Wickedness On Wall Street

Renowned financier Howard Rubin and his assistant were arrested for alleged sex-trafficking in a sex dungeon

“The modern corporation has no soul, no morals, no conscience. It can have no character.” – William O. Douglas

---

Wanted: Personal assistant to outfit and manage a sex dungeon for a successful Wall Street financier. Duties include recruiting Playboy models, strippers and prostitutes; managing travel, schedules and payments; serving drugs and adult beverages; and enforcing non-disclosure agreements. Competitive pay and generous benefits included.

Who would offer a job like this? Allegedly, a well-known Wall Street financier named Howard Rubin who made his millions working for Soros Fund Management, Salomon Brothers, Bear Stearns and Merrill Lynch.

Who would take a job like this? Allegedly, a woman named Jennifer Powers of South Lake, Texas, with a husband and children to support.

Both were arrested on Friday for sex trafficking escapades they allegedly ran from 2009 to 2019 in luxury hotels and what prosectors described as a sex dungeon in a Midtown Manhattan penthouse.

Rubin has pleaded not guilty, but remains in custody after prosecutors told a judge he had discussed hiring a hit man to silence his victims.

Powers awaits arraignment.

I’ll leave most of the sordid details to the indictment, but they read almost like the Jeffrey Epstein case.

Almost, because Epstein was never accused of electrocuting his victims or handling them so viciously that he left a woman with a “breast implant that had flipped upside down and required surgery.”

“Please, sit down. Have a drink and sign this non-disclosure agreement.” (Comic: ChatGPT.)

What is it with some of these Wall Street guys who make way too much money? Why do they think they can get away with anything?

Because they can.

Rubin, a.k.a. “Howie” and “H,” has grown old without facing criminal charges for these alleged atrocities. A civil complaint from women alleging these horrors was filed nearly eight years ago. He’s now 70 and complaining of a stroke.

Powers, 45, signed on as Rubin’s personal assistant in 2011, according to the indictment.

Rubin paid her a salary, her credit card bills, the rent at her Manhattan apartment, private school tuition for her children, and the downpayment and monthly mortgage payments on the Texas home she shared with her husband.

Given Rubin’s wealth and longevity in dodging justice, she may have thought this depravity could go on forever. Like, maybe, Ghislaine Maxwell. And doesn’t this case just ring the opening bell?

They’re now both facing 15 years to life in prison if convicted.

Rubin was also charged with bank fraud for alleged misrepresentation while financing Powers’s mortgage. He should have been put out of business decades ago after a blunder that would have been a career-ender in any other industry.

In 1987, a 36-year-old Rubin made unauthorized trades at Merrill Lynch that cost the firm a then-record $250 million loss. That’s over $700 million in today’s devalued dollars.

No big deal, though, because Wall Street firms worship money and venerate the risk-takers who will do anything to get it.

Rubin was one of the insipidly greedy characters described in Michael Lewis’ famous Wall Street memoir, “Liars Poker,” released in 1989. And after making national headlines, Rubin simply settled civil charges with the Securities and Exchange Commission and moved on to other firms.

From there, he made so much money he allegedly could afford a red, sound-proof sex dungeon in an $18,000-a-month Manhattan penthouse where no one could hear his victims scream.