Ray, 62, faces up to life in prison when he is sentenced by Manhattan District Judge Lewis Lyman later this year. Throughout the month-long trial, prosecutors and victims portrayed Ray as a computer predator who claimed control of a group of students and others to enrich himself as the leader of a criminal organization called the Ray Family. “When his victims were completely subjugated, when he was in control, he committed crimes to pay for them – blackmail, forced labor, sex trafficking, obstruction of justice, financial crimes,” Assistant Attorney General Molly Blair told jurors. . disagreement. “The accused did all this for control, for his own greed and to increase his power, to consolidate his position in the organized group he led.” Ray, 62, abused young people for years and got rich in the process.SDNY Ray began abusing his daughter’s dormitory on campus at Westchester County College in 2010 after being released from prison in an unrelated case. Almost immediately, Ray began treating his daughter’s friends, impressing them with fictional stories about his alleged involvement in military operations abroad and his friends in law enforcement and politics, prosecutors said. In the summer of 2011, some students moved into a one-bedroom apartment on the Upper East Side with Ray, where abuse and control increased, the federal government said. Ray was a predatory calculation, according to victims and prosecutors. Jane Rosenberg / REUTERS For most of the next decade, Ray blackmailed his victims and forced one of them into prostitution while laundering the program, which grossed millions of dollars. Federal authorities began investigating Ray after a 2020 New York Magazine article pulled the curtain on his relationship with Sarah Lawrence’s former students. Ray subjected his victims to physical, mental and sexual abuse, prosecutors said at the trial. Ray recorded the confessions made by his victims, in which they managed to destroy his property, conspire against him and poison him and his family – then used the mea culpas as blackmail. Ray started his abusive sex cult in 2010 after being released from prison in an unrelated case. Ray carried out his criminal operation with the help of Isabella Pollock, a former student who became his collaborator, according to the federals. Ray’s most lucrative plan was to raise money that victim Claudia Drewy earned while working as a prostitute under his guidance, she testified. For about five years, Drury worked seven days a week, meeting clients who paid her exorbitant sums of money in exchange for sex, she said. Ray blackmailed his victims and forced one of them into prostitution.SDNY Drury donated about $ 2.5 million to Ray, who won while accompanying and living in various Manhattan hotels, where she would meet her clients. When Ray felt threatened that Drew was out of control, he and Pollock confronted her at the Gregory Hotel in Midtown, where he tortured her for hours overnight, prosecutors said. He ordered her to undress, handcuffed her to a chair and repeatedly tried to strangle her with a plastic bag, Drewy told jurors. Talia Ray and Isabella Pollok testified about the torture that Ray inflicted on them during the trial. SDNY “I was terrified. I was shaking. You can’t breathe. You want to breathe a lot. It just makes it a lot worse,” he said in March. Ray also dumped Drew’s naked body with water and moved her chair to an air conditioner in the room, she said. During the long torture session, Ray and Pollock stopped to eat hamburgers they had ordered from a nearby restaurant, Drew said. Claudia Drury was forced into prostitution by Ray.SDNY The torture session was strong evidence that Ray had committed almost all of the crimes he was charged with, Braiswell told jurors in her final speech. “Ladies and gentlemen, this unique night of crime tells you almost everything you need to know. “But, as we will cover and as you have seen, there is much more,” he said. Throughout the trial, Ray’s defense team sought to undermine the credibility of his accusers, describing them as a group of “narrators” who embellished stories about Ray because they were jealous of him or otherwise wanted to harm him. A video was shown at his trial with Larry Ray throwing and holding Felicia Rosario. SDNY In her final speech, Ray’s lawyer, Marne Lenox, attacked Drury’s account of the night she was tortured by the defendant, claiming it was a fantasy. “There was no attack on the Gregory Hotel. It never happened, “said Lenox. Ray has been locked up in the Brooklyn Metropolitan Detention Center since his arrest in 2020. Pollok was later charged with alleged role in the operation and pleaded not guilty. He is scheduled to stand trial later this year.
