NXIVM case continues to unfold
Year was filled with major developments, with more expected to come in 2019
The vacant residences spread across a Saratoga County neighborhood where NXIVM founder Keith Raniere and many of his most loyal followers had thrived for more than two decades have sat idle for months.
Most of the homes, including Raniere’s townhouse on Flintlock Drive in the Knox Woods development in Halfmoon, have remained empty with curtains drawn, providing no indication of the illicit acts that federal authorities say once unfolded inside them.
Sex trafficking. Branding of women. Forced labor. Identity theft. Extortion. Money laundering. Obstruction of justice.
The extent of the alleged criminal activity began to be revealed in late March when Raniere, who is known as “Vanguard” to his devotees, was taken into custody in Mexico and deported to the United States.
That same month, two of the Halfmoon residences
controlled by Raniere and his NXIVM members were raided by FBI agents who carted away more than $500,000 in cash, mounds of documents and dozens of electronic devices, including computers and cell phones.
Raniere, whose organization has long been described by experts as a cult, was initially charged in a federal complaint with an array of criminal conduct, including coercing women to have sex with him by luring them into a bizarre secret society within NXIVM. He has since been charged in a superseding indictment unsealed in July that expanded his alleged crimes and implicated his closest confidantes, including NXIVM co-founder Nancy Salzman and Clare Bronfman, NXIVM’S longtime operations director and an heiress to the Seagram’s liquor fortune.
For nine months, Raniere has been held without bond at a federal detention facility in Brooklyn that houses about 1,600 suspected offenders, including violent gang members and others charged with serious crimes.
The 58-year-old has remained in the facility’s general population without incident, according to people familiar with his incarceration. A federal judge has rebuffed his attorneys’ repeated attempts to have him released on bond pending trial.
For Raniere, his decades of living off the grid and controlling the intricate details of his followers’ lives have quickly faded. A man who declined to drive, vote or apply for a credit card — and who apparently falsely claimed he was the smartest person in the world and a brilliant college student — is now relegated to constant government oversight, and has no control over any of his daily activities.
Still, “I have been impressed with his ability to withstand the pressures of incarceration, because no one wants to be there,” said Paul Derohannesian, an Albany attorney who is a member of Raniere’s defense team. “I think no one wants to be in jail, and he’s not pleased with that, but I think he’s more equipped than most people.”
For residents of the Capital Region, the revelation of NXIVM’S cult-like activities and the alleged criminal conduct of its leaders came as little surprise. The Times Union had extensively reported on the inner workings of the secretive group dating back 20 years, including a 2012 series that raised allegations Raniere had sex with underage girls and had used the well-funded organization to punish defectors and critics with crippling litigation.
The criminal case against Raniere and his codefendants — Bronfman, Salzman and her daughter, Lauren, TV actress Allison Mack, and NXIVM bookkeeper Kathy Russell — includes a complex maze of federal statutes. Pre-trial motions by their highly experienced defense attorneys have already sought to poke holes in the government’s case, including the central allegation that the secret women’s organization was no more than a sex-trafficking ploy.
The defense arguments accuse the government of overreaching on many aspects of its case. They assert that the women were not pressured into joining the secret club, in which they were branded with a symbol that blended the initials of Raniere and Mack.
Defense lawyers have noted, for instance, that not all of the women in the group had sex with Raniere, and that their willing participation was evidenced by the fact the members were provided a stencil to choose the exact location of the brand that was seared into their flesh — just above their genitalia — by a doctor associated with NXIVM.
The branding was done by Danielle Roberts, an osteopath who used a cauterizing tool to brand participants in the secret group. A state Health Department review of Roberts’ role in the branding has languished, and she has not been accused of wrongdoing or medical misconduct.
Details of the branding were outlined in a complaint filed with the Health Department last year by Sarah Edmondson of Vancouver. She said that at least 20 women associated with NXIVM were lured into the club and required to provide some sort of damaging “collateral,” such as a nude photo or a dark revelation from their past, in order to become part of the club. They were told that if they broke the rules or left, their collateral would be made public.
