By Frank Parlato;
One of the latest – perhaps the very latest – scamming of Clare and Sara Bronfman’s inherited money by cult leader Keith Raniere appears to be through a company called PLGGDN, [Plugged-In Technologies], in part, a high tech cell phone system Keith Raniere led in its conceptual development.
The system was to be designed to strengthen services in cellular systems in developing nations. Over a five year period, the Bronfmans [particularly Clare] invested $20 million at Keith’s direction in developing tech that either never was developed or was already built elsewhere and did not need to be developed.
Keith Raniere was the conceptual founder of PLGGDN. The Bronfman sisters, heiresses to the Seagram Company liquor fortune, were to fund it.
The vision was to bond cell phones together via nodal networking. The concept was, if you had, for instance, 100 people in a third world country, who all have cellular plans and all have bandwidth, and one of them shoots a video, that person could use the bandwidth of the other 99 on the system to speed things up. In order to do this, the tech required multiple computers that can talk at the same time – called nodal networking.
It would also mean, in effect, an internet – off the grid. If it had been developed, it would have allowed fast phone downloads or uploads and media communications, Raniere explained, to his enthralled investors.
And – if the internet ever were to go down and they had this autonomous network, they – the owners of PLGGDN could still communicate with the internet through their nodal network. They would posses a dark web where they could secretly communicate.
And – in the event that anyone happened to use the cell phones in the USA, on this Raniere- ingenious system – it would be so designed as one where the NSA could not tap into. In fact, only Keith Raniere would be able to tap the phones or monitor internet in the brilliantly conceived plan. It would be built super secure and encrypted, running on its own backbone network, bypassing what the NSA or FBI could access by surveillance.
Raniere conceived a tech that does what the NSA does and that would keep it separate for him alone. He could be his own NSA. Thus, all – the practical anti-surveillance tech, and the altruistic bringing forth to third world nations improved communications was all based on Keith’s grand vision of the future.
It was led on the ground by three top NXIVM techies, Ben Myers, Steve Ose and James Morganstein.
The plan ultimately failed, despite more than $20 million being invested by Bronfmans. [Rosa Laura Junco also, reportedly, invested money, according to sources involved in its development.]
There was unfortunately no technology that was physically developed that matched the vision of the great leader. It was a Raniere idea with no corresponding tech to make it actually work.
However, at the same time the Bronfmans were investing millions into tech-free PLGGDN, Keith was moving money into anonymous electronic currency. The plan involved using Bitcoin addresses that could be handed over with passwords, and exchanged in person for cash, and would stay off the block chain, or on the block chain, if it was not traceable to anyone connected to the NXIVM organization. .
Raniere reportedly told associates it was not done to launder money and he had advice that this was perfectly legal. Its purpose, he said, was to securely convert money that already legally belonged to him [NXIVM] in order to move cash more quickly.
Nothing came of PLGGDN, other than to fleece the Bronfmans out of abother $20 million. What happened to the Bitcoin money is another matter altogether.
This whole episode may become the focus of law enforcement someday soon since it was still ongoing in 2015, recently enough to be within the statute of limitations for fraud. It was not, however, the first financial loss experienced by the Bronfman brats at the beguiling of handsome Keith Raniere.
Back in 2010, the world learned that the awesome cult leader, with the highest recorded IQ known in the galaxy, tapped the stupidest sisters for about $100 million in two awesomely stupid investment deals.
A court dispute, in Los Angeles County, Calif., revealed the Bronfman sisters paid $26 million for real estate in Los Angeles County that somehow never got developed. On top of the real estate deal gone sour, there were commodities trades that lost the dunce-like sisters another $65.6 million. Raniere said he had developed a foolproof mathematical formula for investing in the commodities market.
Somehow, Keith Raniere’s commodities trades lost $65.6 million. Raniere told the sisters the losses were due to outside forces out to foil him, such as their father Edgar Bronfman who pulled strings on worldwide commodities to spite him. But there was a silver lining: Raniere told them he chalked up the losses as an invaluable learning experience that could help him in the future with dealing with world markets. He needed to learn how the cheaters in the world markets worked so that after he started his own country – when he ruled his own nation of NXIVM – or perhaps ruled the world – he would then know how to handle cheaters effectively.
At that level of learning, $65 million was a small price to pay, he said, and the Bronfmans, hands clasped together at their chests, gushingly agreed.
The sisters’ attorney, Robert Crockett, explained to a less credulous media that the Bronfman sisters made the commodities investments, not Raniere, by loaning the $65 million to an entity called First Principles LLC, whose sole stockholder was Nancy Salzman.
“Mr. Raniere was giving the Bronfmans advice on what positions to take with their money,” he said back in 2010. Crockett added that it is not unusual for someone to claim he has a system to beat the market and for that system to fail.
He admitted the Bronfmans, “…are enamored with [Raniere’s] ethical pursuits and his business pursuit.”
After losing the $65.6 million in commodities, Raniere, as mentioned above, diversified into real estate. That led to the Bronfmans funding a partnership called Precision Development. That deal ran amok. And so after that came PLGGDN.
The Bronfman sisters, therefor,e have given Raniere:
– $65.6 MILLION for “loans” to First Principles, Inc., a company owned by Nancy Salzman to cover Raniere’s advice on commodities trades
– $6 MILLION for “loans” to Executive Success Programs, another company owned 100% by Salzman
– $26.4 MILLION investment in Precision Development, LLC, a company in which Salzman originally had a 50% ownership
– $20 MILLION for PLGGDN
$118 MILLION in four business adventures guided and devised by Keith Raniere. And that doesn’t include all the other expenses that they’ve picked up for Raniere-related businesses over the years – like the monstrous legal fees he’s run up in multiple lawsuits; the ongoing cost of paying all the ESPians who can’t find work anywhere else; the illegal Rainbow Cultural Garden operation; the massive amount of real estate in the Clifton Park, NY and Albany, NY areas. And on and on…
How much the sisters spent on lawsuits suing Raniere’s various mostly female enemies is anybody’s guess, but one attorney familiar with most of the lawsuits, and who opposed them on more than one, said he estimates they spent more than $50 million in legal fees in their various [losing] cases.
At the end of the day, Keith Raniere’s phony companies are always looking for ways to siphon and hide cash. They have a lot of money, mostly from the Bronfmans. But think about adding a dash of money laundered clean from Mexico.
How much of the more than $118 MILLION of Bronfman money secretly went off to Keith Raniere’s offshore accounts or Bitcoin is also anybody’s guess.