Clare Bronfman, an heiress to the Seagram Co. liquor fortune, was sentenced this week to 81 months in prison and $6.5 million in penalties for her role in luring female victims for the Nxivm sex cult founded by Keith Raniere.
"She used her incredible wealth and attempted to use her social status and connections not only to support Nxivm’s work but also as a means of intimidating, threatening and exacting revenge,” U.S. District Judge Nicholas Garaufis said Wednesday in Brooklyn, New York. The sentence Garaufis imposed was longer than the five years requested by prosecutors, and he ordered her immediately remanded into federal custody.
Bronfman, 41, gave at least $100 million to help bankroll the cult, which branded women and forced them to engage in sex acts, according to prosecutors. She pleaded guilty last year to harboring an undocumented immigrant who had traveled to the U.S. on a forged work visa, and to identity theft for helping Raniere use a dead woman’s credit card.