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, 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.
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 Justice Department admitted it ‘inadvertently’ published a list of alleged clients of Claudia Drury (pictured arriving at court Tuesday), a Sarah Lawrence ‘sex cult victim’ who claims she was forced into prostitution
Drury, 31, has been on the witness stand giving evidence against alleged sex cult leader Larry Ray, who is charged with sex trafficking, forced labor, among other crimes
Over two days of testimony, Drury told the court how Ray (right) allegedly forced her into a life of prostitution, abused her, and threatened to kill her after ingratiating himself with her and her friends when she was a student at Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, New York
The list was to be used in the federal case against 62-year-old Larry 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.
It is said to have been compiled 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.
Drury (pictured in a court sketch on Monday) began her testimony Friday, telling jurors at Manhattan Federal Court how how she went from naïve college student to a life of prostitution
The 31-year-old witness (pictured outside court Monday) took the stand to describe the alleged gas-lighting, physical and sexual abuse that she claims she suffered at Ray’s hands
Drury claims Ray battered her psychologically and sometimes physically during his alleged campaign of control and abuse
‘This is not an exhaustive list but it includes all my main clients/regulars and many others,’ she wrote.
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.
In a follow up text exchange between Pollok and Talia allegedly regarding the transfer of money earned by Drury through prostitution, Talia reassures Pollok: ‘We got the moollah.’
Ray ultimately ingratiated himself with his daughter Talia’s friends at Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, New York, including Santos Rosario (pictured left with Talia) Daniel Levin, Felicia Rosario (right) and Isabella Pollok
The jury heard on Monday how Ray allegedly abused ‘cult’ victim Dan Levin (pictured) whenever he deemed the younger man to be ‘playing with the truth’
Isabella Pollok is accused of being Ray’s ‘lieutenant’ and conspirator
On Monday, the court was shown emails in which Drury praised Ray’s selflessness and the supposed psychological ‘help’ he was providing to her and college friends including Santos Rosario, Dan Levin, Felicia Rosario and Ray’s co-accused and alleged ‘lieutenant’ Isabella Pollok.
At the time, she referred to Ray, 62, as, ‘the hero of the story.’
Ray was introduced to the group by his daughter Talia who was also a student at the elite liberal arts college in Bronxville, just north of Manhattan.
Taking the stand for a second day on Monday, Drury continued her account of the alleged gas-lighting, physical and sexual abuse that she claims she suffered at Ray’s hands.
On one occasion, she recalled, Ray showed her a photograph of friend and fellow student Levin.
She explained: ‘[Ray] told me that he was having a confrontation or conversation with Dan about Dan’s sexuality and that in the course of this Isabella was folding laundry and Dan kept eyeing a dress.
‘Larry asked Dan, “Do you want to wear the dress?” He told me Dan really did and so he made Dan put on the dress and go down to get mail wearing the dress.’
On his return to the Upper East Side apartment in which the students and Ray were, for the most part, living, Drury said the confrontation ‘escalated.’
‘From there it escalated to Larry telling Isabella to go get her bag of sex toys and dildos and to get the biggest one, and he [Ray] showed me a picture of Dan trying to fit it in his mouth,’ she added.
Sarah Lawrence College is an elite liberal arts college in Bronxville, just north of New York City
Claudia Drury testifies at trial for Larry Ray on Monday March 21, 2022
‘This was all framed as something Dan wanted – that was helpful and clarifying for Dan.’
But according to Drury, Levin’s face was ‘contorted’ in the photograph in which he was looking directly at the camera.
She said: ‘He looks panicked and questioning and scared. It’s not a look I’ve actually ever seen on anyone’s face again.’
Ray is accused of 17 counts including sex-trafficking, extortion, money laundering, violent crime in aid of racketeering, racketeering conspiracy
During another incident recalled by Drury in court, Ray made a ‘noose’ out of tinfoil and had Levin place it round his testicles while he interrogated him – tightening the noose whenever he deemed the younger man to be ‘playing with the truth.’
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 said Ray held sway over the college students, forcing some of them into prostitution and making others wear diapers as punishment.
Assistant US Attorney Lindsey Keenan began her opening statement last week with a description of a gruesome October 2018 alleged attack.
Keenan said Ray and his ‘trusted lieutenant’ found the victim they had ‘forced into a life of prostitution’ at a hotel, where Ray tortured her for hours to make sure she’d continue her sex work.
The prosecutor said Ray used ‘violence, fear, sex and manipulation’ to gain sex, power and money.
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.
PICTURED: Larry Ray outside his stepfather’s home in Pinehurst, North Carolina
The court heard how Ray’s alleged campaign of control escalated during the summer of 2013, when Drury and several others travelled to Pinehurst, North Carolina, to help with yardwork at Ray’s stepfather’s property (pictured)
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.
He had previously been sentenced to five years probation for his role in a securities fraud scam.
The allegations involving the latest case were laid out in a lengthy article by New York magazine’s The Cut in 2019, that included accounts from some of the purported cult members.
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