Ex-financier Howard Rubin’s personal assistant — who allegedly helped lure dozens of women for him to abuse inside a Manhattan “sex dungeon” — lived the high-life with her DJ husband thanks to her boss, who “funded virtually all aspects” of their existence, the feds said.
Jennifer Powers, a 45-year-old mother of three, was set to appear in Brooklyn federal court Wednesday morning for the first time since her indictment on charges she helped the famed former money manager run a sex-trafficking scheme for about a decade.
Powers — who began working for the Wall Street bigwig in 2011 — was hit with fresh allegations on the eve of her hearing that she failed to report the more than $9 million Rubin doled out to cover everything from her kids’ private school to her mortgage and credit card bills.
“Since approximately 2012, Rubin has funded virtually all aspects of Powers and her family’s lifestyle,” the feds wrote in court papers.
Her hubby, Steve Powers, was engulfed in the growing scandal himself late Tuesday, when he was charged alongside Jennifer for allegedly filing false joint tax returns between 2018 and 2024 that failed to mention any of the funds from Rubin.
The couple got married in 2012 at Miami’s Versace Mansion in “high-fashion, rock n’ roll” inspired nuptials that were featured in Wedding Style Magazine.
Steve and Jennifer, who wore a Vera Wang dress, took a month-long honeymoon afterward: a two-week adventure to Botswana and another two weeks in the Maldives, the outlet reported.
In the years that followed, the couple posted online about taking jaunts to Hawaii, Turks and Caicos, Italy and Colombia, according to posts on their Instagram accounts that are now private.
Other posts from over the past decade appear to show the lovebirds and their kids going on a Disney Cruise and taking a private plane.
During that time, the feds charge Jennifer was instrumental in finding women and flying them to New York, where Rubin would allegedly sexually abuse them at swanky hotels and in a soundproofed room dubbed “The Dungeon” inside an $18,000-a-month rented penthouse near Central Park.
The BDSM sex-trafficking scheme started in 2009 and lasted until 2019, with the boss-assistant pair even exchanging stomach-churning text messages reveling in the abuse, prosecutors alleged.
The following year, Powers and her family moved to Texas — and Rubin allegedly covered the down-payment and mortgage on their home in the affluent suburb of Southlake, according to the feds.
Jennifer also allegedly failed to report to the IRS $500,000 in credit card bills that Rubin paid for her each year between 2018 and 2023, prosecutors said.
Jennifer is accused of not reporting any wages during that time span while Steve allegedly divulged less than $40,000 combined in the 2018 and 2019 tax years from his DJ business and nothing since then, the feds said.
“Their entire lives are funded by Rubin,” prosecutors said.
Rubin — a dad of three whose 30-year career included a stint at billionaire George Soros’ investment firm — also allegedly paid his assistant’s legal bills from a years-long lawsuit filed against the pair in 2017 by Playboy Playmate models he allegedly abused.
Jennifer Powers until recently worked as a substitute teacher for the Carroll Independent School District in Southlake, but was removed from that role, the district told CBS News Texas.
She made an initial court appearance in Texas federal court Monday, where she was released on $850,000 bond with a GPS monitor ahead of her Brooklyn court hearing.
While Rubin was found liable for millions of dollars at a 2022 civil trial over the lawsuit, his once jet-setting assistant was cleared in that case.
Criminal defense lawyer Duncan Levin, an ex-federal prosecutor, said the government could have uncovered more evidence since the trial over the lawsuit, or could be speaking with different witnesses to present a stronger case than what was presented in the civil case.
“They have all sorts of tools at their disposal that civil litigants don’t that might not have come into the civil trial,” Levin told The Post.
Jennifer also bought her spouse a 1966 Lincoln Continental convertible as a wedding gift – which Steve would frequently post photos of on his Instagram page.
“We’re extremely close, understand one another, and love with everything we have; now that we’re married we know we will be together forever,” Jennifer told Wedding Style.
Steve has had equal praise for his wife, including in an anniversary post he put up online in 2015.
“I really don’t know where I would be today without my rock, my partner in crime, my true love, my best friend, the mother of my child, the one and only @superjenpowers,” he wrote.
“You are the best thing that has ever happened to me, and am so proud of the mother you’ve become. This journey is still getting started and there is no one else I’d rather be with! I love you!”
Rubin has pleaded not guilty to the criminal charges and is being held without bail pending his next court date on Oct.20. It’s unclear when Steve Powers will make his first appearance in court.
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