On September 26, retired New York financier Howard Rubin, 70, was arrested and charged, alongside his personal assistant Jennifer Powers, 45, with sex trafficking and transporting women in interstate commerce. Rubin was also charged with bank fraud in relation to representations made to financial institutions to secure financing for Powers’s home in Texas.
According to the indictment, Rubin and Powers’s charges are in connection with a series of commercial sexual encounters which occurred between 2009 through 2019. During this time Rubin and Powers allegedly recruited women to travel to New York City to engage in “BDSM” commercial sex acts. Powers reportedly recruited former Playboy models, arranged transportation for the women, and would cover up women’s complaints as to the violence they experienced.
Further, Rubin and Powers are accused of targeting financially desperate women or those who had previously experienced sexual violence. The defendants reportedly spent an upward of $1 million dollars to organize these encounters over the year. Prosecutors allege many women were also given alcohol before being required to sign NDAs, preventing them from sharing information about the commercial sex acts with Rubin and requiring the women to assume the risk of injuries. Rubin and Powers had allegedly converted one of the bedrooms of his penthouse apartment into a soundproof “sex dungeon” complete with sex toys and a cattle prod. Rubin reportedly gave the women a safe word, but ignored their request to stop, brutalizing these women and leaving them with significant injuries that required medical attention and in one case surgery. Powers and Rubin utilized Venmo and PayPal to pay the women $5,000 or more per sexual encounter asalleged by prosecutors.
Rubin allegedly compensated Powers for recruiting women, handling transportation, booking luxury hotels, and facilitating encounters by paying her rent, her children’s private school tuition, and her down payment for her home in Texas.
Prior to these charges being brought, both Powers and Rubin were party to a civil suit commenced in 2017 where the survivors were awarded $3 million in compensatory damages and $850,000 in punitive damages. Powers was not found liable.
Rubin is currently detained in Brooklyn, New York without bail. Officials are concerned Rubin is a flight risk as he refused to surrender his passport when arrested. Meanwhile survivors are concerned for their own safety as Rubin has threatened their friends and family as well as suggested he would hire a hitman on the dark web. Co-defendant, Jennifer Powers, was released from federal custody with a GPS monitor on Monday, September 30th, with prosecutors requesting a “substantial bail package.”
The CSE Institute applauds the work of the United States Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York, and most importantly, recognizes those who have come forward. The Institute supports the survivors and is pleased that the Eastern District of New York is taking affirmative action against human trafficking in the United States. Combatting commercial sexual exploitation requires holding sex buyers and traffickers accountable no matter their socioeconomic status. To effectively fight human trafficking, law enforcement must focus on fighting demand by criminalizing traffickers and buyers of all socioeconomic classes. The CSE Institute further urges the United States Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York to hold accountable other individuals involved in facilitating the exploitation perpetrated by Rubin and Powers.
Money cannot buy consent and should not place anyone above the law. Rubin used his wealth and status as a high-powered financier to abuse and exploit women from established modeling pages. In this case, power and wealth allowed Rubin the means to control the women he exploited and avoid detection despite the abuses he inflicted against these women and the scale at which he caused harm. For the rich and powerful, people view commercial sex as acceptable because it is exhibited through a sanitized lens and typically construed as “sugaring” or an easy, safe way to make money that equally benefits both parties. This belief completely ignores the reality that all forms of commercial sexual exploitation are gender-based violence.
With commercial sexual exploitation, there is an inherit power imbalance, no matter the personal wealth of the sex buyer, when exploited individuals are reliant on buyers and traffickers for their basic needs. Research indicates that sex buyers in the United States typically spend more than $100 per encounter and an average of $186 billion are spent on commercial sex worldwide. Further, high frequency buyers, those who buy sex weekly or monthly, are more likely to earn a salary greater than $100,000 annually. High-frequency buyers comprise 75% of those purchasing sex which demonstrates a belief that money gives individuals the power to control others and turns human beings, specifically feminized bodies into commodities rather than people.
While the media often portrays traffickers as a stranger in a white van, this case exhibits the pervasive nature of commercial sexual exploitation. The CSE Institute has previously reported on cases in which individuals in the modeling industry were sexually exploited at the hands of the rich and powerful such as the Former Executives of Abercrombie & Fitch. Non-profits like Model Alliance have also highlighted stories of other model-survivors who have experienced sexual violence and exploitation while on the job as well as labor trafficking issues that plague the fashion industry. This common occurrence is exacerbated by the vulnerable position of the models and the wealth of those in charge of modeling agencies as well as the power of those exploiting the models.
The CSE Institute will provide updates as they become available.
All views expressed herein are personal to the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Villanova University Charles Widger School of Law or of Villanova University.