NXIVM Inside a Secretive Group Where Women Are Branded

[Iamwhomiam]

NXIVM founder Raniere guilty on all counts
Jury reaches verdict after just four hours of deliberations
By Robert Gavin
Updated 9:19 pm EDT, Wednesday, June 19, 2019

https://www.timesunion.com/news/article/NXIVM-founder-Raniere-guilty-on-all-counts-14018002.php

Keith Raniere verdict sheet
Verdict / Count and subdivision / Charge / Description
1 GUILTY Count 1 Racketeering conspiracy
2 GUILTY Count 2 Racketeering Keith Raniere as leader of NXIVM participated in and conducted an enterprise through a pattern of racketeering activity between the dates of 2003 and March 2018.
3 GUILTY Count 2 Act 1B Racketeering Conspiracy to unlawfully possess identification document
4 GUILTY Count 2 Act 1A Racketeering Conspiracy to commit identity theft
5 GUILTY Count 2 Act 2 Racketeering Sexual Exploitation of a child on Nov. 2, 2005
6 GUILTY Count 2 Act 3 Racketeering Sexual Exploitation of a child on Nov. 24, 2005
7 GUILTY Count 2 Act 4 Racketeering Possession of child pornography
8 GUILTY Count 2 Act 5A Racketeering Conspiracy to commit identity theft
9 GUILTY Count 2 Act 5B Racketeering Identity theft - James Loperfido
10 GUILTY Count 2 Act 5C Racketeering Identity theft - Edgar Bronfman
11 GUILTY Count 2 Act 6 Racketeering Conspiracy to alter records for use in an official proceeding
12 GUILTY Count 2 Act 7 Racketeering Conspiracy to commit identity theft - Marianna
13 GUILTY Count 2 Act 8A Racketeering Trafficking for labor and services
14 GUILTY Count 2 Act 8B Racketeering Document servitude
15 GUILTY Count 2 Act 9 Racketeering Extortion
16 GUILTY Count 2 Act 10A Racketeering Sex trafficking
17 GUILTY Count 2 Act 10B Racketeering Forced labor
18 GUILTY Count 2 Act 11 Racketeering Conspiracy to commit identity theft - Pamela Cafritz
19 GUILTY Count 3 Forced labor conspiracy
20 GUILTY Count 4 Wire fraud conspiracy
21 GUILTY Count 5 Sex trafficking conspiracy
22 GUILTY Count 6 Sex trafficking
23 GUILTY Count 7 Attempted sex trafficking

https://infogram.com/verdict-sheet-for-nxivm-keith-raniere-1hdw2jqlv9oo4l0 (for true format)


https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=3&v=VOAkSBf4FTY

In their words: Reaction to NXIVM founder Raniere's conviction on all counts
Updated 10:54 pm EDT, Wednesday, June 19, 2019

https://www.timesunion.com/news/article/In-their-words-Reaction-to-NXIVM-founder-14020995.php

Catherine Oxenberg

Captive
A Mother's Crusade to Save Her Daughter from a Terrifying Cult
By Catherine Oxenberg

https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Captive/Catherine-Oxenberg/9781982100650

In this heartbreaking and shocking exposé, one of Dynasty’s biggest stars lays bare a secretive organization that is holding her daughter hostage and details her mission to save her in this powerful depiction of a mother’s love and determination.

I am a mother whose child is being abused and exploited. And I am not alone.

In 2011, Catherine joined her daughter, India, at a leadership seminar for a new organization called NXIVM. Her twenty-year-old daughter was on the threshold of building a new company and they both thought this program might help her achieve her dream. But quickly, Catherine saw a sinister side to what appeared to be a self-help organization designed to help its clients become the best versions of themselves.

Catherine watched in horror as her daughter fell further and further down the rabbit hole, becoming brainwashed by the organization’s charismatic leader. Despite Catherine’s best efforts, India was drawn deeper into the cult, eventually joining a secret, elite “sorority” of women members who are ordered to maintain a restricted diet, recruit other women as “slaves,” and are branded with their leader’s initials.

