At this moment, the restitution hearings are on hold.
For the second time ever, Keith Raniere chose to speak out in court – this time at his restitution hearing, prompting the judge to temporarily halt the proceedings. Raniere had previously spoken, very briefly, at his sentencing hearing just prior to being handed a 120-year sentence.
Raniere appeared via teleconference from his prison in Tucson, Arizona.
Today, Raniere said he has seen nothing – none of the restitution paperwork – or anything meaningful about any of the alleged victims’ claims. He said that he has only been permitted to speak to his lawyers for a total of one hour on the phone.
Before the judge stopped the proceedings, Raniere said “I never handled the collateral or know where it is.”
His attorney, Marc Fernich, said he does not believe the government’s claim that they know where the collateral is.
Raniere said “I don’t know who the [alleged] victims are. I have not seen the papers. I do not understand enough to speak intelligently on this matter.”
The judge seemed unusually nice to Raniere and his attorneys and agreed to adjourn for a brief period so he could speak to his lawyers
Lichtman asked to make sure the audio was off in the courtroom where the proceedings are being live-streamed for the non-vaccinated members of the public and media to listen.
At the sentencing hearing of Allison Mack, the microphones were on for about 20 minutes prior to the proceedings and apparently strategically placed next to the defense table – permitting everyone in the overflow room to hear their conversation, which was mostly irrelevant to the Mack case.
See Part #1: What to Expect From Judge Garaufis at Raniere’s Restitution Hearing Today
Recap
On June 19, 2019, following a six-week trial, a jury convicted Raniere of racketeering, racketeering conspiracy, wire fraud conspiracy, forced labor conspiracy, sex trafficking conspiracy, and two counts of sex trafficking.
On October 27, 2020, Judge Garaufis sentenced Raniere to a 120-year term of imprisonment.
On January 27, 2021, the US Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York [the prosecution], which bears the burden of proving a victim’s actual financial loss by a preponderance of evidence, provided the court with 100 restitution requests from putative victims. The prosecution supported payments to 25 “victims.”
Raniere filed a response on March 23, 2021, claiming, in effect, that none of the individuals are victims. This filing, unfortunately for those who would wish to keep certain things from the public, was supposed to be filed under seal but was erroneously filed by Raniere’s attorneys as a public document on PACER and during the time it was public, it fell into the hands of Frank Report.
Much of the information we are reporting today came to us because of the accidentally filed document. But it is the nature of the First Amendment that the government cannot restrict our publishing this information. This Amendment is an inconvenient clause and there are those who wish its elimination, but as it stands today it is still extant.
The US Attorney’s office recommended the following people get money. The list below is in the order of the amount they feel is deserved.
[Note: Frank Report has the full names of all the alleged victims but is following the protocol of the court in not naming the alleged victims’ last names except where the alleged victims have already publicly identified themselves.]
Sutton Family: $2,854,572.26 [for legal expenses in a civil suit with NXIVM]
Daniela: [The woman who stayed in a room for almost two years] [amount recommended is unknown but probably around $500,000-1 Million]
Camila: [underage child porn pics] $507,997.45
Low-rank-DOS-slave: [LRDS] India Oxenberg $391,037.76
Barbara Bouchey: $352,455.27 (former girlfriend’s legal expenses)
LRDS Nicole: [sex trafficked]: $370,968.05
LRDS Souki: $288,156.44
Adrian: $253,204.61 [brother of Cami and Dani who claims he did unpaid work for Raniere/NXIVM]
LRDS Valerie: $231,597.52
LRDS Pam A.: $172,232.12
LRDS Audrey:122,189.74
LRDS Amanda: $96,692.55
LRDS Paloma: $73,697.97
LRDS Jessica Joan: $85,139.88
LRDS Kristin T.: $85,733.16
LRDS Erika: $54,827.05
LRDS Rachel: $52,651.55
LRDS Allison W.: $50,441.76
Toni Natalie: $48,292.89 (former girlfriend’s legal expenses)
LRDS Sarah Edmondson: $25,529.49
LRDS Sylvie: $24,466.70
James Loperfido: $5,625 [email hacked]
Susan Dones: $3,000 former member – legal expenses
Nina Cowell: $1,800 former member legal expenses
There is $6 million – paid to the court by Clare Bronfman – that can be used for restitution payments to Raniere’s victims.
Joseph Sutton is seeking to be Raniere victim #1 but the judge isn’t buying it.
The judge did not go along with all of the government’s requests. For instance, he found that the Sutton family was not entitled to almost half the restitution funds. In fact, it appears they are, according to the judge, entitled to very little.
He wrote, “The jury found that Raniere and others had conspired to alter records [in the Sutton lawsuit].. by directing individuals in the Nxivm community to remove portions of videotapes that were to be produced in discovery in a copyright lawsuit…
“Acting on Raniere’s instructions,” the judge wrote, “Nxivm members edited out segments of the videos that contained false claims, and Nxivm then produced the edited tapes while claiming that they were unedited… the litigation lasted nearly fifteen years, and the Sutton family has submitted a restitution claim seeking over $2.8 million in compensation for litigation costs…
“Nxivm’s production of fraudulent evidence in federal district court litigation caused pecuniary losses to the Sutton family by requiring their lawyers to spend time reviewing the altered tapes and determining how to proceed in response. However, the court does not find that all litigation costs incurred by the Sutton family in its civil litigation against Nxivm are the proximate result of the alteration of evidence produced in discovery: many of those expenses would have been incurred even if Nxivm had produced the unaltered videotapes.”
