The ex-con who allegedly brainwashed his daughter’s college roommates into a sex cult was called a ‘f****** a**hole’ by a woman believed to be the aunt of an alleged victim in court today.
Lawrence Ray, 60, appeared for a pre-trial conference after being arrested earlier this month on charges including extortion, sex trafficking and forced labor.
He limped into court with his ankles shackled and wearing dark blue prison clothes shortly before 3.30pm on Wednesday.
The pre-trial conference before Judge Lewis Liman at Manhattan Federal District Court revealed the evidence that the FBI has turned up after executing search warrants.
Lawrence Ray, 60, appeared for a pre-trial conference after being arrested earlier this month on charges including extortion, sex trafficking and forced labor
It included 44 hard drives, 37 cellphones, five laptops, four palm pilots, three cameras, seven recording devices and a polygraph machine.
Prosecutors told the court that they are sifting through the devices to figure out what belongs to Ray and what belongs to his alleged victims.
Prosecutors said that they also discovered Ray’s email account which contained 200,000 messages and four iCloud accounts of videos, pictures and audio files.
Hundreds of photos were also discovered at Ray’s home in Piscataway, New Jersey, and in a storage unit he kept.
The judge has allowed ten weeks for prosecutors to prepare the evidence, some of which may be subject to a protective order which will be decided on next week.
Ray allegedly used physical and psychological threats and coercion to indoctrinate a group of students who attended the elite liberal arts college, Sarah Lawrence, with his daughter Talia between 2010 and 2018.
He has pleaded not guilty. A magistrates court hearing is scheduled for Monday to assign defense counsel to Ray and hear a request for bail.
The ex-con who allegedly brainwashed his daughter’s roommates at Sarah Lawrence College (above) in Bronxville, New York, into a sex cult was called a ‘f****** a**hole’ by a woman believed to be the aunt of an alleged victim in court today
Ray allegedly used physical and psychological threats and coercion to indoctrinate a group of students who attended the elite liberal arts college (above) with his daughter Talia between 2010 and 2018
Ray’s public defender Marne Lenox also asked the judge to issue an order for medical attention for the 60-year-old at Metropolitan Correctional Center.
She said that he is diabetic and ‘has other medical issues not being adequately addressed while he is incarcerated’.
The judge declined to sign an ‘open-ended’ order for medical issues that were unexplained but said he would address Ray’s diabetes with the prison.
The next pre-trial hearing is scheduled for March 19.
As he left the courtroom, a woman who had been seated on the back row, walked towards Ray and called him a ‘f****** a**hole’.
She declined to speak following the hearing and was escorted into an elevator by a court security officer.
Lee Chen, whose apartment Ray used for some of the alleged abuse, was also in court today.
Ray moved into his daughter’s dorm at the college, just north of New York City, after leaving prison in 2010.
Ray limped into court with his ankles shackled and wearing dark blue prison clothes shortly before 3.30pm on Wednesday. The pre-trial conference before Judge Lewis Liman at Manhattan Federal District Court revealed the evidence that the FBI has turned up after executing search warrants
He is alleged to have forced some of the male and female students into making sex videos, which were used to coerce and extort them, forcing one victim into prostitution, along with cheating them out of $1million.
Investigators seized large amounts of materials including 20 to 40 electronic devices from the Piscataway home of the alleged conman who reportedly had ties to mobsters and New York City police commissioner Bernie Kerik.
Assistant US Attorney Danielle Sassoon previously told a judge that investigators, who conducted about 17 interviews with victims, were told that Ray would sometimes use a woman’s electronic device to take sexually explicit materials and then seize it.
She said he would also direct victims to write ‘sensitive and incriminating things’ in journals that he would then use against them, including videos of Ray berating a victim and using sexually explicit content in the alleged extortion.
Ray, who goes by Larry, is shown in a 2016 interview where he described being assaulted by a mafia boss. FBI revealed evidence of the ‘sex cult’ included 44 hard drives, 37 cellphones, five laptops, four palm pilots, three cameras, seven recording devices and a polygraph machine
Ray was living in New Jersey with two of the former students both of whom he called his wife, it was claimed. He was arrested at the home, which belongs to a friend, on February 11.
