New York’s business elite was left shaking in its boots Tuesday after a list of alleged clients of the student prostitute in the Sarah Lawrence ‘sex cult’ case was inadvertently published online.
The list, which was entered into evidence under seal in the ongoing trial of accused cult leader Larry Ray, includes lawyers and businessmen and socialites throughout the Tri-state area.
DailyMail.com acquired a copy of the list of 121 names which was taken down nearly as fast as it was put up.
A top executive at The Gap clothing firm and her husband was one of two married couples included. A former New York State Supreme Court judge is also named.
Another alleged client is a painter who has studios in Manhattan’s East Village and in Italy. A third is an architect, famous for designing college and university buildings.
An investment executive who was also in pedophile Jeffrey Epstein’s infamous little black book of contacts is also listed.
Other names include a hedge fund manager who has donated millions to charity and has his name on a museum building in New York, a Washington DC, lobbyist who has worked for a foreign resistance movement and an international diamond dealer.
Also included is an executive at the Metropolitan Transit Authority, an account executive at Amazon and a veteran travel writer.
The document is among the government exhibits admitted in the federal case against 62-year-old Ray, who is on trial in New York, charged with operating a sex cult out of his daughter’s dorm room at Sarah Lawrence College.
The list is said to have been compiled and included in an email by former Sarah Lawrence student Claudia Drury, 31, who has been on the stand giving evidence against Ray, whom she claims coerced her into becoming a prostitute.
But somehow the government posted the ‘sealed’ document online and then immediately scrambled to stop the information getting out.
‘Per order of the Court, government exhibit #3217 (GX 3217) was admitted under seal,’ a spokesman for the Department of Justice wrote in an email soon after the document was taken offline.
‘This file was inadvertently loaded to the U.S. v. Ray file share. Please do not reproduce, share, or use this exhibit in any way, if you have downloaded this file, please delete it.’
But the department’s plea is unlikely to be successful as the document has already been posted on Twitter.
The list is included in an email said to be from Drury to the Department.
‘This is not an exhaustive list but it includes all my main clients/regulars and many others,’ she wrote.
Drury is one of at least five cult members who were students at the elite liberal arts college in Bronxville, just north of Manhattan, when they met Ray.
Ray was introduced to the group in the fall of 2010 when he began living in his daughter Talia’s on-campus dorm, where he persuaded her friends to stay the next summer at his city apartment.
Prosecutors say Ray coerced the students to join his ‘family’ as he accumulated power, sex and money, forcing one woman into a sex work enterprise so lucrative that she turned over more than $1million to him in a single year.
Drury, 31, began her testimony Friday, telling jurors at Manhattan Federal Court how Ray’s campaign of charisma resulted in her being hospitalized in a psychiatric facility and ultimately led her into a life of prostitution.
She described how she went from a naïve student to soliciting sex, ultimately handing over $2.5million in earnings to Ray, his daughter Talia and his ‘lieutenant’ and co-accused Isabella Pollok.
Drury admitted that she had always been very uncomfortable and lacked confidence about her body and couldn’t believe that anybody would find her attractive.
She credited this insecurity along with Ray’s coercion with her decision to have sexual encounters with ‘Sam’, a married man from whom Ray bought power tools.
Earlier in the trial jurors were also shown texts between Drury and Pollok and Pollok and Talia apparently discussing Drury’s prostitution, her clients, payment and transfers of cash into Pollok’s bank account.
In the texts read aloud, Drury listed meetings and sums of money she expected in payment.
One read: ‘I’m seeing Joe, the $3,500 guy at 3:30pm. I believe that will be another $8k though maybe less.’
Sums of money ranging from a few hundred to more than $17,000 in cash and bank accounts were discussed.
Taking the stand for a second day on Monday, she continued her account of the alleged gas-lighting, physical and sexual abuse that she claims she suffered at Ray’s hands.
She went on to tell the court how the campaign of control escalated during the summer of 2013, when she and several others travelled to Pinehurst, North Carolina, to help with yardwork at Ray’s stepfather’s property.
At this point, she said, Ray was controlling what students ate – forbidding carbohydrates – and forcing them to work sometimes until three or four in the morning to re-do mistakes that he found in their work.
‘Someone went out and got hamburgers and fries and milkshakes. [Ray] said, “This is your last meal, Felicia. You can have carbs; you can have whatever you want,”‘ she told the court.
Earlier in the trial, prosecutors began their opening statements alleging that Ray, an ex-convict, had used ‘violence, fear, sex and manipulation’ to get sex, power and money.
After learning the students’ secrets and insecurities and gaining their trust, Ray exploited them, ‘profiting off their labor, their money and even their bodies,’ Assistant US Attorney Lindsey Keenan said.
‘Once he gained control of their lives, … he took over their lives.’
Ray’s lawyer told the jury that Ray committed no federal crimes as he encircled himself with college-age ‘storytellers’ who claimed to have poisoned him and arranged to have him physically attacked.
‘You’ll see that Larry Ray is not guilty,’ attorney Allegra Glashausser said.
Ray, who once served as the best man at a wedding of disgraced former New York City police Commissioner Bernard Kerik, has been incarcerated since his 2020 arrest.
He is a well-known New York scammer with a murky past. In addition to spending times behind bars for his role in a securities fraud scam, he has worked on Wall Street, owned nightclubs, been an FBI informant and inserted himself in into powerful networks by brokering meetings.
This is an excerpt from Daily Mail.
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