But Friday afternoon, Bronfman, 40, pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court in Brooklyn to charges arising from an indictment filed last year against her and several other followers of the group’s leader, Keith Raniere.
“I am truly remorseful,” Bronfman told Judge Nicholas G. Garaufis as she pleaded guilty to conspiring to conceal and harbor an unauthorized immigrant for financial gain, and fraudulent use of identification. “I wanted to do good in the world.”
A few minutes later, the group’s longtime bookkeeper, Kathy Russell, 61, pleaded guilty to one count of visa fraud.
The latest guilty pleas mean Raniere will stand trial alone next month on federal racketeering charges, occupying center stage without the women who once idolized and supported him. In recent weeks, three of his other co-defendants, including actress Allison Mack, have pleaded guilty to various charges.
Based near Albany, NXIVM billed itself as a self-help organization, offering workshops that promised self-fulfillment. But it had a dark side. Some women were recruited into a secret order within the group, branded on the pelvis with a symbol containing Raniere’s initials, and coerced into having sex with him, prosecutors said.
Federal authorities began investigating the organization after The New York Times published an article in late 2017 detailing how women had to provide personal secrets as “collateral” to join Raniere’s secret sorority and were warned that damaging or embarrassing information would be made public if they disclosed the sorority’s existence.
Russell faces between six months and a year in prison under federal sentencing guidelines. She will be sentenced July 31. Bronfman faces between 21 and 27 months in prison and will be sentenced July 25.
Raniere has denied all the charges against him. “We are going to trial,” his lawyer, Marc Agnifilo, said Friday. “We don’t believe Ms. Russell and Ms. Bronfman should have been charged, and we are happy they’re out of the case.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.