The FBI and NYPD have raided the New York offices of fashion exec Peter Nygard as part of a sex trafficking investigation – the fourth such probe of the mogul, who is accused of drugging and raping girls on his Bahamas estate.
Six vans full of agents from the FBI and NYPD descended on Nygard’s Times Square headquarters on Tuesday morning to gather evidence, according to two officers who spoke to the New York Times following the raid. The flamboyant Canadian businessman has been under investigation for allegedly trafficking underage girls by a joint child-exploitation task force comprised of state and federal law enforcement for at least five months.
The criminal probe is separate from a lawsuit filed earlier this month by 10 women alleging Nygard drugged and raped them when they were 14 or 15 years old on his estate in the Bahamas, though at least four of the women involved in that lawsuit have been interviewed by the task force. The suit charges Nygard ran a “sex trafficking ring,” luring “young, impressionable, and often impoverished children and women” to his home by dangling cash and promises of successful modeling careers.
Nygard, the suit claims, threw “pamper parties” on his palatial Bahamas estate, where he spiked girls’ drinks with Rohypnol and raped them. The parties were said to be extravagant affairs featuring massages and jet-ski rides, and the estate itself – with a fake Mayan temple, a disco with a stripper pole, and showy animal sculptures – is reminiscent of Jeffrey Epstein’s Lolita Island. In fact, Nygard is a friend of Epstein’s pal Prince Andrew, and like both men is known for being perpetually surrounded with a bevy of attractive young women. He allegedly kept a database with details about each guest going back to 1987 to help him decide who to prey on.
The 78-year-old mogul denies the charges, blaming his neighbor, hedge-fund billionaire Louis Bacon, who hired his own private detectives to investigate Nygard after a pitched battle between the two that has spanned 25 lawsuits across five jurisdictions and cost both tens of millions of dollars. It has also involved the two flinging wild accusations – of insider trading, Ku Klux Klan membership, murder plots, and now raping teen girls.
But this is not the first time Nygard has found himself the target of a sex trafficking probe. The FBI was investigating him in 2015 and 2017, while the Department of Homeland Security spent nine months looking into him in 2016, though nothing came of any of those probes. The women in the lawsuit all hail from the Bahamas except one, and remain anonymous. Nine women in Canada and the US have also accused him of sexual harassment or assault over the years. The Times spoke with nine women not involved in the lawsuit who claim Nygard had touched them inappropriately, made unwanted advances, or, in at least two cases, raped them.