In Captive, Catherine shares every parent’s worst nightmare, and the lengths that a mother will go to save her child. Featuring interviews with past members of NXIVM and experts in the field of cults, Oxenberg attempts to draw back the curtain on how these groups continue to lure in members. She relates her continuing journey to try to reach her daughter, to save her from what she believes is a dangerous, mind-controlling cult.

[seemslikeadream]

Mormon Family Killed In Northern Mexico
https://www.npr.org/2019/11/05/77633140 ... ern-mexico

Jaweed Kaleem
‏
Some victims had the last name LeBaron. Their final destination was Colonia LeBaron in Chihuahua - established by fundamentalist Mormons in 1944. The name LeBaron is best known for killings in the 70s/80s in Mexico and the U.S. by Ervil LeBaron - also known as “Mormon Manson”
https://twitter.com/jaweedkaleem/status ... 4805074944

Mexican slaughter victims were from NXIVM recruiting ground
By Robert Gavin7:23 pm CST, Wednesday, November 6, 2019
A car passes through Colonia LeBaron, one of many locations where the extended LeBaron family lives in the Galeana municipality of Chihuahua state in northern Mexico, Tuesday, Nov. 5, 2019. Drug cartel gunmen ambushed on Monday three vehicles along a road near the state border of Chihuahua and Sonora, slaughtering at least six children and three women from the extended LeBaron family, all of them U.S. citizens living in northern Mexico, authorities said Tuesday. Photo: Photo: Christian Chavez, AP
Photo: Photo: Christian Chavez, AP
Image 1 of 19
A car passes through Colonia LeBaron, one of many locations where the extended LeBaron family lives in the Galeana municipality of Chihuahua state in northern Mexico, Tuesday, Nov. 5, 2019. Drug cartel gunmen ... more
ALBANY – The nine U.S. citizens slaughtered in an ambush Monday were from a Mormon community in northern Mexico where NXIVM recruited teenagers for a "girls school" to live in the Capital Region under the care of a high-ranking "slave" for Keith Raniere.

The Mormon community’s ties to the disgraced NXIVM leader's cult-like organization were revealed in May during the testimony of NXIVM defector Mark Vicente, a filmmaker based in Los Angeles who once lived in Knox Woods, the same Halfmoon townhouse complex as Raniere.

The nine women and children killed -- including eight-month-old twins -- were traveling in a mountainous area where the notorious Sinaloa drug cartel has been waging a turf war. The victims were related to the extended LeBaron family community in the state of Chihuahua.

Vicente’s testimony in May helped lead to the conviction of Raniere, 59, formerly of Halfmoon, on all charges of sex trafficking, forced labor and racketeering in his trial in U.S. District Court in Brooklyn. Raniere, known within NXIVM as “Vanguard,” faces the possibility of life in prison at his sentencing on Jan. 17 by Senior U.S. District Judge Nicholas Garaufis.

According to Moira Kim Penza, the lead federal prosecutor at Raniere's trial, Raniere created a “girls school” for Mexican teenagers, many of whom were recruited from within the LeBaron community to live in the Albany area under the care of a "first-line slave" for Raniere.

Raniere secretly operated a"master/slave" group known as DOS or “Dominus Obsequious Sororium," which translates from Latin as "Lord/Master of the Obedient Female Companions." Under the orders of Raniere, the "Grand Master," women in DOS were starved on 500-calorie-a-day diets and forced to provide "collateral" in the form of sexually explicit photos or false information about themselves and their family to ensure their loyalty. They also were required to have Raniere's initials branded onto their pelvic areas by a person using a cauterizing pen.

Penza, now a partner at the firm of Wilkinson Walsh + Eskovitz in Manhattan, told the Times Union that some of the girls attending the so-called school took courses at Jness, a purported women’s group in NXIVM. There, they were “exposed to Raniere’s pedophilic and misogynistic teachings, and, I believe, being groomed to have sex with Raniere,” the former prosecutor explained.

“I believe the girls from the LeBaron community were targeted specifically because, having been raised in a polygamist sect, they were more vulnerable to Raniere’s teachings on sexuality, including that it is natural for women to be monogamous and for men to have more than one partner—a philosophy that served Raniere’s own sexual preferences,” Penza said.

