Financier Howard Rubin charged with intercourse trafficking

Famed former Salomon Brothers bond dealer Howard Rubin and his former private assistant have been arrested Friday morning on fees of intercourse trafficking and transporting girls throughout state strains for business intercourse acts over the course of a decade.

Rubin, 70, participated in intercourse acts with the ladies in luxurious lodges in New York, and later, a rented two-bedroom penthouse house in Manhattan that was transformed right into a so-called “intercourse dungeon” outfitted with bondage, self-discipline, dominance, submission and sadomasochism gear, in addition to soundproofing, a 10-count indictment alleges.

The gear allegedly included a tool to “shock or electrocute girls,” prosecutors mentioned.

“Throughout many such encounters, Rubin engaged in conduct past the scope of the ladies’s consent,” the indictment in U.S. District Courtroom in Brooklyn, New York, alleges.

“Throughout many of those encounters, Rubin brutalized girls’s our bodies, inflicting them to worry for his or her security and/or leading to vital ache or accidents, which at instances required girls to hunt medical consideration,” the indictment fees.

The previous Soros Fund Administration financier and his ex-personal assistant, Jennifer Powers, 45, spent not less than $1 million of Rubin’s cash “working and sustaining the trafficking community,” which lasted from between not less than 2009 by 2019, the indictment mentioned.

Rubin was arrested by FBI brokers at his residence in Fairfield, Connecticut. He’s scheduled to be arraigned on Friday afternoon in Brooklyn federal court docket.

Powers was arrested at her residence in Soutlake, Texas, and is scheduled to seem in U.S. District Courtroom for the Northern District of Texas subsequent week. She can be charged with financial institution fraud in reference to alleged misrepresentations she made to a financial institution whereas financing the mortgage for her and her husband’s residence in Southlake, Texas, authorities mentioned.

Prosecutors in a letter to Choose Kuo requested that Rubin be held with out bail, “as a result of no situation or mixture of situations can fairly safe Rubin’s look in court docket as required or the security of the group.” The letter famous that he had “extraordinary wealth, a few of which is held in accounts abroad.” In 2024, Rubin had greater than $74 million in a Cayman Islands account, the letter mentioned.

Prosecutors desire a “substantial bail bundle” for Powers.

Rubin was sued in November 2017 by two self-identified Playboy fashions and one other mannequin from Florida, who claimed they have been overwhelmed, sexually abused and raped by Rubin in a number of incidents in New York Metropolis in 2016.

In April 2022, a civil jury in Brooklyn federal court docket discovered Rubin answerable for intercourse trafficking six girls who had sued him and Powers, and ordered him to pay them a complete of $3.85 million in compensatory and punitive damages. Powers was not discovered liable by that jury.

Rubin is at the moment interesting the civil judgment.

A spokesman for the U.S. Lawyer’s Workplace in Brooklyn had no remark when requested why there was a lag of practically eight years between the submitting of the civil lawsuit in opposition to Rubin and the workplace acquiring a prison indictment in opposition to him. On the time the lawsuit was filed, a lawyer for girls who sued Rubin advised CNBC that the U.S. Lawyer’s Workplace had reached out to him about probably investigating the financier.

The detention letter by prosecutors says that after Rubin was sued, he advised a lady whom he had seen for business intercourse from 20014 by to 2019, “that pursuant to his preparations, a hitman was contacted on the darkish net to focus on girls who had filed a civil go well with in opposition to him, however he didn’t finally retain the hitman.”

Rubin, after working as a bond dealer at Salomon Brothers, additionally did stints at Bear, Stearns and Merrill Lynch.

He first gained public notoriety in 1987 for making unauthorized trades at Merrill Lynch, which the agency on the time mentioned contributed to an enormous $250 million loss from mortgage securities. Rubin’s motion at Merrill, which led to his termination, is detailed in Michael Lewis’ Wall Avenue memoir “Liar’s Poker.”

Powers is accused within the indictment of facilitating Rubin’s business sexual encounters from not less than 2011 by 2019, allegedly recruiting girls to journey to New York and paid for his or her acts with Rubin, in addition to managing “the fallout from girls’s complaints” stemming from these acts.

CNBC has requested remark from Rubin’s lawyer, Michael Gilbert, and from Powers’ lawyer.

The indictment alleges the intercourse trafficking of six girls, a few of whom have been additionally recognized as girls who have been transported throughout state strains with the intent to have interaction in prostitution, in violation of the Mann Act.

“Rubin and Powers required the ladies to signal non-disclosure agreements … which presupposed to require the ladies to imagine the danger of the hazards and harm of the BDSM encounters with Rubin, prohibit the disclosure of details about the BDSM intercourse with Rubin and require the fee of damages within the occasion of a breach,” the Brooklyn U.S. Attonrney’s Workplace mentioned in a press release.

“Rubin used the NDAs to threaten the ladies with authorized penalties and public shaming in the event that they sought authorized recourse,” the workplace mentioned.

Prosecutors of their letter to the choose mentioned that “Rubin and Powers stored a stash of clean NDAs in a protected within the Penthouse, which they required girls to signal.”

“Ladies weren’t supplied with a duplicate of the NDAs earlier than being required to signal,” prosecutors wrote. “Ladies have been required to attest that they weren’t below the affect of medication or alcohol on the time of signing, when at instances that they had been supplied with alcohol and/or medication by Rubin, Powers or their co-conspirators earlier than being introduced the NDA.”

The workplace additionally mentioned that after Rubin’s alleged sexual encounters with girls, “Rubin and/or Powers used Rubin’s cash to pay the ladies by wire switch or a fee service similar to PayPal or Venmo.”

“At instances, Powers structured the funds to keep away from sending a single transaction of $10,000 or extra, to keep away from triggering reporting obligations by the financial institution,” the workplace mentioned. “The indictment alleges the defendants spent not less than $1 million of Rubin’s cash working and sustaining the trafficking community.”

If convicted of intercourse trafficking, Rubin and Powers every face a most attainable sentence of life in jail and a compulsory minimal sentence of 15 years in jail.

“As alleged, the defendants used Rubin’s wealth to mislead and recruit girls to have interaction in business intercourse acts, the place Rubin then tortured girls past their consent, inflicting lasting bodily and/or psychological ache, and in some instances bodily accidents,” Brooklyn U.S. Lawyer Joseph Nocella mentioned in a press release.

“At present’s arrests present that nobody who engages in intercourse trafficking, on this case in luxurious lodges and a penthouse house that featured a so-called intercourse ‘dungeon,’ is above the legislation, and that they are going to be delivered to justice,” Nocella mentioned.

“Human beings are usually not chattel to be exploited for intercourse and sadistically abused, and anybody who thinks in any other case can anticipate finding themselves in handcuffs and dealing with federal prosecution like these defendants,” he mentioned.

— CNBC’s Jim Forkin contributed to this story