Ex-blogger could face prison Felony computer trespass admitted against corporation
A State Police investigation into allegations that journalists and critics of the NXIVM corporation may have hacked into the organization’s computer system to obtain client lists and other information led to the guilty plea Wednesday of a former Saratoga County blogger, with more arrests expected, according to a special prosecutor in the case.
John J. Tighe, 57, of Ballston Spa, who previously published a blog called Saratoga in Decline, pleaded guilty to felony computer trespass and faces one year in prison at his January sentencing. In his plea before Judge Peter Lynch in Albany County Court, Tighe agreed to cooperate with a special prosecutor against others implicated in the computer trespassing case.
There is no indication in court papers that journalists James M. Odato, of the Times Union, and Suzanna Andrews, who writes for Vanity Fair magazine, will face criminal charges. Both Odato and Andrews have written extensively about NXIVM, which was described by one expert in a 2012 Times Union article as an “extreme cult.”
NXIVM’s founder, Keith Raniere, of Clifton Park, has adamantly denied that NXIVM, which says it is an executive training program, is a cult.
NXIVM’s lawyer, Stephen Coffey of Albany, hung up the phone Wednesday when asked to comment.
In court Wednesday, Tighe admitted that in November 2010 he intentionally accessed the computer network of NXIVM, which was housed on the seventh floor of 80 State St. in Albany. Tighe said he utilized the user name and password of Mary Jane Pino, a former NXIVM coach, without her permission to access the list of NXIVM participants and clients — including their contact information.
Holly Trexler, a former Albany County assistant district attorney serving as special prosecutor in the case, said arrest warrants in the case have been issued for Joseph O’Hara, a NXIVM critic who once did legal work for the organization, and Barbara Bouchey, a financial planner and former NXIVM board member. In July, Toni Foley Natalie, a former associate and girlfriend of NXIVM founder Keith Raniere, was arraigned in Albany City Court on a felony charge of computer trespass; her case is pending, Trexler added.
In an unrelated case, O’Hara was sentenced July 2013 to three years in federal prison for his conviction in a bribery case involving a public school district contract in El Paso, Texas. He is serving his sentence at a federal prison in Brooklyn.
Tighe, meanwhile, is also facing child pornography charges in U.S. District Court in Albany. Law enforcement officials said they inadvertently discovered extensive child pornography on Tighe’s computer after it was seized in connection with the computer trespassing investigation.
The investigation into the alleged hacking began in March 2013 when the State Police received a complaint from NXIVM that multiple people may have used a former client’s sign-on information to gain unauthorized access to the corporation’s computer server at their Albany County headquarters, according to court records. The alleged unauthorized access took place on hundreds of occasions dating to 2006, according to a federal lawsuit filed by NXIVM in Rochester.
NXIVM’s lawsuit was filed in October 2013 in the Western District of New York against Tighe, O’Hara, Foley, Odato and Andrews. It remained sealed for 10 months until August, when a judge lifted a sealing order that had been requested by NXIVM’s attorneys, who said disclosure of the lawsuit would harm a criminal investigation.
Michael Grygiel, an Albany attorney for Andrews, said the allegations against his client are baseless. He said Andrews is “an award-winning professional journalist” and that the claims against her “arise from her protected newsgathering activity and lack any merit whatsoever.” Andrews wrote an investigative story on NXIVM’s ties to the Seagram heiresses Sara and Clare Bronfman — “The Heiresses and the Cult” —for Vanity Fair in November 2010.
“This lawsuit represents nothing more than an attempt to retaliate against Ms. Andrews for the exercise of her First Amendment rights as an investigative correspondent for Vanity Fair,” Grygiel said.
David A. Schulz, a Manhattan attorney who represents Odato in the lawsuit, declined to comment, citing the pending litigation. Odato has written dozens of stories on NXIVM in the past decade, including an award-winning 2012 series published by the Times Union that examined the corporation’s operations and the habits of Raniere, who is known to NXIVM’s adherents as “Vanguard.”
The 2012 series, “Secrets of NXIVM,” was a more-than-yearlong investigation by Odato and Times Union writer Jennifer Gish, which won first-place from the New York State Associated Press Association for depth reporting.
Schulz filed a motion in federal court in Rochester last month saying the lawsuit against Odato should be dismissed because it fails to state any claim and lists no damages as a result of any alleged computer trespass. The motion also noted that the alleged computer trespass would have taken place more than five years ago, outside the statute of limitations.
“NXIVM’s complaint seeks to assert a number of claims against a disparate group of defendants who have each exposed its cult-like and legally suspect practices in some way,” the motion states. “Odato’s 2012 series also documents NXIVM’s history as a ‘litigation machine’ that pursues largely meritless lawsuits to punish and silence those who speak ill of the group’s leader — litigating with a level of intensity that judges have described as entirely ‘disproportionate’ and ‘deplorable.'”