A former CIA officer was sentenced Wednesday to 30 years in prison for drugging and sexually abusing and recording multiple women without their consent in one of the most serious misconduct cases in the agency's history.
Brian Jeffrey Raymond, 48, of La Mesa, California, photographed and recorded 28 women while they were unconscious or unable to consent in multiple countries, the U.S. Attorney's Office for Washington, D.C., said in a statement.
Raymond pleaded guilty in November to one count each of sexual abuse, abusive sexual contact, coercion and enticement, and transportation of obscene material. His crimes were committed over 14 years from 2006 to 2020.
He also pleaded guilty to drugging and sexually abusing four women, as well as engaging in nonconsensual sexual contact with six women, as part of a plea agreement.
"When this predator was a government employee, he lured unsuspecting women to his government-leased housing and drugged them," U.S. Attorney Matthew M. Graves said in a statement.
"After drugging these women, he stripped, sexually abused, and photographed them. Today’s sentence ensures that the defendant will be properly marked as a sex offender for life, and he will spend a substantial portion of the rest of his life behind bars," he added.
David Sundberg, the assistant director in charge of the FBI’s Washington field office, said Raymond exploited his trusted position as a U.S. government employee.
"He then drugged and sexually assaulted them and took explicit photos and videos of them without their consent. The FBI thanks the brave women who shared information that furthered this investigation," Sundberg said.
Court documents said several of Raymond's victims were drugged and sexually assaulted in government-leased housing while he was working in Mexico City, The Associated Press reported. The Mexican government and the city's police force collaborated in the investigation.
The U.S. attorney's statement says evidence shows Raymond "touching and manipulating the victim’s bodies while they were unconscious and incapable of consent." He later tried to delete the video evidence after a criminal investigation had been launched, the statement said.
Authorities said heard Wednesday in U.S. District Court that Raymond would meet victims on Tinder and other dating apps before he lured them to his residence and drugged them. He would spend hours posing their bodies, the court heard — some learned of what happened only when the FBI showed them pictures afterward, the AP reported.
"My body looks like a corpse on his bed," one victim said of the photos. "Now I have these nightmares of seeing myself dead."
Raymond read a statement in court expressing remorse, according to the AP.
"It betrayed everything I stand for, and I know no apology will ever be enough," he said. "There are no words to describe how sorry I am. That’s not who I am, and yet it’s who I became."
The CIA condemned Raymond's actions in a statement Wednesday. It said: "There is absolutely no excuse for Mr. Raymond’s reprehensible, appalling behavior. As this case shows, we are committed to engaging with law enforcement."
Raymond's defense attorney, Howard Katzoff, argued in a court filing that his client worked "tirelessly" at his job and "ignored his own need for help, and over time he began to isolate himself, detach himself from human feelings and become emotionally numb," the AP reported.
U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly also ordered Raymond to undergo supervised release for life, register as a sex offender and pay $260,000 to the victims.
