New evidence has emerged that allegedly shows the FBI manufactured and planted evidence to secure the conviction of NXIVM sex cult founder Keith Raniere, according to the latest appeal for his release.
Raniere was convicted in October 2020 of racketeering, sex trafficking, forced labor conspiracy, and wire fraud conspiracy and was sentenced to 120 years in prison. He was also fined $1.75 million.
If the FBI were shown to have acted improperly, it could have implications beyond the case if Congress investigates, as well being a blow to public trust in an agency that is already expected to face a major shake-up after Donald Trump takes office early next year.
Evidence of government malfeasance, provided in the appeal documents, included more than 100 photos planted across a digital camera memory card and backup hard drive, according to court documents filed in the Second Circuit Court of Appeals Oct. 28 as part of an appeal seeking a new trial. Evidence also included property search records that contained anomalies and improprieties – revealing a staged crime scene, according to court records filed in the Eastern District of New York on Nov. 28 as part of a motion to vacate the original sentence.
“The search of 8 Hale (a property where Raniere had resided) was deliberately and fraudulently staged and that search scene collection photographs were also deliberately staged,” wrote Mark Daniel Bowling, a former FBI agent and former agent for the Department of Energy’s Office of Inspector General, one of the experts hired by Raniere’s legal team.
“Further, I agree that at least four of the nine search team members were complicit in this fraudulent conduct, with two of them as key orchestrators,” he added. “During my nearly 20 years in the FBI, I have never seen a search executed with this level of corrupt and illegal behavior,” added Bowling referring to the search on March 27, 2018.
The FBI declined comment to Newsweek on the case.
Raniere’s legal team has hired seven digital forensic experts, four of whom are former FBI examiners, and a former FBI crime scene and senior evidence technician photographer for the new appeal.
How was Raniere Convicted?
Raniere founded NXIVM as what he called a self-help group in the 1990s and was accused of creating a sex cult known as DOS within the organization. Its female members said they served as “slaves” and “masters.” Multiple women testified that they joined DOS after being told it was a “women’s empowerment” group. They said they later discovered they would be expected to have sex with Raniere, send him nude photos and have his initials branded onto their bodies.
One piece of evidence was an alleged late discovery, 11 months after the search was conducted, by agents of more than a dozen images of a female that the FBI said was a minor, based on the photo’s metadata showing it was taken in 2005, when the female was under age 18. The woman, with the pseudonym Camila, said in a victim impact statement she had a sexual relationship with Raniere.
Within a few weeks of when the photo evidence and child pornography charges were filed, Raniere’s five codefendants all took plea deals, making it harder for his defense to argue for his innocence.
What are the Allegations of Malfeasance?
However, the experts now hired by the defense say in a report that the photo metadata had been changed to make it appear that Camila was under 18 when the pictures were taken, while Raniere’s lawyers say she was a legal adult when a relationship began.
Raniere’s lawyers previously filed a motion for a new trial alleging malfeasance by the FBI on the grounds of the allegedly manufactured photo evidence, which was rejected in April by Judge Nicholas Garaufis of the Eastern District of New York. They filed a new appeal on that case in October.
In its own filing responding to the defense’s motion for a hearing on a new trial the government admitted that an unidentified FBI photo technician had accessed critical and unpreserved evidence, which the defense’s experts say was an unprecedented act that taints the evidence.
“If he’s not a digital forensic examiner, why is he taking a piece of digital forensic evidence and plugging it into his machine?” asked Micah Sturgis, an independent forensics expert and owner of Sturgis Forensics LLC, who reviewed the reports by the seven forensic experts for Newsweek but is not involved in the case. He reviewed the initial and subsequent reports by the former FBI experts for the initial motion for a new trial, and the government’s own filing in response to the motion for a new trial which was denied and is now pending appeal.
“I’m sure that violates the FBI policy,” Sturgis added. “That would definitely violate any type of local law enforcement policy … It appears to me that the FBI has altered the images, or they have changed the evidence to fit their narrative.”
