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Isabella Pollok, ‘Lieutenant’ Of Sarah Lawrence Sex Trafficker Larry Ray, Gets 54 Months In Prison
Isabella Pollok, 31, must report to federal prison in 60 days, prosecutors said.
A co-conspirator of “cult” sex trafficker Larry Ray has been sentenced to 54 months in federal prison.
A U.S. District Court judge handed down the sentence to Isabella Pollok, 31, in a Manhattan federal courtroom on Thursday afternoon.
The former Sarah Lawrence College student pleaded guilty to a single count of conspiracy in September. She’d initially pleaded not guilty. Prior to taking a plea deal, Pollok had faced a series of charges, including extortion conspiracy, sex trafficking conspiracy, racketeering conspiracy and money laundering. She had faced a possible maximum of five years in prison, according to a plea agreement.
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In 2010, Ray allegedly recruited Pollok to help operate a campus sex “cult” after moving into his daughter’s dormitory at Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, New York. According to investigators, Ray had enlisted Pollok “to join the criminal scheme and to work on behalf of the [e]nterprise,” investigators wrote in court documents.
Ray was ultimately convicted and sentenced in January to 60 years behind bars on a number of charges including extortion, sex trafficking and racketeering conspiracy.
Pollok later confessed to assisting Ray in trafficking her one-time friend and roommate, Claudia Drury, as well as laundering millions of dollars of illegal income.
Prosecutors had previously painted Pollok as someone who held a "privileged position within the Ray Family, acting as Ray's lieutenant, with respect to his extortionate demands for financial payments, physical labor, and prostitution, and in laundering the criminal proceeds of extortion and sex trafficking through bank accounts and GoDaddy," per sentencing documents cited by PEOPLE.
"While collecting money from her abused and trafficked college friends, the defendant was spending luxurious nights at the Pierre Hotel on the Upper East Side and buying expensive clothing, beauty products and high-end lingerie," prosecutors also wrote.
But Pollok’s defense lawyers, David B. Bertan and Jill R. Shellow, also argued she was severely victimized by Ray. They had written a letter to the federal judge in the case in the weeks leading up to her sentencing pleading for leniency.
"There is the damaged, lonely Sarah Lawrence College freshman,” the letter stated. “There is the awed protégé. There is the broken automaton. … If it were not for Lawrence Ray's presence at Sarah Lawrence, Isabella would not be here. She does not deserve jail time.”
Pollok’s attorneys accused Ray of gradually coercing their client until he ultimately “exercised complete control over her.” They insisted she’d been “brainwashed” by Ray.
"Ray groomed Isabella, at first by listening and paying attention to her," Pollok’s attorneys wrote. "Ray then became her lover and convinced her of the need to explore her sexuality. … Isabella did whatever Ray directed.”
Federal prosecutors, who had previously described Ray as a “monster,” didn’t dispute Pollok’s own victimization in the case, but noted she was also complicit in Ray’s campus sex ring at the esteemed liberal arts college.
"The Government does not dispute that the defendant also suffered at Ray's hands," prosecutors said in a separate letter to a federal judge. "Witness interviews and evidence recovered during the investigation show parallels between the defendant's experience and that of the victims in this case."
Pollok must report to federal prison in 60 days, a spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York confirmed with Oxygen.com on Friday.
