$100M BAIL FOR SEX CULT HEIRESS
Heiress accused of bank rolling sex slavers
Seagram heiress Clare Bronfman was a big-time player in the sinister sex cult involving former “Smallville” actress Allison Mack, federal prosecutors said Tuesday.
Bronfman, 39, was arrested and charged in a new indictment that also named the cult’s president, Nancy Salzman, her daughter Lauren Salzman and bookkeeper Kathy Russell as new defendants in the creepy case.
Prosecutors claim the women engaged in a racketeering conspiracy and other crimes to keep the upstate sex ring going with its “master” and “slave” structure designed to extract free labor out of its victims and sexual services for leader Keith Raniere.
The feds arrested Raniere in March while he was living with Mack at a $10,000-aweek villa in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. Mack was arrested in April.
Prosecutors previously charged the pair with sex trafficking and conspiracy, claiming they forced female “slaves” to have sex with Raniere and permanently brand his initials onto their bodies.
Bronfman, the youngest daughter of the late billionaire philanthropist and former Seagram chairman Edgar Bronfman Sr., appeared in Brooklyn Federal Court on Tuesday afternoon. A judge set her bail at a whopping $100 million.
Wearing flip-flops and a T-shirt, the multimillionaire defendant pleaded not guilty through her lawyer and was placed on house arrest with an electronic monitoring.
Appearing before a different judge in Albany, the three other defendants entered not guilty pleas, a spokesman with the U.S. Attorney’s Office said.
The judge agreed to release Russell on a $25,000 bond and the Salzmans on $5 million each. The women were not immediately released Tuesday, the spokesman said.
In court paperwork released Tuesday, prosecutors said Bronfman was a “highranking” member of the sex cult, known as Nxivm, from about 2009 to 2018 and helped bankroll the group.
They said Bronfman made it possible for Raniere to obtain use of a dead person’s credit card account by arranging to pay the monthly bill with the dead person’s bank account.
Raniere used the card as part of a scheme to avoid paying taxes, prosecutors said.
As a leader of the freaky cult, Bronfman also led efforts to discredit DOS victims and orchestrated “abusive litigation” meant to intimidate and attack perceived enemies and critics of Raniere, prosecutors claimed.
Prosecutors claim Lauren Salzman trafficked an undocumented woman for free labor and locked her in a room as “punishment after she developed romantic feelings for a man who was not Raniere.”
Raniere’s ex-girlfriend Toni Natalie, an alleged victim of the scheme, said she was happy with Bronfman’s astronomical bail amount.
Speaking to reporters after the hearing, Natalie, 59, claimed Bronfman used her money to fund Nxivm and “terrorize people.”
“Without the Bronfman money, most of this would never (have) happened,” she said.
Natalie said she never met Bronfman but always “felt the power of her money.”
A former Amway salesman, Raniere founded Nxivm with Nancy Salzman.
In 2015, he created a secret hierarchy called “DOS,” in which “masters” recruited and commanded groups of “slaves,” prosecutors said.
The masters persuaded other women to join the ranks by describing it as an elite “women’s empowerment group of sorority,” officials said.
Prospective slaves were asked to provide “collateral,” such as explicit photos, videos or personal confessions, to prevent them from leaving the group or disclosing it to others.
Mack, if convicted on charges of sex trafficking, sex trafficking conspiracy and forced labor conspiracy, faces 15 years to life in prison.