Bronfman gets over 6 years
Judge says Seagram’s heiress used fortune to inspire fear, silence others
A federal judge in Brooklyn sentenced Seagram’s heiress Clare Bronfman to six years and nine months in prison Wednesday for crimes related to her role in NXIVM, saying she used her wealth as a “sword” to inspire fear and silence within Keith Raniere’s cultlike organization.
Senior U.S. District Judge Nicholas Garaufis not only gave Bronfman 21 more months in prison than even prosecutors requested, but he asked U.S. marshals to take the well-heeled defendant immediately into custody to begin her sentence.
The judge imposed Bronfman’s sentence in a proceeding that lasted nearly five hours in a cavernous second-floor courtroom in Brooklyn’s federal courthouse.
The courtroom and needs for social distancing attracted a crowd so large that two extra rooms needed to be filled to watch the sentencing on video. If Bronfman was surprised at her legal fate, she was not alone.
“When I heard him say 81
months, I was speechless,” former NXIVM member Barbara Bouchey said outside courthouse following the sentencing, calling it justice served.
The 41-year-old Bronfman, the daughter of late Seagrams’ tycoon Edgar Bronfman, sat between her attorneys, Ronald S. Sullivan Jr. and Duncan Levin as 10 women, including Bouchey, laid bare the excruciating pain they experienced at the hands of Bronfman and Raniere, known in NXIVM as “Vanguard,” who faces life in prison at his sentencing on Oct. 27.
The speakers included former friends and coworkers and former members of Raniere’s “master/slave” group, Dominus Obsequious Sororium or DOS, in which some women were physically branded with Raniere’s initials by a woman using a cauterizing pen.
“She pretended to be my friend for a long time when I was just being manipulated to be groomed for Keith,” said one former DOS slave who described NXIVM as a “bogus and criminal organization.”
Sullivan told the judge Bronfman has “always been in the service of humanity,” adding,
“When Clare sees someone someone suffering, she steps in. When Clare sees hurt and suffering, she attempts to step in.”
Former NXIVM members shook their heads as Sullivan spoke. Bronfman has yet to disavow Raniere or NXIVM.
Bronfman’s lawyers have said she had no knowledge of DOS until it was exposed in late 2017.
Members of the allfemale group agreed to lifetime vows of obedience and be “slaves” to their “masters” and, in turn, recruit more slaves to whom they would be the master. At Raniere’s instruction, “slaves” gave collateral in the form of naked photos or embarrassing information that could be used against them if they ever turned on DOS. Women in the group were told to live on 500-calorie diets, to answer “readiness” drills at all hours of the night and, in multiple cases, to seduce Raniere, whose role as the head of DOS was kept secret.
But the judge made it clear that while Bronfman was not in DOS, she received letters from DOS members who wanted their collateral back, refused to comply and worked with Raniere to try to threaten them into silence.
Sarah Edmondson, a former NXIVM leader in Vancouver who became a whistleblower on DOS and who was branded, said via video that Bronfman, whom she knew for 12 years, tried to have her arrested on trumped up charges after Edmondson went public with her story to the New York Times.
Another former highranking NXIVM member, Ivy Nevares, took times during her statement to speak directly to Bronfman. Nevares, who was in NXIVM for nearly two decades and worked for Bronfman, said Bronfman lowered her pay and raised her rent for a supposed “ethical breach” against Raniere. Despite working 20-hour days at times, Nevares said, Bronfman afforded her no benefits or health insurance.
“Clare, after all the evidence, after countless victims whom you considered among friends — how can you remain loyal to your Vanguard?” Nevares asked Bronfman via video. “No matter how hard you try, you cannot be principled if the person you follow is a sociopath and a convicted criminal.”
Kristin Keeffe, another former high-ranking member of NXIVM who lived with Raniere and two other women in the Knox Woods townhouse development in Halfmoon that was home to many NXIVM members, tearfully explained Bronfman’s bankrolling of the company, which she left in 2014. She said Raniere, fully supported by Bronfman, told her to claim that their child, a son who is 13 now, was adopted and that Raniere was not the father. Keeffe said Bronfman demoted her and lowered her salary to $13,000 a year after she spoke on behalf of Bouchey, a former NXIVM official who had become an enemy of Raniere.
“(Bronfman) was trying to psychologically break me — and she almost did,” Keeffe told the judge.
Susan Dones, a former high-ranking NXIVM member, asked Bronfman: “Did you ever consider that they just wanted your money?”
Dones implored Bronfman to end her loyalty to Raniere, adding, “If you stay with him, you will end up committing more crimes.”
Also delivering victim impact statements was Toni Natalie, who was never a member of NXIVM but had earlier been Raniere’s girlfriend and, later, deemed a “suppressive” in the group.
Natalie emotionally said she had never before met Bronfman, but that she had become someone Bronfman sought out to destroy and worked to push criminal computer trespassing charges against her in Albany, which were dismissed.
Citing NXIVM’S scorched earth policy, she added: “I wasn’t just scorched. I was incinerated.”
And Bouchey said Bronfman went after her, threatening civil and criminal actions following Bouchey ’s departure in 2009 from the purported self-help group that was based in Colonie.
