{"id":214733,"date":"2026-04-29T22:48:11","date_gmt":"2026-04-29T22:48:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/214733\/"},"modified":"2026-04-29T22:48:11","modified_gmt":"2026-04-29T22:48:11","slug":"judge-denies-bail-to-alleged-sex-dungeon-operator-howard-rubin-for-fifth-time-says-he-cant-be-trusted","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/214733\/","title":{"rendered":"Judge denies bail to alleged \u2018sex dungeon\u2019 operator Howard Rubin for fifth time, says he can\u2019t be trusted"},"content":{"rendered":"

The man accused<\/a> of sex trafficking and abusing dozens of women while running a sex dungeon in a New York City penthouse will remain behind bars as his case proceeds, a federal judge ruled Wednesday in denying him bail for the fifth time.\u00a0<\/p>\n

U.S. District Judge Brian Cogan said his decision \u201cnot \u2026 an easy one\u201d but that he didn\u2019t trust that former Wall Street financier Howard Rubin would abide by the conditions of the $75 million package, regardless of Rubin\u2019s promise all of his assets would be out of his reach and proposals to be subject to house arrest, equip his home with 24\/7 private security, be placed under electronic monitoring, subject all his communications to surveillance and surrender his passport.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Rubin is charged<\/a> with sex trafficking and bank fraud along with his personal assistant Jennifer Powers, who\u2019s alleged to have helped facilitate and cover up Rubin\u2019s conduct. Rubin, a former investment adviser to financier George Soros, was found liable<\/a> for raping and brutalizing women and ordered to pay almost $4 million to victims in a 2022 civil case. He was arrested in 2025 on criminal charges.<\/p>\n

Women have said Rubin convinced them to travel to New York to participate in BDSM sex, something some of them initially desired. However, upon beginning to engage in sex with Rubin, he\u2019d physically abuse them beyond the bounds of BDSM after they asked him to stop in a soundproof \u201csex dungeon\u201d \u2013 In one instance, he tied a woman up and hit her breasts for over an hour, leaving her with such severe scar tissue that surgeons couldn\u2019t operate on her to repair the damage for weeks, government prosecutors said in court Wednesday.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Rubin\u2019s attorney, Michael Gilbert, said the proposed bail package was \u201cso comprehensive\u201d it would make it \u201chard to fathom\u201d Rubin, now 71, would be able to escape house arrest, emphasizing it was the government\u2019s burden to prove it was \u201cmore likely than not\u201d that he would flee.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is not correct to conclude \u2026 he would flee. Quite frankly, he has nowhere to go,\u201d Gilbert said. \u201cWe firmly believe electronic monitoring is more than sufficient given that he is a 71-year-old man with health issues.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Cogan said that, in said that in situations like this, it was important to consider the \u201ccircumstances for not trusting the defendant.\u201d He agreed with the government\u2019s arguments that there was no way to be certain Rubin wouldn\u2019t be able to flee the country despite the proposed security measures, nor could he be sure Rubin didn\u2019t have a secret stash of money \u2013 or a friend he\u2019d be able to convince to help him \u2013 that he\u2019d be able to use to do so.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cFrankly, having gotten to know Mr. Rubin pretty well, I don\u2019t trust him to disclose those things,\u201d said Cogan, who presided over Rubin\u2019s 2022 civil trial that dealt largely with the same sex trafficking and sex abuse conduct. \u201cHe is not a person whose representations to the court can be trusted.\u201d<\/p>\n

He referenced Rubin\u2019s \u201cshifting\u201d account of how much money he has over the course of the five bail hearings, him convincing people to bribe guards at the Metropolitan Detention Center for preferential treatment and him allowing lawyers to lie on his behalf about why he had a large collection of phones in making his decision.<\/p>\n

Cogan said Rubin was \u201cnot a person who goes by the rules\u201d and held a \u201cmaster of the world mentality\u201d that allowed him to \u201cget anyone to do anything.\u201d He pointed to Rubin\u2019s representation of his conduct as being simply part of \u201ca BDSM subculture,\u201d and his \u201cability\u201d to both convince lawyers to view his conduct in the same light he did and his soon-to-be ex-wife, Mary Henry, to sign his bail package.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019d call it a BDSM subculture to the 22nd degree removed,\u201d Cogan said. \u201cThere is no culture where women end up hurt like this.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Cogan also agreed with Assistant District Attorney Raffaela Belizaire\u2019s argument that Rubin would be a danger to the community and that there was a chance Rubin would attempt to intimidate or harm witnesses, despite Gilbert\u2019s assertion that it would be \u201cimpossible.\u201d Belizaire said women who plan to testify at his criminal trial told the government they\u2019d fear for their lives if he was released.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Rubin is set to return to court on June 22.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n

A date for his trial has not been set yet. He faces life in prison if convicted.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The man accused of sex trafficking and abusing dozens of women while running a sex dungeon in a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":214734,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[84750,2710,9,24,63,3018,134,136,135],"class_list":["post-214733","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-staten-island","tag-howard-rubin","tag-law","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-rape","tag-staten-island","tag-staten-island-headlines","tag-staten-island-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/214733","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=214733"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/214733\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/214734"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=214733"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=214733"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=214733"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}