The penthouse of the sleek, postmodern Metropolitan Tower in Midtown Manhattan offers panoramic views of New York. But for more than five years, a former Wall Street trader used it as a sex “dungeon,” luring women in and leaving them maimed and bruised, federal prosecutors say.
Howard Rubin, 70, a former Salomon Brothers bond trader who was made Wall Street-famous in a book about the firm, was arrested Friday on sex trafficking charges. Prosecutors said he brought women to the penthouse blocks from Central Park, where a bedroom was painted red, soundproofed and fitted with devices to use on the women, according an indictment unsealed in Federal District Court in Brooklyn.
Along with a personal assistant, Jennifer Powers, Mr. Rubin recruited and paid at least a half-dozen women to participate in bondage and sadomasochism, but the acts went far beyond what the women had signed up for, according to prosecutors.
Ms. Powers, 45, was primarily responsible for the logistics of the trafficking, prosecutors said, including by recruiting and paying the women, arranging for them to sign nondisclosure agreements, and taking notes on the encounters and whether Mr. Rubin enjoyed them.
Prosecutors said Mr. Rubin took advantage of the women, many of whom were especially vulnerable because of their histories of addiction and abuse.
Mr. Rubin was arrested in Connecticut and was scheduled to appear in Federal District Court in Brooklyn on Friday afternoon. Ms. Powers was arrested in Texas and set to be transferred to Brooklyn.
In addition to sex-trafficking, Mr. Rubin was also charged with bank fraud, and both Mr. Rubin and Ms. Powers were charged with transporting people across state lines for the purposes of prostitution. Both defendants face life in prison.
A lawyer for Mr. Rubin did not immediately respond to a request for comment. A lawyer for Ms. Powers could not be immediately reached on Friday.
Though women were told they could use a “safe word” to stop any sexual encounter, prosecutors said they were often unable to utter it because they were gagged or Mr. Rubin simply ignored their pleas. The room would often remain locked during the encounters, prosecutors said, while the women were shocked, beaten and violated.
Mr. Rubin also provided the women with copious amounts of drugs and alcohol before their sex acts, prosecutors said, despite the terms of the nondisclosure agreement. In one encounter, Mr. Rubin gave a female victim a sedative that made her unconscious so he could enact a rape fantasy, they said.
All told, Mr. Rubin and Ms. Powers spent at least $1 million on the network, which ran from 2009 to 2019, prosecutors said. The women were trafficked to the penthouse, which Mr. Rubin rented for $18,000 per month, from 2011 to 2017, according to court papers.
The nondisclosure agreements, which Mr. Rubin kept in the penthouse, stipulated that the women assumed the risks of the activity, that Mr. Rubin had not provided them drugs or alcohol and that they not discuss the sex acts publicly. If they violated the agreement, they would have to pay Mr. Rubin $500,000, prosecutors said.
Mr. Rubin and Ms. Powers were previously sued in a civil case involving the victims in 2017. In 2022, a jury found Mr. Rubin found liable for trafficking and ordered him to pay $3.9 million.
Mr. Rubin gleefully discussed his exploits with Ms. Powers through messages sent from his work email, prosecutors said. In a 2013 email, Mr. Rubin said that the activity would leave a women “sore and bruised for probably a week.”
Mr. Rubin was prominently featured in Michael Lewis’s 1989 book “Liar’s Poker,” about Salomon Brothers in the 1980s. Mr. Rubin, according to the book, joined the firm in 1982 and became known as one of its wiliest traders. He left in 1985 for substantially more pay at Merrill Lynch.
“Of all the traders, Rubin displayed raw trading instinct,” Mr. Lewis wrote.
He became an object of fascination on Wall Street, Mr. Lewis wrote, for his application of behavioral research to mortgage sales. He later became infamous for his role in a $250 million loss in 1987 at Merrill Lynch, which was at the time one of the largest reported by a Wall Street firm. (That would be more than $700 million in 2025 dollars.) Merrill’s executives blamed the loss on Mr. Rubin for making unauthorized trades of mortgage-backed securities.
After leaving Merrill Lynch, Mr. Rubin became a fund manager at Bear Stearns and then Soros Fund Management. The civil case for trafficking represented a fall from grace. When he testified in 2022, he insisted that all the sexual encounters had been were consensual.
“I’m a married person. I work on Wall Street,” Mr. Rubin told jurors, according to Bloomberg. “I’m trying to keep my private life private.”
Santul Nerkar is a Times reporter covering federal courts in Brooklyn.
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