At a Jness meeting in Apropos, a former Halfmoon restaurant on Route 9, NXIVM president Nancy Salzman parroted Raniere's words that some children are "adult-like," mentally capable of experiencing sex with adults and "perfectly happy" doing so.

During the trial, Vicente testified that he spent eight years working on a 2016 documentary, Encender EL Cocorazon, which was based in LeBaron and chronicled efforts to stand up to violence in Mexico. The film included interviews with Julian LeBaron, whose brother, Benjamin LeBaron, the spiritual leader of the LeBaron community and an anti-violence activist, was murdered in 2009.

Julian LeBaron, a relative of the victims in the massacre, by Wednesday afternoon had received condolences from more than 300 people on his Facebook page.

Vicente testified that during the making of Encender EL Cocorazon, members of NXIVM's executive board, including Seagram's heiress Clare Bronfman, became angry at him because he was "minimizing" Raniere in the film and not recognizing the "greatness of Raniere."

"And I said, 'No, I'm not, this is the story I'm following that started,'" Vicente testified. "And (Clare Bronfman), at one point, really exploded at me saying, 'It's unbelievable that given everything you've been given by this man, you can't -- you know, you can't give him tribute.' And so that went on for years."

Bronfman, who pleaded guilty in April to conspiracy to conceal and harbor illegal immigrants for financial gain and fraudulent use of identification, will be sentenced Jan. 8. NXIVM president Nancy Salzman and other former top NXIVM officials, including her daughter, Lauren Salzman, actress Allison Mack and NXIVM bookkeeper Kathy Russell, also await sentencing.

On May 9, Assistant U.S. Attorney Mark Lesko asked Vicente about a separate program for girls from LeBaron that NXIVM set up known as Rainbow Cultural Gardens.

Vicente said the program was headed by NXIVM member Rosa Laura Junco, the daughter of a media mogul in Mexico. The program, built on Raniere's teachings, claimed to immerse children in nine languages at the same time.

Junco was identified at the trial as a “first-line” slave of Raniere in DOS, which means she answered directly to him.

Vicente also testified that India Oxenberg, the daughter of actress Catherine Oxenberg and who is now out of NXIVM and DOS, was put in charge of Delegates, a company in the Halfmoon area within NXIVM whose members were mostly younger people from within the LeBaron community.

"You call somebody, 'I need my laundry picked up, or I need to be picked up from the airport' kind of thing," Vicente said. "People would call her or text her and tell her what we needed and she would look at the workforce that was available and then assign them."

Vicente added: "A lot of the LeBaron girls were working for Delegates, and then some of the other younger members. They were -- they were, you know, younger people that didn't really have a career choice yet that were working for her."

Members of the LeBaron community, who are said to trace their origins to the 1950s, live about 70 miles south of the border town of Douglas, Ariz.
https://www.chron.com/news/article/Vict ... witter.com

[Iamwhomiam]

I’m not sure how many people know what instigated the FBI’s investigation of NXIVM. It wasn’t their special unit that tracks cults, that’s for sure; they hadn’t a clue Keith Raniere had been using NIXIVM as a cover to grow his organization by using mind control techniques against his followers in order for them to become devotees who worshiped him. And the organization grew. And the devotion of certain women Raniere desired were willing to become branded just to meet his approval. How this cult’s operation became exposed was weirder than you’d imagine.

Ever hear of the Clean Hands Doctrine? There are many variations, like the time my brother-in-law drove over to the state police and said he wanted to “fix” the ticket my sister had received for speeding. Not too smart to have used that language in that circumstance. Now, that ordinarily could be explained away, but my brother-in-law didn’t have ‘clean hands’ when he asked; he had had a couple of cocktails before he went over to ask to have my sister’s ticket fixed and got arrested for driving drunk to the police station.

It was a muckraking blogger who blew it all open and he did it unintentionally. He had a real rag of a blog that ruthlessly ripped apart any Saratoga Springs, NY council member he disagreed with and that was nearly everyone on the council. The local Saratogian newspaper publisher/editor was another beauty who allowed any outrage in his letters to the editor section, as long as it wasn’t directed at a Republican, and gave this nasty blogger free rein to air his screed. You might have such characters where you live. I do. Smalbany . https://smalbanynewyork.wordpress.com/

John J. Tighe was the man behind "Saratoga in Decline," but Saratoga is growing and Tighe’s went to jail and his blog long ago ceased to exist. Turns out, Tighe was a dirty old man who didn’t have clean hands.

