The scandalous Seagrams: Inside the Bronfman family's dark past

The Bronfman family are known as the heirs of the infamous Canadian beverage company Seagram's, but they also have a scandalous past.

Samuel Bronfman, the patriarch of one of the most influential and wealthiest Jewish families in Canada, first delved into the alcohol business in 1903 after his family purchased a hotel, leading him to start up Distillers Corporation in Montreal in 1924.

He started off with selling cheap whiskey in major U.S. cities, including New York, Boston and Chicago, during the Prohibition - when the production and distribution of alcohol was illegal.

The Jewish refugee then acquired the Seagram Company in 1928 from Joseph E. Seagram & Sons of Waterloo, Ontario - leading his family to billionaire status. 

Samuel shared four children with his wife Saidye Rosner: Aileen Mindel 'Minda' Bronfman, Phyllis Bronfman, Edgar Miles Bronfman Sr., and Charles Rosner Bronfman. 

One of Edgar Sr.'s sons, Samuel Jr. was kidnapped in 1975, and held for ransom in Yorktown Heights, New York, until his father and FBI agents saved him. 

Edgar Sr.'s other child,  Clare Bronfman - one of two daughters he had with his third wife Rita Eileen Webb - is a convicted felon and former leader of the sex cult NXIVM. 

Meanwhile, Hannah Bronfman, the youngest daughter of his son Edgar Bronfman Jr., was recently branded 'out of touch' after she launched an entitled rant online when she was refused entry at an airport security checkpoint.

Kidnapping 'Scheme' 

On August 8 1975, Samuel Bronfman II, then 21, was kidnapped after having dinner with his father. 

He sat alone in his green BMW car where he was held at gunpoint before being snatched and thrown in another vehicle. 

A call was then made to his father's home in Westchester County to inform him his son had been taken.

He also received a ransom note that claimed Samuel Jr. would be buried alive unless $2.3 million was sent to the kidnappers, specifically in $10 bills.

They also claimed they would kill his father Edgar Sr. with cyanide bullets if the instructions were not followed. 

The perpetrators told Edgar Sr. he must drive to the parking lot behind the International Arrivals terminal at JFK Airport and wait for further instructions.  

The late billionaire scion then found himself waiting by a payphone outside the airport for a call on August 15. 

The following day, his palatial Fifth Avenue apartment turned into a makeshift FBI headquarters. 

At 9:12pm the phone rang and he was ordered to drive to an undisclosed underpass in the shadow of the Queensborough Bridge, put his car in park and wait 15 minutes.  

At around 3:00am, Edgar Sr. was asked to stop his car on a street corner in Woodside by one of the abductors, Mel Patrick Lynch, who met up with co-conspirator, Dominic Byrne. 

Byrne was waiting to load the ransom bags into the trunk of a 1971 rust-colored Oldsmobile before the two criminals drove off.

Undercover agents nearby wrote down the New York license plate number that was registered to Lynch's Brooklyn home address. 

Some 25 hours later, Samuel Jr., loosely bound, disoriented and blindfolded was saved by federal agents who stormed the apartment.

William K. Madden, Lynch's defense attorney, said the entire abduction was staged. 

The 37-year-old New York firefighter arrested for Bronfman's kidnapping said he had been deeply involved in a romantic relationship with Samuel for over a year. 

He proceeded to tell investigators that he only agreed to the scheme because Samuel Jr. had threatened to go to the fire department about Lynch's sexuality. 

Samuel Jr. has vehemently denied ever knowing his captors before his abduction, with the Assistant District Attorney putting up a strong case on his behalf. He made the point he was the son of one of the wealthiest men in America and did not need the money. 

In 1976, Lynch and Byrne were convicted only of extortion. Samuel Jr. told reporters it's 'pretty sad' they got acquitted on kidnaping charges. 

Sex cult with brainwashed female 'slaves'

Another of Edgar Jr.'s children was caught up in a major scandal fueled by sex and money. 

Clare, 45, a convicted felon and former leader of the sex cult NXIVM, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to conceal and harbor illegal aliens for financial gain, and to fraudulent use of identification in 2019. 

She was officially convicted in 2020, with the bureau classifying her as a sex offender based on a pre-sentencing report suggesting she was involved with the Albany, New York-based group's secret sorority called DOS.

The group was accused of brainwashing female 'slaves', branding them with the initials of the group's leader Keith Raniere and forcing them to have sex with him. 

