From the government’s sentencing memorandum, wherein they recommend a prison sentence of five years for Clare Webb Bronfman, the government goes out of its way to narrate Clare’s various crimes including those she was never convicted of in the hopes of her getting the full five year sentence.
Clare Bronfman pleaded guilty to two felony counts, conspiring to conceal, harbor and shield from detection one or more aliens for financial gain and that unlawfully transferred and used a means of identification of another person with the intent to commit and in connection with attempted tax evasion.
The government draws heavily on Clare’s presentencing report [PSR] prepared by the Pretrial and Probation Department and, in this memo, we get our first glimpse of what that report contains.
The government in making its case for a five year sentence begins with alien smuggling and they narrate an ugly story of how Clare lied on a visa application about the salary a Mexican woman [Jane Doe #12] was going to receive.
With a $200 million net worth, one would think Clare would be disinclined to break federal law and risk prison over cheating poor immigrants out of money.
But her training in Executive Success under Raniere gave full sway to her sadistic, exacting and parsimonious nature — all the while pretending that her cruelty was in the name of the highest ethics and adherence to justice.
Here are the government’s own words from the sentencing memorandum. It paints a not too pretty picture of the greedy and vicious heiress who thought nothing of perjuring herself for the sake of destroying enemies..
Alien Smuggling
Bronfman conspired to recruit and secure immigration status for numerous individuals so that they could work in one or more Nxivm-affiliated organizations…. Bronfman used a variety of Nxivm-affiliated organizations to sponsor, or enter into purported employment contracts with, these individuals, with the expectation that these individuals would “earn” the cost of their visa.
Bronfman paid these individuals very little, if at all, and required them to submit a “payment plan” to “pay back” the cost of their visa.
For instance, Bronfman recruited young women, including Jane Doe 12, to work for Exo/Eso, a fitness-related Nxivm-affiliated company, and submitted documents purporting to hire them as “management consultants” with salaries in the amount of $3,600 per month in order to secure NAFTA professional (TN) visas.
A TN visa is a visa category enabling citizens of Canada and Mexico to enter the United States to engage in professional business activities on a temporary basis. In order to obtain a TN visa, a prospective employer must provide a letter of employment detailing the professional capacity in which the individual will work in the United States and their anticipated compensation. Lawyers, accountants, engineers, scientists and management consultants, among others, are the types of professionals eligible to seek admission into the United States as TN nonimmigrants.
…. The employment letters Bronfman presented in connection with the application for TN visas for these individuals were false because, among other things, Bronfman never intended to pay and did not pay the salary listed in the letters.
Exo/Eso and Jane Doe 12
In January 2015, Jane Doe 12, a citizen of Mexico, entered the United States on a tourist visa. … At this time, Bronfman invited Jane Doe 12 to remain in the United States and work for Exo/Eso….
Bronfman prepared an employment letter in connection with Jane Doe 12’s application for a TN visa that contained materially false statements…. The letter stated that Exo/Eso would “engage [Jane Doe 12’s] services as a management consultant to provide advice to Exo/Eso’s management . . . on the development of strategic marketing and business development plans to expand our business[.]”
The letter also stated that Jane Doe 12 would be “compensated as an independent contractor at the rate of $3,600.00 monthly.”…. The letter also included a detailed description of Jane Doe 12’s “duties,” which included, among other
things, to:
Analyze and resolve the strategic and operational challenges associated with marketing and selling the services and products of Exo/Eso to professional dancers and other high-performing arts individuals in other fields of endeavor
Observe, research and analyze the company’s existing marketing and sales activities
Assess existing and potential market opportunities and interpret strategic research and competitive intelligence….
All of these statements were false when submitted.
Even prior to the beginning of Jane Doe 12’s employment with Exo/Eso under the terms of the October 1, 2015 letter, Jane Doe 12 expressed concerns to Bronfman about her experience being paid by Exo/Eso:
“.. . Exo Eso took around 8 months to pay me what I did last year. One day I received a piece of paper with the quantity of 1,170 written on it, that they say I will be able to change that piece of paper to real money and that took months, I finally got the refund when one of the members of the Development Team found out that I had not eaten in 2 days and lent me 30 usd. I don’t want to tell you how many times I asked for the refund. I just didn’t get an answer at all. Also the amount of money made it was really low, compare with the time, knowledge and effort…..”