Blogger pleads guilty to child porn charges

By Robert Gavin
Published 7:21 pm, Monday, January 26, 2015

Albany

The former writer of a heavily critical blog called "Saratoga in Decline" pleaded guilty Monday to federal child pornography charges in U.S. District Court.

John J. Tighe, 57, of Milton, faces at least a mandatory five years in prison — and could face up to nine more years under federal sentencing guidelines.

Tighe admitted he received and possessed 400 video files and more than 40,000 images of child pornography on his home computer. Female victims — some as young as age 6 — were forced to have sex with men on the material that Tighe obtained for viewing purposes, prosecutors said.

"Is that what you did?" Senior Judge Thomas McAvoy, based in Binghamton, asked Tighe, watching via videoconference from U.S. District Court in Albany.

"Yes," Tighe replied.

Several members of Tighe's family attended the proceeding.

Tighe operated a blog that almost daily blasted the elected and public officials in Saratoga Springs, but eventually he became the story.

Court papers show that in April 2012, State Police launched a probe into the unauthorized access to computer systems owned by NXIVM, a Colonie-based self-improvement organization. On Oct. 23, 2013, police seized evidence at Tighe's home that included computers, external hard drives and thumb drives.

At the time, Tighe asked State Police Investigator Rodger Kirsopp: "Can I get in trouble for anything else on those computers other than NXIVM?"

Kirsopp said it was possible.

"All the computer stuff is mine. My wife doesn't know anything about computer stuff," Tighe told Kirsopp. "She has no knowledge of what is on there. I gave her the small laptop upstairs for her to look at stuff on."

Police found the child pornography.

In November, Tighe pleaded guilty to felony computer trespass for intentionally accessing the computer network of NXIVM, which had been housed on the seventh floor of 80 State St. in Albany. Tighe admitted he used the user name and password of a former NXIVM coach without her permission to access the list of NXIVM participants and clients, including their contact information.

Tighe will remain free on $25,000 bail until his sentencing on June 8.

rgavin@timesunion.com • 518-434-2403 • @RobertGavinTU

http://www.timesunion.com/news/article/Blogger-pleads-guilty-to-child-porn-charges-6041543.php

Former blogger sentenced for possessing child pornography
https://www.timesunion.com/news/article/Former-blogger-sentenced-for-possessing-child-6317402.php


Full local coverage of NIXIVM
https://www.timesunion.com/nxivm/

[Elvis]

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/v7gyjx/actress-who-allegedly-recruited-nxivm-slaves-is-dancing-for-prisoner-rights-now

Actress Who Allegedly Recruited NXIVM 'Slaves' Is Dancing for Prisoner Rights Now

Nicki Clyne of 'Battlestar Galactica' is part of a mysterious 'movement' involving dance, #BLM hashtags, and Keith Raniere, the NXIVM leader convicted of sex trafficking.

by Sarah Berman
July 22, 2020, 1:37pm

Given the relentless news cycle of 2020, you’d be forgiven for forgetting about NXIVM, the disgraced cult-like self-help company. It was just last summer that the organization’s founder Keith Raniere was convicted of sex trafficking for his role in orchestrating a secret blackmail and branding scheme, but it feels like decades have passed since.

Canadian actress Nicki Clyne (Battlestar Galactica) has not forgotten, and doesn’t seem to want the rest of us to forget, either. She and a handful of other NXIVM associates who remain loyal to Raniere have launched a quick-pivoting “movement” called The Forgotten Ones or We Are As You, depending on what week of July you checked their social feed. The campaign claims to shine a light on terrible prison conditions via nightly dance performances, but only made its connection to Raniere public last week. So far the group’s main accomplishment seems to be having the prison move Raniere to a new cell.