At the time of Ray’s arrest, US Attorney Geoffrey S. Berman said Ray used ‘physical, sexual and psychological abuse’ to extort money from five different students at Sarah Lawrence College.
He convinced them they were indebted to him, subjecting them to ‘grueling interrogations’ that spanned hours and deprived them of food and sleep, he said.
At least one of the women was forced into prostitution and Ray collected over $500,000 from her, prosecutors said.
He would video her encounters with customers and use them to extort money and force her to continue in prostitution, investigators claim. Other victims were allegedly threatened with knives.
Prosecutors said Ray solicited false confessions from more than a half-dozen victims for crimes they did not commit, and coerced them to make payments they didn’t actually owe and couldn’t afford.
He began his alleged coercion by holding ‘therapy sessions’ with his daughter and her friends after he was released from prison and moved into her dorm room at Sarah Lawrence College, prosecutors allege.
Some were coerced into working without pay to install an irrigation system on a property his family owned in North Carolina, it was claimed.
His daughter Talia, now 30, currently lives at the home in Pinehurst. She declined to be interviewed by DailyMail.com.
Ray was previously known for his role in helping to send former New York City police commissioner Bernard Kerik (right), a close confidant of Rudy Giuliani, to prison. At the time, Ray, who had been the best man at Kerik’s wedding, was under indictment in a $40 million stock scam
Ray subjected his victims to ‘sexual and psychological manipulation and physical abuse’ from 2010 to 2018, indictment stated
Journals, financial records along with cellphone videos, described as ‘particularly disturbing’ will be examined, prosecutors said.
The prosecutor said evidence would eventually be shown to defense lawyers under secrecy rules meant to protect the identities of victims.
Sassoon also said statements Lawrence Ray made after his arrest on Tuesday will be turned over to defense lawyers so they can prepare for trial.
Ray subjected his victims to ‘sexual and psychological manipulation and physical abuse’ from 2010 to 2018, indictment stated.
He starved some of the girls, the indictment claims, by placing a lock on the refrigerator, while forcing them to carry out labor to ‘repay him’ for purported damages they had caused to his home in Manhattan.
Ray also used ‘sleep deprivation, psychological and sexual humiliation, verbal abuse and threats of physical violence’, the indictment states.
In an article published by New York magazine last year, some of Ray’s alleged victims detailed the violent and sadistic abuse.
One male student, who was questioning his sexuality, described Ray making a garrote out of crushed aluminium foil and twisting it around his genitals.
The young man was also forced to put on a dress by Ray and go into the lobby of the apartment building they were staying at on the Upper East Side. On his return to the apartment, Ray gave him a dildo and told him to penetrate himself with it in front of the group.
At one time, after allegedly damaging the oven in the apartment, Ray threatened to dismember him with a knife.
Another male student was allegedly put in a sleeper hold by Ray, causing him to black out.
Prosecutors allege Ray used physical and psychological threats to extort victims. One woman was allegedly forced into prostitution and Ray would video her sexual encounters with customers to extort her
Ray was previously known for his role in helping to send former New York City police commissioner Bernard Kerik, a close confidant of Rudy Giuliani, to prison.
At the time, Ray, who had been the best man at Kerik’s wedding, was under indictment in a $40 million stock scam.
The felon also reportedly had connections to mobsters and intelligence officers.
Kerik told DailyMailTV that his former friend is a ‘predator’.
He said: ‘He’s a conman. He is somebody that’s a detriment to society. Hopefully, justice will take its course and he’ll be held accountable for his crimes.’
In interviews with New York magazine, whose story last year prompted the federal investigation, Ray said he believed he was being poisoned as part of a conspiracy hatched by some of the students and Kerik, who denied any involvement.
The president of Sarah Lawrence College searched for an explanation in a letter to the college community.
‘Perhaps because the apartment in question was a small townhouse with its own entrance, students in other housing would not necessarily have been aware of the presence (and have told us they were not) of this student´s father,’ President Cristle Collins Judd wrote the day after Ray’s arrest.