Sturgis worked as a digital forensic expert for law enforcement for 10 years and was trained by the U.S. Secret Service at the National Computer Forensic Institute. He said he was limited in his assessment because he didn’t have access to the original evidence, but he knows the agents who drafted the defense’s reports personally and by reputation and he believes them.
Sturgis said he was surprised that the judge didn’t give more credence to the report by the former FBI agents as part of the motion for a new trial and alongside the new search findings, in the motion to vacate the original sentence.
“When you’ve got that and it’s being shoved in your face by seven experts, and a judge turns his nose up at it, that entire judicial system needs to be brought into question,” he said.
What Happened in the Search?
Kenneth DeNardo, a 23-year veteran of the FBI who worked as a senior evidence technician and photographer for the evidence response team and is now among the experts paid by Raniere’s defense said he has “never seen a search with this magnitude of malfeasance.”
He alleged that FBI agents had pre-filled the list of personnel on the scene and one agent signed off as several other agents, against agency protocol. He also said that an agent pre-filled the evidence recovery log for the search at 8 Hale before even arriving to conduct the search. FBI protocol requires evidence logs be filled out on site to ensure an accurate real-time record of the search, but this didn’t happen at 8 Hale.
“This is evidenced by crossed-out entries on a later page of the log that correspond to items already listed on an earlier page, albeit in a different sequence, revealing a pre-choreographed effort to fit a predetermined narrative rather than the required real-time documentation. This constitutes evidence fabrication,” he wrote.
He cites multiple other problems with the search, including the fact that a dog was apparently present (a paw was photographed at the scene), despite never being logged as part of the search. Such oversights are serious violations of protocol that indicate an overall pattern of inaccuracy and falsification, DeNardo said.
He said it appears that FBI agents “choreographed” finding key evidence in an upstairs room right away, instead of starting the search with the first room downstairs, per standard FBI procedure. DeNardo said that agents manufactured a scene on a bookshelf by adding and arranging items including two uncollected books on sex trafficking. DeNardo said he also believes one camera was planted on the scene because it was staged on a countertop and photographed, but never taken into evidence.
Another camera, the one allegedly used to take photos of Camila, was discovered almost a year after the search and has an unknown origin, because it was not clearly visible in any FBI photograph taken on the property, according to DeNardo’s report.
The Digital Evidence
The latest court filings also go into more detail outlining what it said were major problems with the digital material that the FBI said it had found within law enforcement’s evidence 11 months after the search of the Hale property.
The case against Raniere was built on two key pieces of digital evidence: a camera card and an external hard drive, said J. Richard Kiper, a retired FBI special agent and computer forensic examiner and instructor who produced a report for the defense on the digital forensic evidence.
Prosecutors said that Raniere used the camera and its card to take explicit photographs of women, including of Camile when she was allegedly 15.
But Kiper and the other experts say the camera card was likely altered between April 11, 2019, and June 11, 2019, while in FBI custody.
According to FBI practice, no examination of electronic evidence can take place before a forensic image (exact copy) has been made of the device by the CART (Computer Analysis Response Team) lab. However, on September 19, 2019, an FBI examiner took the camera card out of evidence control for “review” before CART had processed the evidence, according to court documents. This is a major violation of chain-of-custody standards, Kiper said.
On the same day the camera card was accessed without a write-blocker, which meant it could have been manipulated, the experts said.
“Them taking an SD card that’s in question, and that’s important evidence, and plugging it into a computer that’s not write-blocked – that right there is enough, in my opinion, to have tainted everything. If they allow that to happen there, what more have they done?” Sturgis said.
Kiper said that’s because there was no write-blocker, it could not be determined what was originally on that memory card.
What’s Next?
The FBI has until March 2025 to respond to the filing from Raniere’s legal team.
In the meantime, Sturgis says this evidence could have ramifications far beyond Raniere’s case, particularly if Congress decides to step in and examine the allegations.
“If the FBI manufactured evidence in this case, then the American people need to be concerned with their freedoms and what can happen to them if they’re being investigated by the FBI,” he said. “At what point do you lose complete trust in our federal government or our state government or even our local government?”
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), the chair of the subcommittee on federal courts, oversight, agency action, and federal rights, declined to comment on the allegations that the FBI had engaged in major malfeasance.