Clyne was named as a co-conspirator at Raniere’s trial, and witnesses testified that she recruited at least three so-called “slaves” who were at first told about a secret women’s empowerment group, propositioned to hand over life-destroying “collateral” to hear the details, and then initiated into a master/slave relationship in which speaking out or going against Clyne’s orders were grounds for collateral release. Clyne has not been charged with any crime in connection with the scheme.

Lauren Salzman, the daughter of NXIVM’s president, told a Brooklyn jury Clyne’s involvement as a “first-line master” of the now-infamous “sex cult” DOS predated Smallville actress Allison Mack’s, and that both Clyne and Mack gave “seduction assignments” to their slaves, in which they were told to have sex with Raniere under the threat of collateral being released. At trial DOS “slaves” said they handed over letters falsely accusing their parents of sexual abuse, deeds to their property, and naked photos as collateral. The so-called collateral, which prosecutors called blackmail material, was leveraged to elicit yet more collateral, Salzman testified.

Clyne and her lawyer did not respond to VICE News' request for comment.

[ The NXIVM 'Sex Cult' Story Keeps Getting More Disturbing ]

Former members of Raniere’s inner circle are furious that Clyne is positioning herself as an activist interested in prisoner rights. The group has used Black Lives Matter-associated hashtags to entice families of incarcerated people to join their dance performances outside the Metropolitan Detention Center where Raniere is being held.

“Stop this fucking @WeAreAsYou nonsense,” Ivy Nevares, a longtime Raniere girlfriend who left the group, tweeted on July 15. “Tell us who #KeithRaniere really is and what he’s done. Tell us who YOU really are and what you’re doing. Above all: tell us why you continue supporting him.”

Nevares, a dance choreographer and writer from Mexico, asked why the NXIVM loyalists didn’t throw their support behind Black-led protests like Justice for George demonstrations at nine New York prisons, including the Metropolitan Detention Center.

The performance group first launched in early July with a colourful website, swirling graphics and “the dance must go on” messaging. Days after the Albany Times Union published a report pointing to NXIVM links, the group rebranded as “The Forgotten Ones” with a drab backdrop and logo resembling the slashes that might count out days on a prison wall. The group released a statement on July 15 claiming Raniere was punished for his apparent association, and was moved to a cell out of view of the dancers. VICE could not independently confirm if he was moved.

Clyne is featured extensively in posts and videos streamed on Instagram Live, along with a Black woman whose full name was redacted at Raniere’s 2019 trial. The woman was one of Mack’s “slaves” according to trial testimony. Former members VICE spoke to say only about 20 NXIVM loyalists remain. The group once boasted 17,000 self-help students.

Police and prison abolition have become mainstream political ideas in the wake of global protests calling to defund the institutions that enforce systemic racism. The protests have pushed many cities and states to enact serious and sweeping criminal justice reforms.

Beyond NXIVM’s troubling association with slavery and long-term confinement, former members say The Forgotten Ones campaign doesn’t seem to have a firm grasp on these issues. The website positions limits on visitors due to COVID-19 as injustice rather than a public health precaution, and makes no mention of the disproportionate incarceration of Black people or other marginalized groups. A press release describes the violence and lack of medical treatment as “worse than what most people would accept for their pets.”

When a Good Morning Bushwick podcaster recently asked campaign co-founder and NXIVM coach Eduardo Asunsolo whether the dancers would make any specific demands for improvements, like heat in winter, Asunsolo countered that the first step was to acknowledge prisoners are in fact humans. “Once there are humans in there, the press and the people won’t allow these crimes to be committed to them,” he said. “The reason why they occur is because nobody cares.”

Asunsolo described anti-Black racism as “horrible campaigns of defamation for decades that have rendered them (Black people) criminals,” and added that the same thing is happening to Raniere’s followers.

“That is the most awful thing that can happen to a race, and that is happening to people in NXIVM now.”

The Forgotten Ones campaign has shared short messages from inmates who say they are uplifted by the dancing. “I Would like to thank and send a shoutout to Niki and all the people who come with her,” reads a July 20 posting from “N on the 5th floor.”

In a statement, the group called out “prejudice in the media against Keith Raniere and his friends” for trying to “hijack this peaceful movement and make it into something it’s not.”

