NXIVM loyalist denied in bid for shorter sentence
NEW YORK — A federal judge in Brooklyn has rejected Seagram’s heiress Clare Bronfman’s request for a reduction of her nearly seven-year prison sentence for her crimes in Keith Raniere’s cult-like personal growth organization.
Bronfman, 45, formerly of Clifton Park, sought leniency from Senior U.S. District Judge Nicholas Garaufis, who in September 2020 sentenced the former NXIVM director of operations to six years and nine months in prison for her guilty pleas to conspiring to conceal and harbor undocumented immigrants for financial gain and identification fraud. A federal appeals court in Manhattan later upheld the convictions and sentence.
In denying Bronfman in a decision dated Monday, Garaufis recalled his words at Bronfman’s sentencing that she made “promises to immigrants that she did not keep, exacted labor that she did not pay for, and took advantage of these individuals’ financial straits and immigration statuses, in a manner that exacerbated both their financial and emotional vulnerabilities and made them more reliant on her and the NXIVM community, sometimes with very harmful consequences.”
The judge said that even if Bronfman was eligible for a reduced sentence, it was not warranted. He repeated his words from Bronfman’s sentencing that the nature and circumstances of her crimes were “particularly egregious in light of the financial and emotional harm Ms. Bronfman’s actions caused.”
Garaufis had said 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.”
Garaufis sentenced Bronfman — daughter of late Seagram’s liquor tycoon Edgar Bronfman and whose sister, Sarah Bronfman, was also in NXIVM — to three times the maximum sentence under the federal guidelines of that time.
In February, Bronfman’s attorney, Ronald Sullivan, filed a motion with Garaufis stating that the U.S. Department of Probation found Bronfman eligible for a reduced sentence of 15 to 21 months under updated federal sentencing guidelines.
In response, Assistant U.S. Attorney Tanya Hajjar, one of the prosecutors at Raniere’s 2019 trial, reminded the judge that Bronfman was a major benefactor and proponent of NXIVM and its Executive Success Programs. The prosecutor said Bronfman recruited individuals — often women with no legal status in the U.S. — into Nxivmsponsored organizations. She said Bronfman did not provide the people with a living wage.
“Instead, she obtained a labor force of desperate individuals dependent on her and on Raniere for their continued legal status in the United States,” Hajjar told the judge. Hajjar argued that defendants eligible for the reduced
sentence cannot have caused a financial hardship, as she argued Bronfman had caused.
As is, the prosecutor said, Bronfman is eligible for release June 29, 2025.
In 2018, federal prosecutors in the Brooklyn-based Eastern District of New York charged Bronfman in a sweeping indictment alongside Raniere, NXIVM president Nancy Salzman, her daughter Lauren Salzman, actress Allison Mack and bookkeeper Kathy Russell.
Raniere, 63, known within NXIVM as “Vanguard,” was convicted at trial of sex trafficking, forced labor conspiracy, wire fraud conspiracy and racketeering charges with underlying crimes that included possessing images of child pornography. Raniere, widely viewed as a cult leader, is serving a 120-year sentence in a federal prison in Tucson, Ariz.
Nancy Salzman, known as “Prefect,” was released from a halfway house last month after serving time for racketeering conspiracy. Lauren Salzman, a star prosecution witness, received five years probation for racketeering charges. Mack, who cooperated with prosecutors after pleading guilty to racketeering charges, was released last July after serving time. Russell received two years probation for visa fraud.
Unlike her co-defendants, Bronfman has remained loyal to Raniere.