Milton resident John Tighe, author of Saratoga in Decline, confirmed that the seizure was connected with the group NXIVM, which he has written about in the past. He said he has hired Lee Kindlon as his attorney and declined additional comment.
Saratoga County District Attorney James A. Murphy III said his office was not involved in the seizure by state police and referred all questions to them.
The Troop G spokesman confirmed that this seizure was one of three sites across the state where computers were seized.
In Tighe's most recent blog post, which came on Wednesday, he wrote that his blog will be closed until further notice.
His blog is a regular visit for people staying up on gossip and breaking news in Saratoga Springs and the surrounding towns. Recently he has become an outspoken advocate for Darryl Mount Jr. and highly critical of Public Safety Commissioner Chris Mathiesen, who Tighe calls "Toothy," because he is a dentist.
Tighe, 57, was the focus of a piece the Gazette did on local bloggers. In that piece, it was noted that the blog has drawn praise and criticism. Critics consider him a pariah spewing a vitriolic and not-always-accurate account of news unfolding in the Saratoga area; others view him as a valuable news source who picks up the slack of the professional media.
“I’ve made a lot of enemies,” Tighe said last year, “but I’ve also made a lot of friends.”
a case of the minority getting swept away by the majority status quo.....simple.....
unless there are physical threats or calls to yell fire in a theater....the politicians should just be ashamed of themselves along with gumba gangstas.....
shame shame shame.....
...you are a product of your environment, your environment is a product of your priorities, your priorities are a product of you......
The replacement of morality and conscience with law produces a deadly paradox.
STOP BEING GOOD DEMOCRATS---STOP BEING GOOD REPUBLICANS--START BEING GOOD AMERICANS
Troopers take computer from area home related to complaint by NXIVM
By James M. Odato
Updated 11:25 pm, Thursday, October 24, 2013
State Police searched the homes of three New York residents on Wednesday, including that of a Saratoga Springs political blogger, and collected their computers. One of the searches by troopers was at the Saratoga County residence of John Tighe and is related to a matter involving NXIVM, Tighe and his lawyer said. NXIVM says it is a self-improvement organization. It is based in Colonie and has been the target of some of Tighe's critical postings.
Tighe's blog, Saratoga In Decline, indicated on Wednesday that it is closed until further notice, as the mayoral election season is in progress.
Terence L. Kindlon, Tighe's lawyer, said the search was executed based on an Oct. 17 warrant signed by Acting State Supreme Court Judge Kimberly O'Connor. She would not allow a reporter to review the search warrant she signed, saying, through her clerk, that it is not a public document.
Kindlon said Tighe's computer and external hard drives were taken by State Police. He said the reason for the investigation is vague but it involves an assertion of felonious computer access or trespass. Without his own computer, Tighe, who has taken to his blog almost daily to sharply criticize elected and public officers in Saratoga Springs, "is off the air," Kindlon said.
Kindlon said he expects Tighe to get another computer and to return to blogging on politics in Saratoga Springs. Stephen Coffey, who has represented one of NXIVM's top officers, could not be reached for comment about the searches and seizures.
State Police Bureau of Criminal Investigations Investigator Rodger Kirsopp in Clifton Park said on Wednesday that the NXIVM investigation is continuing, and would not confirm or deny the search. However, the State Police Troop G press office said on Thursday that Albany County search warrants were issued for a probe that began in April 2012 involving potential larceny of computer related information. The release said the matter was triggered by a complaint from NXIVM/ESP. NXIVM is related to Executive Success Programs, which is also known as ESP. The search warrant was executed by the Computer Crimes Unit.
"Computers and computer related documents were seized from locations in Milton, Saratoga County, Schenectady, Schenectady County and Perinton, Monroe County. The subjects who reside at the three locations have had some dealings with NXIVM in the past and none are current employees," the news release said. No one has been charged or arrested.
State Police Lt. Michael Lair said Judge O'Connor sealed the warrants even though investigators did not request that. He would not identify who resided at the locations of the three searches.
Albany County District Attorney's Office sought a special prosecutor to work with State Police on the probe and one was assigned, said David Rossi, chief assistant Albany County district attorney. The district attorney sought an outside counsel for the work to avoid potential conflicts, he said.
