.
While the criminal case against Asad was pending, Roy sued Asad over her brother’s death in civil court. That case ended in a confidential settlement before the murder charge was substantially reduced and may have played a role in the decision to allow Asad to plead to a misdemeanor. A felony conviction could have interfered with Q Link Wireless’s business with the federal government.
Susie Roy, a real estate agent in Colorado, declined to comment.
ASAD AND QLINK TO PAY $110 MILLION
Asad, 51, and his wife, Noha, own a 7-bedroom, 9-bathroom home at 12767 Equestrian Trail in Davie that the property appraiser values at $2.3 million. Resumes submitted to the Illinois Commerce Commission from Q Link Wireless executives identify Noha Asad as Q Link Wireless’s vice president.
In last month’s guilty plea, Asad and Q Link also agreed to pay nearly $110 million in restitution to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) – which runs the Lifeline Program that subsidizes basic communications services for low-income consumers – no later than sentencing, which is now set for Jan. 15, 2025 before Miami U.S. District Judge Rodolfo Ruiz. Asad has separately agreed to pay $1.76 million in restitution to the Small Business Administration and a forfeiture judgment against him of at least $17.48 million, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
In addition to last month’s fraud conspiracy and money laundering guilty plea, Asad also pleaded guilty to defrauding the Paycheck Protection Program, created during the COVID-19 pandemic to aid small businesses. Court records said Asad used that money on the construction of a new home, to buy jewelry and pay property taxes on his home.
According to the government, Asad and Q Link pleaded guilty to purposefully conspiring to defraud the Lifeline Program beginning as early as 2012 and continuing through at least 2021. They “cheated the program by making repeated false claims for reimbursement…providing false information about its Lifeline customers and deceiving the FCC about its compliance with program rules,” a U.S. Attorney’s press release says.
Asad and Q Link also used “tricks” to mislead the FCC about how many people were actually using Q Link’s Lifeline phones and engaged in “coercive marketing techniques to get people to remain Q Link customers,” the release says.
THE KILLING OF MICHAEL KRAMER
Back in Broward Circuit Court, court documents detail what happened the day Asad was charged with killing Michael Kramer.
BSO Detective John Curcio’s affidavit says Kramer’s helper, Stephan Senick, told police that after the two men had finished working, about 4:30 p.m. on July 5, 2014, Asad drove up in the parking lot in a new 2014 black Mercedes S550.
The two men began arguing. Senick said Kramer was standing in front of Asad’s car.
“Senick advised that Asad, who was sitting in the driver’s seat of his vehicle handed him the lesser amount of money that he wanted to pay the victim. Asad then moved his vehicle forward several times towards the victim who continued to argue with him over paying the total amount promised. Seeing Asad’s actions the victim shouted to Asad, ‘What are you going to run me over?’ ” the affidavit says.
“Senick stated that Asad then told the victim ‘If you don’t move I’m going to run you over.’ After that comment Asad then ‘hit the gas,’ according to witnesses and ran over the victim with his 2014 Mercedes automobile. Witnesses described Asad’s vehicle as going over the victim’s body with both front and back tires as if the vehicle [was] driving over a speed bump.
“Witnesses described Asad as having no obstruction behind his vehicle and could have easily backed up his vehicle to leave the area. Asad’s actions of running over the victim with his vehicle was an intentional act using his vehicle as a weapon,” the affidavit says.
Senick made the first call to 911 at 4:38 p.m. The second call was from Asad two minutes later. “In that call Asad tells the 911 operator that he had an ‘altercation’ and the victim ‘jumped in front of his car’ and was ‘attacking’ his car,” the affidavit says.
Kramer was transported to Hollywood’s Memorial Hospital. Asad was arrested at the scene, charged with aggravated battery.
The affidavit says Kramer was later transported to the hospice care unit at Aventura Hospital in North Miami-Dade County. He died July 15 without ever regaining consciousness. The Miami-Dade Medical Examiner’s Office found that Kramer suffered “multiple skull fractures and died from complication from crushing force injuries to the head.” The death was ruled a homicide.
“Based upon the above facts, the physical evidence, your affiant has probable cause to arrest Issa Asad for the premeditated murder of the victim Michael Kramer,” Detective Curcio’s affidavit says. Then-Broward Circuit Judge Matthew Destry signed the arrest warrant.
MURDER ONE BUT WEALTHY ASAD BONDS OUT
Nine days after his murder arrest, Asad posted the $1-million bond set by now-retired Judge Barbara McCarthy. She also ordered Asad to surrender his passport and remain on home confinement with a GPS monitor. He could only leave his house to visit his attorneys, but only upon prior notice to the court.
There is no scheduled bond for murder. And it is rare for a judge to set a bond on murder one because the penalty, possibly death, is a motivator to flee. Still, there is no explanation in the docket as to why McCarthy set a bond for Asad.
(McCarthy, who now works as a private mediator at Coral Springs-based ATD Mediation and Arbitration, was the judge who in 2011 sentenced Ryan LeVin, the privileged son of a wealthy Chicago jewelry merchant, to two years house arrest in his parents’ luxury condo at the Point of Americas and 10 years of probation after he pleaded guilty to two counts of vehicular homicide and leaving the scene of a fatal accident. The controversial sentencing followed a payment on LeVin’s behalf of an undisclosed sum to the victims’ families, the Sun-Sentinel reported at the time.
(In 2009, LeVin’s Porsche jumped the curb on AIA in Fort Lauderdale and killed two British tourists, Kenneth Watkinson, 48, and Craig Elford, 39. LeVin, on probation in Illinois at the time, fled the scene.)
Within two months, the murder one charge against Asad was reduced to murder in the second degree. Again, the court docket doesn’t explain why, but it wasn’t for a lack of evidence. The state’s discovery submission at that time listed various civilian and police witnesses, their statements, security video, crime scene and autopsy photos and reports.
Judge Jeffrey Levenson, a former federal prosecutor, soon caught the case. On Oct. 23, court records show, he granted Asad’s request to terminate house arrest. Levenson also granted Asad freedom to travel in South Florida without prior permission, and go anywhere in the U.S. for work as long as he obtained approval 24 hours in advance. The GPS monitor “shall be removed up to 24 hours prior to each trip and re-affixed within 24 hours or the next business day upon his return.” Asad also obtained permission to travel internationally.
In February 2015, Asad’s lawyers, Paul Calli of the Miami office of Carlton Fields Jorden Burt, and Fort Lauderdale’s Fred Haddad, complained to the court that Susie Roy was waging “an extensive social media campaign and engaged in sophisticated internet advertising to promote her dissemination of misinformation and half-truths” attacking Asad.
Roy “has leaked selective information obtained from discovery provided to her by the state attorney and/or the detectives. Her actions are inappropriate,” their motion states. “It is apparent that the purpose of this campaign is to influence potential jurors as well as to bolster the Sister’s related civil claim for money.”
The defense lawyers, who characterized Kramer’s death as a “tragic traffic accident,” asked the court to tell Roy to knock it off. The state opposed, but the docket lists no order issued to resolve the matter before Asad settled Roy’s civil suit against him and changed his plea to the misdemeanor charge of culpable negligence in November 2016.
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