Judge allows NXIVM president Nancy Salzman to postpone prison term

HALFMOON — A federal judge will allow longtime NXIVM president Nancy Salzman to delay the start of her three-and-a-half year prison sentence for another month.

Senior U.S. District Judge Nicholas Garaufis on Friday approved a request made earlier in the day by Salzman attorney Robert Soloway, who highlighted a COVID-19 outbreak at the West Virginia federal prison camp where he said Salzman is headed.

"To be clear, until late into this week, Ms. Salzman had no intention of seeking a delay in surrender," Soloway said in a letter to the judge, adding that his client is now "very fearful of surrendering into a facility that is in the throes of a failed response to a COVID surge and is reportedly unsafe."

The judge will allow Salzman to report to prison on Feb. 21. She had been ordered to report by Jan. 19.

Salzman and Raniere co-founded NXIVM, also known as Executive Success Programs (ESP), in 1998. Photos of the faces of Raniere, known as "Vanguard," and Salzman, known as "Prefect," greeted students of NXIVM as they walked in the doors of the cult-like personal growth company at 455 New Karner Road. 

Salzman was arrested in 2018, months after Raniere was picked up in a Mexican fishing village, far from the Knox Woods townhouse complex in Halfmoon where he and more than two-dozen NXIVM members resided. 

In March 2019, Salzman pleaded guilty to racketeering conspiracy. She was the first of five NXIVM defendants — including Raniere and her daughter, Lauren, who became the government's star witness — to be convicted in the racketeering case led by federal prosecutors in Brooklyn that toppled the the organization's leadership. 

Salzman admitted, among other crimes, that she tried to obtain names and passwords of email accounts of perceived NXIVM  "enemies," including journalists, in files kept in her basement on Oregon Trail in Halfmoon.

But Friday, to boost his argument, Salzman's attorney highlighted the work of journalists who reported on skyrocketing COVID-19 rates at the Alderson federal prison camp in West Virginia, a 677-inmate women's facility

"News reports, and other reliable information coming to her counsels the instant request to seek postponement," he told the judge. 

Soloway said a consultant named Jennifer Myers, who operates a women-focused prison business, "maintains personal contact with her clients inside Alderson" and "strongly urges Ms. Salzman to seek delay in surrender for her personal safety until the surge at Alderson abates, even if her desire is to get it [her sentence] begun to move toward its completion.”

Soloway said Salzman put her affairs in order and planned to drive with one of her daughters to Alderson. He said Salzman had received permission to leave a day early to arrive earlier and placed her elderly mother in a New Jersey assisted living facility.

"Mostly, at this point, she simply wants to begin her incarceration to start counting the days off until it concludes," Soloway said.

Soloway said Salzman would like to join her elderly mother for a medical appointment on the same day she is expected to report to prison. He said his client does not trust the facility.

At Salzman's sentencing in September, victims of NXIVM spoke of their distrust in the notorious company and its leaders. The judge sentenced Salzman to the three-and-a-half year term, imposed a $150,000 fine and required her to be on three years of supervised release following her prison term.

“In 20 years at Raniere’s side, you left trauma and destruction in your wake,” Garaufis told Salzman.

The guilty plea included admission of underlying acts, including one in which Salzman doctored tapes to be used as evidence in a civil lawsuit in New Jersey against cult expert Rick Ross and others. 

When given a chance to speak, Salzman said she has changed drastically in the past three years and rejects Raniere, a onetime lover whom she she now regards him as a predator. Court filings revealed that Salzman, like many women in Raniere's circle, was subjected to his cruel criticism and shunning.

Raniere, 61, was convicted at trial of all counts, including sex trafficking, forced labor conspiracy and racketeering charged with underlying acts of possessing child pornography, child exploitation and identity theft. He is serving a 120-year sentence in an Arizona prison.

NXIVM's former operations director, Clare Bronfman, the Seagram fortune heiress, is serving six years and nine months for conspiring to harbor or conceal illegal immigrants for financial gain, and fraudulent use of identification.  Ex-actress Allison Mack, a former high-ranking NXIVM member and first-line member of Dominus Obsequious Sororium (DOS), Raniere's secret "master/slave" club, and who cooperated with prosecutors, is serving three years in prison. She and Lauren Salzman, also a former DOS first-line member, pleaded guilty to racketeering and racketeering conspiracy. 

 Lauren Salzman and NXIVM bookeeper Kathy Russell, who pleaded guilty to visa fraud, received probation.