Financier Howard Rubin to stay behind bars awaiting 2027 sex trafficking trial

Last week, a Second Circuit panel swatted Rubin's latest attempt to be released on bail. He remains in custody at Brooklyn's Metropolitan Detention Center.BROOKLYN (CN) — Howard Rubin, a retired Wall Street trader who’s accused of brutally raping multiple women over a 10-year period at his Manhattan penthouse, will stay in jail as he awaits a trial that’s more than a year away.Senior U.S. District Judge Brian Cogan set trial for Sept. 13, 2027, at a hearing Wednesday morning, days after an appeals court denied the 71-year-old former Bear Stearns trader’s request for release on a proposed $75 million bail package. Rubin is detained at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn.In a five-page unsigned opinion, a Second Circuit panel disagreed that Cogan applied the wrong legal standard by “requiring proposed release conditions that would ‘guarantee’ his appearance rather than reasonably assure it.”“Nor can we say that the district court clearly erred in finding by clear and convincing evidence that Rubin posed a danger to the community,” the judges wrote.Federal prosecutors say Rubin and his personal assistant Jennifer Powers, who’s also charged in the case, recruited 10 women between 2009 and 2019 to engage in sex acts with Rubin in which he “brutalized women’s bodies,” luring them to a soundproof, locked “sex dungeon” that was furnished with BDSM equipment: straps, restraints, electroshock devices.In some cases Rubin provided women with a safe word, but proceeded to disregard it, prosecutors say. Some women were gagged or unconscious, unable to object to severe physical and sexual abuse. One victim says Rubin hit her so hard that her breast implant flipped upside down and required surgery.Some of the women told Powers about the abuse and sent her photographs of their injuries, and in response, Powers “minimized Rubin’s behavior by telling the women he was too drunk or even blaming the women for letting Rubin get too drunk,” the indictment says.Rubin and Powers targeted Playboy models in particular, prosecutors say, contacting them through social media, modeling pages or high-end prostitution networks.It’s the first time Rubin has seen criminal penalties for sexual abuse — he faces 16 counts including sex trafficking, interstate transportation for purposes of prostitution and bank fraud — but following a 2022 civil trial, also before Cogan, he was ordered to pay victims $3.85 million.Ahead of the civil trial, Rubin sent a threatening letter to one of the victims after consulting with his counsel, a detail prosecutors have signaled is likely to come up at next year’s trial. At Wednesday’s conflict-of-interest proceeding, Cogan determined that Rubin can maintain his attorney, Michael Gilbert of the firm Sheppard Mullin Richter & Hampton LLP, who had knowledge that Rubin was going to send the letter but says he didn’t have any input.“It wasn’t ghostwritten by you?” asked Cogan, a George W. Bush appointee.“It certainly wasn’t ghostwritten by me,” Gilbert replied. “I had no personal involvement in that at all.”Rubin acknowledged the potential conflicts in his representation and the notion that Gilbert may not be able to participate in portions of trial centered on the letter. Those in theory could be handled by another attorney for Rubin; he has also retained Marc Agnifilo of Agnifilo Intrater, a prominent New York City defense lawyer who represented music mogul Sean “Diddy” Combs and, more recently, admitted healthcare CEO shooter Luigi Mangione.Both Gilbert and Agnifilo declined to comment Wednesday on Rubin’s continued detention.Subscribe to our free newslettersOur weekly newsletter Closing Arguments offers the latest about ongoing trials, major litigation and rulings in courthouses around the U.S. and the world, while the monthly Under the Lights dishes the legal dirt from Hollywood, sports, Big Tech and the arts.Additional Reads