When the INSANE are running the ASYLUM In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule. -- Friedrich Nietzsche
“How fortunate for those in power that people never think.” Adolph Hitler
Secrets of NXIVM Some experts say Keith Raniere, the guru behind an unusual training business, is really a cult leader By James M. Odato and Jennifer Gish Updated 2:39 pm, Friday, February 24, 2012 1 of 23 VIEW: LARGER | HIDE Keith Raniere, founder of NXIVM, entering the Dalai Lama event and moments before being served with court papers at the Palace Theater in downtown Albany on Wed., May 6, 2009. (Patrick Dodson / Courtesy of Albany Student Press) Photo: Patrick Dodson Keith Raniere, founder of NXIVM, entering the Dalai Lama event and moments before being served with court papers at the Palace Theater in downtown Albany on Wed., May 6, 2009. (Patrick Dodson / Courtesy of Albany Student Press)
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inShare Larger | Smaller Printable Version Email This Font Latest News 3 Saratoga County firms top job creators Wanted: Alive, Parrot Pete, reward Walmart plans two Capital Region openings next week Stabbing suspect nabbed at NYC train station In a Saratoga County townhouse complex, a man who wears a Jesus beard and seeks to patent his philosophies keeps a cluster of adoring women at his side. He has drawn more than 10,000 people to his mission of ethical living. But some disciples say he has delivered a much darker reality.
Keith Raniere, a multilevel-marketing businessman turned self-improvement guru, has peddled himself as a spiritual being to followers, most of them women. A close-knit group of these women has tended to him, paid his bills and shuttled him around. Several have satisfied his sexual needs. And a few have left their families behind to wrap him in their affections.
Claiming one of the world's highest IQs and holding three degrees from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Raniere has evolved over the past two decades from the fresh-faced founder of Consumers' Buyline Inc., a buying club business investigated for being a pyramid scheme, into the 51-year-old intellectual commander of NXIVM, a Colonie-based company promising followers from Canada to Mexico it can "help transform and, ultimately, be an expression of the noble civilization of humans."
Raniere has convinced some followers he doesn't drive because his intellectual energy sets off radar detectors. He says his energy is drained if those around him disappoint or defect, former girlfriends have said. "He's the Vanguard," one of his key supporters testified in court, with the insistence and reverence of a child describing Santa Claus. Dozens of followers assemble annually near Lake George for Vanguard Week, a celebration of Raniere's birthday also considered a corporate retreat.
But Raniere's time here also has unfolded in a way that suggests more than a harmless God complex.
At least one cult expert said Raniere directs one of the most extreme cults he has ever studied and has likened Raniere to David Koresh, who most Americans link with images of a burning cult compound packed with women and children. Raniere has denied that NXIVM is a cult.
Other experts believe there is sufficient evidence for the New York Attorney General to investigate whether NXIVM — thought to have multimillion-dollar revenues — is an illegal multilevel-marketing business.
And some former followers have said it's expected you buy into Raniere's mission with money, mind and body.
Raniere "is a compulsive gambler, a sex addict with bizarre desires and needs, and a con man that specializes in Ponzi schemes," one of his former girlfriends, Toni Natalie, recently declared in federal court.
Since the 1990s, Raniere has attracted the attention of attorneys general in several states and the Securities and Exchange Commission. In 1996, he admitted no guilt but signed an agreement with the New York State Attorney General's Office promising he would not operate an illegal "chain distributor scheme" and pay a $40,000 settlement. Since then, he has never been prosecuted by any state or federal agency, and he had only been sued once as of last month — a countersuit by a noted cult expert who claims NXIVM invaded his privacy.
Through the years, Raniere has remained a somewhat mysterious figure, but based on a yearlong investigation, including scores of interviews and a review of business records, police reports and court documents, the Times Union has uncovered troubling details about a man once considered a boy genius.
...you are a product of your environment, your environment is a product of your priorities, your priorities are a product of you......
The replacement of morality and conscience with law produces a deadly paradox.
STOP BEING GOOD DEMOCRATS---STOP BEING GOOD REPUBLICANS--START BEING GOOD AMERICANS
'NXIVM is a litigation machine' Criticize Keith Raniere or tell the public NXIVM's secrets and you'll be sued, several subjects say By James M. Odato and Jennifer Gish Updated 12:41 pm, Tuesday, March 13, 2012 1 of 14 VIEW: LARGER | HIDE Steve Rombom, a private investigator who contacted several associates of NXIVM. Steve Rombom, a private investigator who contacted several associates of NXIVM. ()
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inShare Larger | Smaller Printable Version Email This Font Latest News 3 Saratoga County firms top job creators Wanted: Alive, Parrot Pete, reward Walmart plans two Capital Region openings next week Stabbing suspect nabbed at NYC train station They joined NXIVM hoping to secure an improved life. But when they left the organization, they found themselves entangled in the court system, bankrupt and in one case suicidal.