Raniere’s lawyer Marc Agnifilo did not respond to questions about the dance campaign or Raniere’s status at the Metropolitan Detention Center, where Jeffrey Epstein associate and accused sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell is also being held. Raniere’s motion for a new trial was denied on Monday.

[Elvis]

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/30/nyre ... ncing.html

Actress Who Recruited Women for Nxivm Sentenced to 3 Years in Prison

Allison Mack, known for her role on “Smallville,” helped lure women into the cultlike group led by Keith Raniere.

By Colin Moynihan
June 30, 2021

During her time within the cultlike group Nxivm, the actress Allison Mack recruited female “slaves” into a secret sorority, collected information used to coerce their compliance and directed several women to seduce the group’s leader, Keith Raniere.

She and Mr. Raniere discussed the design of ceremonies in which he suggested so-called slaves would be branded with his initials while unclothed and tied down — “almost like a sacrifice.”

But before pleading guilty in 2019 to racketeering and racketeering conspiracy charges for taking part in such activities, Ms. Mack quietly gave federal prosecutors who were pursuing a case against Mr. Raniere and other members of Nxivm what they called “substantial assistance.”

Among other things, prosecutors said, Ms. Mack turned over the recording of the branding discussion and provided a chilling bit of evidence that transfixed jurors when it was played aloud in court during Mr. Raniere’s trial. He was convicted and last year was sentenced to 120 years in prison for sex trafficking and other crimes.

On Wednesday, a federal judge in Brooklyn sentenced Ms. Mack to three years in prison, saying she had used her status as a popular actress to lure women into her orbit then to “recruit and groom them as sexual partners for Mr. Raniere.”

“You capitalized on your celebrity,” Judge Nicholas G. Garaufis told Ms. Mack. “You were an essential accomplice.”

Ms. Mack will remain subject to home confinement until September, when she is scheduled to begin serving her sentence.

Prosecutors had cited Ms. Mack’s help in a memorandum to the court this month, asking Judge Garaufis to sentence her to less than the 14 to 17 and a half years that federal guidelines called for.

Ms. Mack’s lawyers asked the judge to issue a sentence without prison time, writing in a partly redacted memorandum that she had been subject to “brainwashing” while in Nxivm and now “recognizes that her actions were abhorrent.”

While under home confinement and awaiting sentencing, those lawyers added, Ms. Mack had obtained an associate degree at a community college in California, had enrolled at the University of California, Berkeley, and had worked as a caterer.

She also filed for divorce from Nicki Clyne, an actress who had joined Nxivm and was known for a role in “Battlestar Galactica.” The marriage, Ms. Mack’s lawyers wrote, had been at Mr. Raniere’s request.

In a letter to the court, Ms. Mack apologized to the people she had brought into Nxivm.

“I am sorry I ever exposed you to the nefarious and emotionally abusive schemes of a twisted man,” she wrote, adding, “I feel a heavy weight of guilt for having misused your trust.”

In court on Wednesday, Ms. Mack watched impassively as a woman she had recruited into a clandestine sect within Nxivm rose and spoke before the sentencing. The woman, who had testified under the name Jay during Mr. Raniere’s trial, saying that Ms. Mack had directed her to “seduce” him, identified herself on Wednesday as Jessica Joan.

Ms. Joan accused Ms. Mack of “grooming me to become a sex slave for her beloved Keith Raniere,” adding, “Allison Mack is an evil sociopath, a menace to society and a danger to innocent human beings.”

[drstrangelove]

the linchpin here seems to be sara bronfman. she was the first to hook up with raniere and then brought her sister clare on board, who would eventually take the fall. but sara is where the money came from and the one who had the clout to arrange the deli lama meet. and she conveniently cut ties with this human trafficking cult in 2016. unlike her sister, sara was a mover and shaker in the oligarch world. after gaddafi was assassinated she married basit igtet, one of the key guys that took over the Libyan energy sector. her family have long and close ties with the rothschild's, who epstein ultimately worked for. a lot of similarities between raniere and epstein.

this deserves a proper deep dive. it isn't so often you get a case that brings you this close to the invisible hand. raniere and epstein are two.