In a series of interviews with the Times Union last year, Edmondson said many of the women were misled. She said she was told it would be a “tattoo” and only learned weeks later that the brand, which she had been told was a Latin symbol for “the elements,” actually featured the initials of Raniere and Mack, whom Edmondson’s complaint identified as having “started” the secret women’s group with Raniere.
Although federal prosecutors in Brooklyn now say the activities of the secret club amounted to sex trafficking — their complaint details the account of one woman who was allegedly coerced into having sex with Raniere — state health officials initially dismissed Edmondson’s complaint and said the allegations “did not occur (within) the doctor-patient relationship and should be reported to law enforcement.”
Edmondson said she contacted State Police, but an investigator told her there was no criminal conduct because the women had agreed to be branded.
Federal prosecutors
now say Raniere created the secret club, known as “Dominus Obsequious Sororium,” which means “Master Over the Slave Women.” Raniere’s attorneys have since acknowledged that he helped create the club, which he once disavowed, but contend any sex Raniere had with its members was consensual.
Typical of NXIVM’S numerous drawn-out court fights with its perceived enemies, the criminal case — still months away from trial — has also produced early controversy when prosecutors recently questioned the legality of a trust fund set up by Bronfman to pay attorneys’ fees for witnesses and others who may testify for the government.
At least one unidentified witness, the government alleged, told prosecutors an attorney paid by the trust fund had informed her that he could not represent her unless she agreed not to cooperate with the government or to invoke her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination and not answer questions.
“If any such conduct rises to the level of obstruction of justice, it will be investigated by the government as a criminal matter,” prosecutors wrote in a recent filing.
As a federal judge examines the trust fund arrangement, attorneys in the case said prosecutors have indicated they are moving toward filing a second superseding indictment. If so, it may expand the number of defendants and increase the severity of the criminal charges. A new indictment could also serve as a way for the government to tighten down the criminal case to withstand any appeals should they win convictions, according to legal observers.
Derohannesian, a former Albany County assistant district attorney who specializes in criminal law, has described the government’s case as “legally adventuresome” and said that both sides have not yet revealed all that they know.
“I think this case is far from over because there’s significant legal and factual issues that have to be addressed in court and may not be resolved until even appeals,” he said. “I think it’s wrong to try and resolve this case outside the courtroom . ... I think it’s extraordinarily complex, factually and legally.”
The criminal case has stoked controversy in law enforcement circles as well because the prosecution is being handled by the U.S. attorneys office in Brooklyn, rather than by the U.S. attorneys office in Albany, where NXIVM has been headquartered for two decades and where law enforcement authorities had for years fielded complaints about the organization but never pursued a criminal investigation.
Other law enforcement agencies that have fielded complaints but declined to pursue deep investigations of NXIVM include the New York State Police, the U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement Agency, the Internal Revenue Service and the FBI, according to interviews with law enforcement sources and people who said they provided information to those agencies.
The intensive and fastmoving federal investigation that began in Brooklyn last year followed a New York Times story that highlighted NXIVM’S secret women’s club and their practice of branding, which had first been reported months earlier by Frank Parlato, a former NXIVM publicist who runs various news blogs in Buffalo and has been at odds with the organization for years.
No matter the outcome of Raniere’s criminal case, many people familiar with the organization said that NXIVM — which had once maintained offices and thousands of followers around the world — has been hobbled and that it would be difficult to revive its operations, which were shut down last summer.
Indeed, the organization, which the government said offered highly priced executive training and “self-help” programs that were similar to a pyramid scheme, is feeding on itself as many of Raniere’s staunchest former supporters have turned on him. Some of those former devotees, in interviews, have described awakening to the realization they may have been simply guarding the door for a man more interested in unfettered sex with young women than with human development.
Raniere faces up to life in prison on the sextrafficking charges, and potentially decades in prison if convicted on related charges of wire fraud, racketeering and forcedlabor conspiracy.
He was taken into custody last spring at a luxury beach villa in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, along the Pacific Ocean. In Mexico, authorities said, Raniere got rid of his mobile phone and used encrypted email to communicate with his followers. They said it took Mexican authorities nearly two months to locate and detain him.
A federal judge in Brooklyn has scheduled the trial of Raniere and his co-defendants to begin in March.