Clare gave millions of dollars to bankroll Raniere and his program of intense self-improvement classes. She also paid for lawyers to defend the group against lawsuits by its critics. 

She ended up pleading guilty to non-sex crimes, including credit card fraud and harboring an illegal immigrant. 

She was sentenced to six years, nine months in prison. However her lawyers said the Bureau of Prisons relied on an 'inaccurate' report drafted by the government and put a 'public safety factor' designation on her file, labeling her a sex offender. 

After exhausting the prison system's administrative appeals process, her attorneys Duncan Levin and Ronald Sullivan petitioned the U.S. District Court in Connecticut, arguing that the designation violated her constitutional rights. 

Now, the sex offender label has been dropped from her record and Clare was released to a halfway house in May of this year in New York City after serving nearly nine years in a Philadelphia prison. 

'We are very gratified that the federal government has decided to remove the sex offender label from Clare's file, which was unfairly applied to her,' Levin told DailyMail.com. 'It's unfortunate it took us having to sue the federal government to get this result.' 

'The fact is Clare Bronfman has never been involved in any way with any alleged sex offenses and the record is extremely clear about that,' Levin continued. 'She was supporting NXIVM, a self-help group that has had thousands and thousands of members, but she never supported any alleged sex offenses in any way with a single dollar of her money.' 

Just a month before her release, Senior U.S. District Judge Nicholas Garaufis denied her motion for a reduction to her 81-month sentence. 

She is the younger daughter of former Seagram's chairman Edgar Sr., who died in 2013. She is estimated to be worth around $500million.

Her sister Sara, now 48, who introduced her to NXIVM, was described at Raniere's trial as one of his 'trusted group,' but she was not charged in the criminal case.

When giving a victim statement in court, one former member had said she watched Claire mentally descend over the years into a 'dangerous megalomaniac'.

Another slammed her as a predator, saying: 'You should feel shame, self loathing... You should understand there are lives you destroyed.' 

In a letter to the court, Bronfman wrote that she 'never meant to hurt anyone, however I have and for this I am deeply sorry.' 

Raniere, 62, was convicted of turning women into sex slaves. As well as the Bronfman sisters, his adherents included actress Allison Mack of TV's Smallville; and India Oxenberg, the daughter of TV star Catherine Oxenberg of Dynasty fame. 

Entitled influencer meltdown 

Hannah - the youngest child of Edgar Bronfman Jr. and his first wife actress Sherry Brewer - recently took to TikTok to complain about her hectic travel day, with many people branding her 'out of touch' after she arrived at the airport 20 minutes before her flight boarded. 

The heiress was on her way to Houston, Texas, when she was informed she could not board her first class flight because she did not have her ID with her.

Despite having Clear, which expedites the travel process when flying, and even TSA PreCheck, Hannah was informed that she needed to update her identification before flying.

She quickly realized she did not have her ID and decided to 'beg and plead' with airport staff to let her identify herself with her credit cards, but she was again denied.

'Then because I did not arrive at the airport an hour before boarding time, I am denied such verification,' the mother-of-two said.

Rather than retrieve her passport herself, she instructed her nanny to send it to the airport in an Uber, as Hannah moaned about not getting a notification from Clear about needing ID to travel.

'That would've been a nice notification cause I am flying domestically, and because I did have Clear and PreCheck, one would think they didn't need to bring their ID,' she said. 

During her nearly four-minute rant, Bronfman revealed that because she missed her flight she had to be downgraded to economy to make it to her destination.

Users were quick to attack her for her rant, as one asked: 'You fly without ID?' 

'Just fly private Hannah,' someone suggested.

'Girl please,' another said.

Hannah married her husband ex-Dj Brenden Fallis, 45, in 2017, with whom she shares two children Claude Peaches Anne and Preston Miles Thomas. 

They own a sprawling three-level New York City home, for which they pay a mortgage of $4,300 a month.

She followed in the entrepreneurial footsteps of her grandfather by co-founding her own business - a beauty app called Beautified. However she left the company in 2014, and moved onto other ventures. 

Hannah is also an angel investor. Her most recent investment was in 2022 with Territory Foods, a dietitian- and chef-designed meal delivery service specifically designed to meet the nutritional needs of women who are expecting or postnatal.

The Bronfman family made their millions through the beverage company, which they eventually sold to the French conglomerate Vivendi in 2000 for $30 billion, according to Forbes.