Readers: No wonder State Police let him off: Alleged NIXVM child molester was registrar of domains on computer trespass case

>A source writes:  A young man who has been identified as ‘Robbie C’— may have sexually molested children in Clifton Park.

The police chose not to press charges against Robbie C— for reasons that are unclear.

Perhaps there was not enough evidence, or possibly the parents of the alleged child- victims were not cooperative. Perhaps state police felt that by charging Robbie, it might complicate their computer trespass case against Toni Natalie, Joseph O’Hara, Barbara Bouchey, and John Tighe.

The four — all of whom were enemies of Keith Raniere – were criminally accused of entering into the password protected website of NXIVM.

The password protected site is accessed by thousands of students, past and present, but the four who were alleged to have entered the site were not authorized users.

The site has information on activities of NXIVM, dates of courses and the names of teachers and coaches.

Robbie, the alleged child molester, used to drive the allegedly molested children to help their parents, all of whom either worked for Mr. Raniere or were his disciples.

He also babysat the children.

Robbie also helped prepare taxes for people who were in NXIVM, including the parents of some of the allegedly molested children.

In addition, Robbie was the registrar for some 189 domain names for Keith Raniere and his businesses; some of the domains were part of the computer trespass case.

The domain name registrar is the individual registering the domain name and shows up on the public record. The registrar can be used to hide the true identity of the owner.

Robbie — along with Adrian “Fluffy” Fernandez were the two young male proteges of Keith Raniere. They were the boys who studied the teachings of Mr. Raniere since they were children through adolescence and into young manhood.

If Robbie had been charged for felony sex molesting, the computer trespass case would have taken a back seat to the more salacious and serious charge of child molesting.

What is worse for the compute trespass case, is that since Robbie was the registrar of the domains, the case would have included a “victim” of trespassing who was an accused child molester.

It would be hard to get jury sympathy for the trespassed.

It might confuse the alleged victims [Raniere/Bronfman/NIXVM] with the alleged villains.

Police chose to not charge Robbie

Had Clare Bronfman not lied under oath, there is a chance that the prosecution would have tried much harder to prosecute the alleged computer trespassers. As it was, three alleged trespassers were acquitted; the fourth, Mr. Tighe, was facing more serious crimes and accepted a plea deal.

The attorney for Mr. Raniere and Miss Bronfman was, among others, Michael McDermott. He was a former Deputy DA for Albany County – and, along with long-time NXIVM attorneys Steve Coffey and Pam Nichols, a member of the O’Connell & Aronowitz law firm.

Since no one was willing to prosecute the computer trespass case, Mr. McDermott helped arrange for a Special Prosecutor – Holly Trexler – who was at one time his assistant at the Albany County DA, creating an appearance of a conflict of interest.

The reason why there was a need for a Special Prosecutor in Albany County was because the Saratoga County DA was not willing to prosecute what appeared to be a minor crime with little or no victimization.  And the New York State Attorney General was also unwilling to prosecute for the same reason.

Even with his strong connection to the Albany County DA – his former boss is the current DA, David Soares –  Mr. McDermott was unable to get that office to prosecute the case.  That’s because the Albany County DA’s office had been accused in 2007 of improperly handling a case concerning Miss Clare Bronfman where one of Mr. Raniere’s operatives, Kristin Keeffe, actually worked in the DA’s office to investigate and help build a case against one of Mr. Raniere’s enemies, Mr. O’Hara. She was even given access to grand jury records which are supposed to be secret. Although they got the indictment, a judge immediately dismissed it because of improper grand jury instructions.

The O’Hara case fell apart and the Albany County’ DA’s office was stung by accusations of unethical practices in favoring Miss Bronfman’s interest.

It became a campaign issue in the next election.

Consequently, the Albany County DA’s office was not willing to publicly come anywhere near the latest Bronfman case.  So, instead, they agreed to allow a Special Prosecutor to be named to investigate and prosecute the case and Ms. Trexler, the former assistant DA who worked under Mr. Raniere’s attorney, was appointed as the “impartial” Special Prosecutor.

But even with the Special Prosecutor in hand, there was still a problem.  In order for the Special Prosecutor to have jurisdiction to prosecute the case, the computer trespass had to occur in Albany County.

This was a big problem because the computer server that hosted the ESP website was actually in Saratoga County – as Robbie C  well knew.

Thus, if there were an actual computer trespass, it would have occurred in Saratoga County, making the Saratoga DA responsible for prosecuting.

But the Saratoga County DA had already said he would not prosecute.

So, Miss Bronfman – as one of the directors of NXIVM – got two of her employees, Steve Ose and Ben Myers, to perjure themselves by making up a fictitious report that the server was in Albany County.

In order to be believed, Miss Bronfman had to deceive the Special Prosecutor and the court by not revealing that Mr. Myers and Mr. Ose were on her payroll and were students of Mr. Raniere.

She misled the court that they were independent computer experts with separate companies who had independently assessed the server and found it to be in Albany County – which, of course, was perjury .

This fooled the Special Prosecutor who relied on the integrity of Mr. Raniere’s attorneys.

This might have passed the smell test up until trial when it certainly would have come out that the independent computer experts were employees of the victim, but Miss Bronfman herself committed perjury when she swore under oath to the court that she learned about the computer trespassing a year after she actually admitted she had learned about it in other litigstion.

This was unfortunate because the statue of limitations had passed because it runs from the date of discovery of the trespass.

Consequently, the judge realized that Miss Bronfman had perjured herself by changing the date of discovery to a year later than it truly was in order to keep the case within the statute of limitations.

Because of this same perjury, she lost her civil lawsuit against two publishers.

In the end, the alleged trespassers were acquitted.

Miss Bronfman was not charged with perjury but she was admonished. And she lost both cases despite spending taxpayer resources and damning the lives of the defendants in the case who only were charged because of her perjury.

As an additional result, Robbie C– was never charged.

Perhaps he might be excused since his mentor, Mr. Raniere, teaches it‘s OK to have sex with children [and Mr. Raniere has been accused of so doing].

This would have come out at trial if Robbie had been charged and Miss Bronfman had not committed perjury.

if they had charged Robbie – they might have lost the computer case.

If they chose to ignore child molesting and hammer the computer trespassers, it should be considered that they had spent a lot of time on the computer trespass case and Miss Bronfman spent a lot of money on lawyers.

Frank Parlato