This is Part 2 of Life In Prison, the Government’s view of the crimes of Keith Alan Raniere with some additional comments and photos provided by this writer.
You can read the entire government memorandum here.
Identity Theft and Unlawful Surveillance (Keylogging)
By Seth D. Dicharme,
Acting US Attorney Eastern District of New York
Tanya Hajjar
Mark J. Lesko
Karin Orenstein
Assistant United States Attorneys
Raniere and his co-conspirators engaged in unlawful surveillance and investigation of his perceived enemies. The targets of these efforts included federal judges overseeing litigation in which Nxivm was a party, high-ranking politicians, reporters who had published articles critical of Raniere or Nxivm, Nxivm’s own lawyers, legal adversaries and their families, an accountant (James Loperfido) who worked for
an attorney who had previously done work for Nxivm, and Edgar Bronfman Sr., the father of Clare Bronfman.
The late Edgar Bronfman, Sr. was the billionaire father of sinister Clare Webb Bronfman. A lovely daughter, she hacked into her father’s computer so that her master, the Gruesome One, Keith Alan Raniere, could view his emails.
On multiple occasions, Bronfman approached Stephen Herbits, a colleague of her father, whom she believed to have political influence, in an attempt to persuade him to help her intimidate individuals perceived to be hostile to Nxivm or Raniere.
Stephen Herbits was a good and faithful friend of Edgar Bronfman and declined to do the foul deeds Clare Webb Bronfman and her sister, Sara Rosner Bronfman, asked him to do.
Between August 2005 and October 2008, Raniere directed Daniela to obtain the usernames and passwords for email accounts belonging to individuals they perceived to be Nxivm enemies, in order to gain access to those individual’s email accounts and monitor their communications.
After the publication of an October 2003 Forbes article in which Edgar Bronfman was quoted as calling Nxivm a “cult,” Raniere considered Edgar Bronfman an enemy of his and of Nxivm.
As a result, Raniere tasked Daniela with creating keylogging software in order to access and monitor Edgar Bronfman’s email account.
Bronfman installed the keylogging software on her father’s computer, and Daniela was, thereafter, able to access Edgar Bronfman’s email account.
For years, Daniela reported the results to Raniere. At Raniere’s direction, Daniela also created and installed keylogging software on the computer of James Loperfido, an accountant who had worked for Joseph O’Hara, an attorney who had previously done work for Nxivm.
Daniela, thereafter, regularly emailed the results of the keylogging software, which reflected Loperfido’s computer activity, to Raniere.
In November 2008, Raniere also enlisted Daniela to install keylogging software on Daniela’s sister Marianna’s computer after Raniere suspected Marianna of rekindling a relationship with an ex-boyfriend.
Through installation of the keylogging software, Daniela provided Raniere with her sister’s Facebook password.
On behalf of Nxivm, Bronfman hired several private firms, including Canaprobe and Interfor, in order to investigate perceived enemies of Nxivm and Raniere.
Keith Alan Raniere, Clare Webb Bronfman, Sara Rosner Bronfman, and Carlos Emiliano Salinas de Gortari y Occelli hired these two detectives to spy on and illegally access Raniere’s enemies’ offshore banking records. Talk about stupid, PI’s Elaine White and Cullen Johnson were fraudsters and were out-frauding Raniere. They themselves were accused of creating phony documents and bank records for other legitimate clients and wound up being sentenced to prison in an unrelated case. In other words, the people Nxivm hired to illegally spy on their enemies just created bullshit reports and fake bank account statements and bilked the smartest people in the world out of about $1 million.
Between approximately 2007 and 2009, Canaprobe sent the results of purported “bank sweeps” for bank account and balance information belonging to Nxivm’s adversaries.
On March 27, 2018, a search warrant was executed on the residence of Nancy Salzman. Among the items recovered was a large box containing what appears to be private banking information of many individuals perceived to be Nxivm enemies, including Edgar Bronfman, Joseph O’Hara, Rick Ross, and others.
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Here is a partial list, by the way, of the enemies that Raniere spied on–
Enemies List
Salinas, Bronfman and Raniere spied on men at the local newspaper where Raniere lived: the Albany Times Union.
They spied on George Hearst, the Publisher; Rex Smith, Editor; and Jim Odato, a reporter who had written stories about Nxivm.
George Hearst, publisher
Rex Smith, editor.
James Odato, reporter.
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Chet Hardin, a reporter for the Albany Metroland, a now-defunct weekly in the Albany area.
Chet Hardin wrote a number of critical stories about Nxivm and Raniere in Metroland, a weekly Albany publication. That prompted Raniere to want to spy on Chet.