Jane Doe 12 asked Bronfman, in a November 7, 2015 email, if the “salary that is written in the contract” was “real” or if it was “only for purposes of processing the visa.” …
Bronfman responded that the “contract” would “formally start when” Jane Doe 12 came to the United States, and “when we have a chance to sit down and define exactly what it is you will be doing[.]”…
Although Jane Doe 12’s letter of employment stated that she would earn $3,600 per month, records from the Exo/Eso bank account at Key Bank reflect only three payments made to Jane Doe 12, totaling $4,194.75 between December 4, 2014 and July 31, 2017.
Jane Doe 12 emailed Bronfman on November 9, 2015, expressing concern about her salary: “With no money involved [it] is very difficult to support [sic] my self [sic], now that I am at home it has been hard to keep up the pace with no income and with the uncertainty of not knowing how I will live each day, either here or there.”…
Once in the United States, Jane Doe 12 was forced to find other ways to earn money to live.
On December 3, 2015, Jane Doe 12 asked Bronfman about the possibility of seeking other means of earning an income because Exo/Eso was not paying her.
She wrote, “I know that [Exo/Eso] is not making enough profit to pay me the [wage] that was mention [sic] in the contract and I am not vested on ask you [sic] for that. I mention this because I have been looking for jobs to be able to support myself here and I want to check with you if my visa have some limititations [sic] about It or if is something that I can do.”…
Bronfman responded that seeking any additional employment would cause “work issues due to” the TN visa but that she would talk to Raniere “as that would impact the work agreement.”….
In 2016, Bronfman offered Jane Doe 12 administrative work at $15 an hour.
When Jane Doe 12 protested, Bronfman told Danielle Roberts to “[t]ell [Jane Doe 12] if Bill Gates cleaned a tiolet [sic] would it be right for him to charge millions of dollars? (Money module) it has nothing to do with her skills it is the job.”…
On June 23, 2016, Jane Doe 12 submitted a proposed payment plan to Bronfman. The following day, Bronfman responded, “There is one fundamental question yet to be answered; what are you going to do to earn having your visa? This needs to be figured out or technically you can not stay here.”….
Bronfman recruited other individuals to work as “management consultants” at Exo/Eso, whom she purported to compensate at $3,600 per month.
On January 29, 2015, Bronfman prepared an identical letter for a TN visa submitted on behalf of a citizen of Canada…. Three months later, she wrote Bronfman an email stating that she was not “prepared for no income” and that she
legally had “no other means of income other than exo/eso as per [my] visa.”…
[end of government excerpt from sentencing memorandum]
***
So here the government is showing an entirely different picture of Clare than the one painted by her attorneys and in the 66 letters of support she received [most of them from people who are financially dependent on her].
In those letters we see a divine creature who is generous, heroic and loyal.
In the government’s revelation of how she treated Jane Doe #12, we see the Clare Bronfman that most in Nxivm knew.
Imagine paying a poor Mexican woman with a piece of paper with a number written on it, instead of with cash. Imagine swearing on a federal immigration document that you are going to pay a woman $3600 a month and only pay her $4000 total over two and a half years, thus cheating her out of $104,000 and committing a federal offense in the bargain.
Sure $104,000 sounds like a lot. It’s nothing compared with, for example, the $66 million Clare and her sister invested with Raniere in the commodities market and lost. Or the $50 million they invested in lawyers to destroy enemies.
Think of it — Clare knowingly commits a federal crime for $104,000. Its .05 – [five one hundredths of one percent] of her net worth of $200 million.
If someone had a net worth of $500,000, .05 percent of that would be $250.
Would anyone with a half million net worth, outside of ESP, risk several years in prison to save $250?
That’s the enormity of her stupidity. Of course she may have had a good reason to cheat little people out of small [to her] amounts of money. With corrupt or inactive law enforcement in Albany, she and Raniere thought they would never be caught.
They miscalculated.
John Tighe of the Saratoga in Decline blog, said he went to a NXIVM event, possibly ”V-Week” and was confronted by some Mexican guards. He said he threatened to call immigration and they backed off. Can that be found on the old Wayback Machine? He took pictures. 😊
Here is a video of VWeek 2012 where the cameraman is confronted by a Mexican guard who makes a gun gesture with his finger.
Please ignore the Russian rap music that goes with the video.