Albany
Clare W. Bronfman, an heiress of the Seagram Company business empire, allegedly implanted a "key logger" virus on the computer of her late father, Edgar M. Bronfman Sr., so officials with the NXIVM corporation could secretly monitor his emails, including his exchanges with world leaders and Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, according to court records.
The extraordinary allegations are attributed to Kristen M. Keeffe, who was part of the inner circle that ran NXIVM, a "human development" organization that has been described by one expert as an "extreme cult." The accusations by Keeffe are contained in a transcript of a telephone conversation that took place last March between Keeffe and Barbara J. Bouchey, a former NXIVM executive board member who is facing computer trespassing charges in Albany that accuse her and three others of improperly accessing the corporation's website.
Bouchey's attorneys filed a copy of the transcript in Albany County Court recently to buttress their argument that top NXIVM officials have used litigation, as well as the criminal case, to attack her and other perceived adversaries. Bouchey, a financial planner, claims NXIVM officials have dragged her into 13 lawsuits and filed the criminal complaint against her as retribution for defecting from the organization in 2009. She's denied hacking into the corporation's social website.
Clare Bronfman, 36, who owns a horse farm on West Wind Road in Knox and has described herself as NXIVM's operations director, did not respond to requests for comment.
The whereabouts of Keeffe, who left NXIVM last year, are unknown. She was part of NXIVM founder Keith Raniere's inner circle and has contacted Bouchey by telephone, and through encrypted emails, and offered to help her defend herself in the criminal case, according to court records. Keeffe said that she gathered information about NXIVM for several years before she left and tried to "deprogram" Nancy L. Salzman, who is NXIVM's president. Salzman did not respond to a request for comment.
"In the three and a half years leading up to where I left, I was a spy," Keeffe said during the conversation. "And I went to great lengths to make them think I was going along with things with the exception of trying to deprogram Nancy and a couple of other people that l was close to that were not close to Keith."
Raniere did not return a telephone call seeking comment.
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