Some people who have defected from NXIVM have said the same leaders who preach humanitarianism are also master intimidators who will wring out opponents with years of litigation, use private investigators to bully and urge the government to pursue charges against those they believe have crossed them.
"They'll go to the ends of the earth to destroy you," Susan Dones, who once established a NXIVM training site in Washington state but broke away from the group in 2009, said in court last fall. She and her partner and former NXIVM trainer Kim Woolhouse were representing themselves against NXIVM's claims they had violated their confidentiality agreements with the organization.
"NXIVM is a litigation machine that is quick to file legal action against anyone who expresses an opinion about their 'leader' Keith Raniere's behaviors," the women told the court.
The judge in that case, Brian D. Lynch, agreed with some of that sentiment while noting that Dones was not blameless. "NXIVM's claims and litigation tactics were disproportionate and largely lacking in merit," Lynch ruled in dismissing nearly all of the claims against Dones.
"NXIVM's pursuit of Woolhouse is another matter entirely and sheds light on its true motivations," the judge wrote in his Oct. 25 opinion, in which he called the treatment of Woolhouse "deplorable." "Her 'sin' was to attempt to walk away after discovering that NXIVM was not what she thought or hoped. In return, she was labeled as 'suppressive,' a term that NXIVM applies to former associates who leave the company or whom NXIVM perceives to be its enemies, and subjected to protracted litigation from two large law firms and a phalanx of attorneys."
About 10 people, including cult tracker Rick Ross, four former NXIVM members and one former NXIVM attorney, have fallen into the self-improvement organization's legal cross hairs, pummeled with court filings some of them have said are meant to deliberately slow the judicial process and punish defendants for defecting from or speaking out against the group.
But what several of these people have called harassment and intimidation has extended beyond the courtroom.
Ross, the cult tracker NXIVM sued for publishing portions of its training program, has alleged private investigators hired by NXIVM rifled through his trash, searching for financial records. After being sued by Ross, the private investigators denied knowledge of it in court papers.
Toni Natalie, a former girlfriend and business associate of NXIVM founder Keith Raniere, said a breakup with the self-improvement guru began with pleas for her to return to him and developed into an eight-year bankruptcy nightmare, an alleged campaign outside the business she once owned and a report to police that one of Raniere's close associates had been tampering with her mailbox Bankruptcy Judge Robert Littlefield sized up Raniere's litigation against Natalie this way: "The individual challenging the Debtor's discharge is her former boyfriend this matter smacks of a jilted fellow's attempt at revenge or retaliation against his former girlfiiend, with many attempts at tripping her up along the way."
Another woman mentioned the organization in her suicide note, only to have leaders of NXIVM suggest after her death that she was part of a drug ring, as recounted in sworn testimony.
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Barbara Bouchey left NXIVM in 2009, but in February, as she testified before a federal magistrate, she detailed how the group would not let go.
Bouchey, a financial planner who once served as an executive board member of NXIVM, financial manager for two top NXIVM devotees and girlfriend of NXIVM founder Keith Raniere, sounded in her court testimony to be ground down by the process, which included hours of sometimes intense depositions with NXIVM attorneys.
When the INSANE are running the ASYLUM In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule. -- Friedrich Nietzsche
“How fortunate for those in power that people never think.” Adolph Hitler
"In the beginning of a change, the Patriot is a scarce man, brave, hated and scorned. When his cause succeeds, however, the timid join him, for then it costs nothing to be a Patriot."
To family friends, Seagram heiresses Sara and Clare Bronfman are victims of a frightening, secretive “cult” called nxivm, which has swallowed as much as $150 million of their fortune. But the organization’s leader, Keith Raniere, seems also to have tapped into a complex emotional rift between the sisters and their father, billionaire philanthropist Edgar Bronfman Sr. The author investigates the accusations that are now flying—blackmail, perjury, forgery— in a many-sided legal war.
I believe the blogger has made claims that the cult people hacked his computer. I don't quite understand the Albany prosecutor's involvement in getting a special prosecutor. We shall see, I guess.
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