“I fear that Clare’s stalking of me is not over,” Bouchey said.
Other victim impact statements were delivered by Sally Brink, who worked for Bronfman and two women in DOS.
The courtroom drew attendees that included Moira Kim Penza, the lead prosecutor in the trial who is now in private practice. Also present but not speaking was a Mexican woman and former NXIVM member whom Raniere ordered confined to a room in her family ’s townhouse in Wilton Court in Halfmoon because she dared to kiss another man.
A group of NXIVM loyalists, including members of DOS, were in the courthouse after the sentencing. They declined comment.
Bronfman, who has homes in Clifton Park and Manhattan, faced 21 to 27 months in prison under sentencing guidelines for her guilty plea to conspiracy to conceal and harbor illegal aliens for financial gain, and fraudulent use of identification. The latter charge was for paying $135,000 in bills using the credit card of former high-ranking NXIVM member Pamela Cafritz, a close friend of Bronfman, after she died in 2016 of cancer.
The judge said Bronfman, who was on NXIVM’S executive board from 2009 to 2018, gave $100 million to Raniere and NXIVM over the years.
He said she used her influence to try to convince her father’s lawyer to convince attorneys general in New York and New Jersey to bring criminal charges against Rick Ross, a cult expert who sat high on NXIVM’S list of perceived enemies. Her effort was unsuc
cessful.
“There is nothing wrong with being wealthy, of course,” the judge said in a lengthy address before imposing sentence. “But I am troubled by evidence suggesting that Ms. Bronfman repeatedly and consistently leveraged her wealth and social status as a means of intimidating, controlling, and punishing individuals whom Raniere perceived as his adversaries, particularly NXIVM’S detractors and critics.
“This culture of stifling and threatening dissenters, a culture that Ms. Bronfman clearly participated in and perpetuated, is the same culture that gave rise to the darkest and most horrific crimes that Raniere and others committed,” the judge continued. “This was one of the mechanisms by which Raniere exerted and retained power over his victims, and even if Ms. Bronfman did not knowingly facilitate Raniere’s worst crimes, as a general matter she was his accomplice in the effort to intimidate and silence detractors, using her wealth and privilege as a sword on Raniere and NXIVM’S behalf.”
Prosecutors in Brooklyn’s Eastern District said Bronfman, who was in NXIVM alongside her older sister, Sara Bronfman-igtet, used her wealth to recruit immigrants — usually women — into Nxivm-related groups under the idea that they would get a scholarship or work. But Bronfman instead got a workforce of recruits desperate to earn a living and who were dependent on her and NXIVM to stay in the country.
“I thought I was being hired for my personal skills,” said a Mexican woman who was hired by Bronfman in October 2015 and came to America for a supposed job as a management consultant for a NXIVM affiliate making $3,600 a month.
She said she never received a salary. Bronfman, she said, held her visa over her head as if it was a privilege. The woman later joined DOS and, as she said Wednesday, was dismayed to see Bronfman referred to the coercive group as a sorority.
“Clare — I must say from personal experience that I was part of that group and it did not help me,” the woman said. She said she was told by her “master” that Raniere wanted to know about her sexual life with her boyfriend.
When Bronfman was afforded a chance to speak, the rail-thin heiress — wearing a pink shirt and ash slacks and mask with daisies — said “all over the world, people are praying for me” and that she was truly sorry for her crimes.
She apologized to the former DOS woman whom she admittedly exploited. It infuriated the judge, who saw it as Bronfman repeating the same disingenuousness he saw in her crime.
“This judge is not blind!” Garaufis told Bronfman. “Ms. Bronfman — I saw what you did and I’m speechless.”
A long silence followed as the judge, clearly irked, waited for her to continue.
The judge imposed a $500,000 fine on Bronfman, ordered she forfeit $6 million and directed her to pay more than $96,000 to the woman to whom Bronfman apologized.
Garaufis had made it clear he was considering an "above guidelines" punishment. Her recently hired attorneys, Sullivan and Levin, asked for three years of probation. Assistant U.S. Attorneys Tanya Hajjar and Mark Lesko had asked for five years.
The judge went beyond both requests.
Bronfman, NXIVM’S longtime operations director, was charged in July 2018 in a superseding indictment that also named Raniere, actress Allison Mack, a highranking NXIVM member who was on the television show “Smallville;” NXIVM president Nancy Salzman; Salzman’s daughter and high-ranking NXIVM member Lauren Salzman, and NXIVM bookkeeper Kathy Russell.
Raniere and Mack had been initially charged the prior April.
All of the women were, at one point, sexually involved with Raniere. The elder Salzman, known in NXIVM as “Prefect,” later pleaded guilty in 2019 to racketeering conspiracy.
Her daughter pleaded guilty to racketeering and racketeering conspiracy and became a star witness for prosecutors at trial. Mack also pleaded guilty to racketeering and racketeering conspiracy. Russell pleaded guilty to visa fraud. All are yet to be sentenced.
On Monday, Bronfman lawyer Levin told the judge she is facing a “possibly serious liver ailment" and is scheduling "medical follow-up visits, and we wanted the court to be aware of this situation.
Acting U.S. Attorney Seth Ducharme said he hoped the sentencing would bring a measure of justice to the victims.