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And Michael Freedman, who wrote a cover story for Forbes magazine on October 13, 2003, entitled “Cult of Personality”.
Then there were politicians:
Joe Bruno
They spied on Joseph Bruno, a Republican New York State senator, who took flights on Clare and Sara’s private jet.
Eliot Spitzer
Eliot Spitzer, a Democrat, who at the time was New York State Attorney General. He later became governor of New York but was forced to resign amid a prostitution scandal.
David Soares.
P. David Soares, the District Attorney in Albany County.
Charles Schumer
Charles Schumer, a U.S. senator from New York, a Democrat.
Steve Pigeon
Steve Pigeon, a Democrat political consultant.
Roger Stone
Roger Stone, a Republican political consultant.
Both Pigeon and Stone worked for NXIVM for a time as consultants. [Nxivm was spying on their own consultants.]
Federal Judges
They spied on seven federal judges who, at various times, oversaw cases involving NXIVM.
Gary L. Sharpe
U.S. District Chief Judge Gary L Sharpe
U.S. Magistrate Randolph F. Treece
U.S. District Judge Dennis M. Cavanaugh
U.S. Senior Judge Thomas J. McAvoy
U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Robert E. Littlefield, Jr,
U.S. Magistrate Mark Falk
Robert E. Littlefield
Mark Falk
Litigants
They spied on people they were suing.
Rick Alan Ross
Rick Ross, of the Rick Ross Institute.
Morris Sutton, a defendant in a lawsuit with Rick Ross. Raniere/Nxivm was the plaintiff.
Juval Aviv, a private detective hired by Nxivm to spy on their enemies. Nxivm even spied on their spies and par for the course sued Aviv.
Juval Aviv, who owned a private investigation firm called Interfor, who was hired by NXIVM for conducting investigations in relation to some of Nxivm’s enemies.
They were investigating their own investigator.
Spying on Papa
Edgar Bronfman, Sr.
They spied on Edgar Bronfman Sr., Clare Bronfman’s father, his business and his associates.
Stephen Herbits
Stephen Herbits, one of Bronfman Sr.’s closest associates.
The World Jewish Congress, which Bronfman led.
Israel Singer
Israel Singer, who was associated with the World Jewish Congress.
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There were the litigants who were connected to the Los Angeles real estate fiasco that Keith Raniere operated:
Yuri Plyam
Yuri Plyam, Natalia Plyam – and their company, Castle Trading, were involved in the California real estate project that Clare and her sister Sara funded and Raniere guided.
The paranoia even extended to critics,
Deke Sharon
They spied on Deke Sharon, famous within the a cappella community, who was critical of Raniere. Raniere staged a cappella concerts. He used Kristin Kreuk, Nicki Clyne, and Allison Mack to host the concerts. It seemed to be a thinly veiled recruitment effort to get college students into Nxivm and got a lot of criticism.
David Touretzky
David Touretzky, a professor at Carnegie Mellon who was critical of Raniere.
Carlos Rueda a psychologist cited in newspaper articles providing unflattering opinions of NXIVM and their curriculum and teachings.
They Spied on Joe O’Hara and Frank Parlato
Bronfman, Salinas, and Raniere also spied on this writer. I worked as a consultant during 2007-08 and was fired by Nxivm when I discovered more than $90 million missing from the Bronfman sisters’ money.
Joe O’Hara
They spied on another former consultant, Joseph O’Hara. Ironically, O’Hara left Nxivm when he discovered Nxivm was spying on Rick Ross illegally.
They also spied on Raniere’s former harem members who left him and the scoundrel even spied on his own girlfriend, Mariana, fearing that she was cheating on him. He got her sister to do the hacking into Mariana’s Facebook account.
Happily for Mariana, Keith Raniere did not find she was cheating on him when he spied on her and later he delivered on his promise, siring for her an avatar baby, a son, Kemar.
Mariana’s sister, “Virgin” Cami, did not fare as well. She was supposed to have an avatar baby too, but Raniere caught her cheating with the son of one of his followers and then spent years punishing her – the final punishment being that she was not permitted to be the mother of the avatar child and her sister instead got that great honor.
Finally, two points. Two of the biggest scoundrels of Nxivm, who funded and participating in the spying were never charged. They are Emiliano Salinas and Sara Bronfman.
Lauren Salzman with Emiliano Salinas at Vanguard Week. She was charged for her crimes but Emiliano was not.
Sara Bronfman by Marie White — Sara got off scot-free so far despite being one of the main funding sources for Nxivm for years.
