Rick Ross

who at one point had been an Amway distributor, and then he created a big MLM multi-level marketing company called Consumer Byline, which was sued out of existence by attorney generals in different states. And then after that folded, he created ESP, Executive Success Programs, which evolved into NXIVM.

And that was a seminar-selling company that basically marketed courses, very expensive, that people would attend for self-improvement. And Ranieri had what he called a philosophy that he taught through NXIVM, which was called rational inquiry. And really what I came to find out was that NXIVM was actually an amalgam of things that Ranieri had copied, largely from Scientology.

He copied much of what they teach. And then he also incorporated kind of the structure of another organization called Landmark Education, formerly known as EST, Erhard Seminar's Training, their kind of training structure. And then he also fancied Ayn Rand. the author of Atlas Shrugged and Fountainhead, and he incorporated many of her beliefs regarding objectivism into his philosophy.

And then he created multi-level marketing for his trainers, his coaches, that he adapted from his experience with Amway and his previous failed MLM. And this family came to me and they said, our son, our daughters are involved in this, our son-in-law is involved, will you please help me, help us? And so I examined, I investigated, and I realized that Nexium was

was really a large group awareness training company, and that the kind of training that they offered was very extreme, and I would say indicative of a thought reform program. and coercive persuasion as opposed to anything really educational. And that is that the ultimate goal, in my opinion, that NXIVM had was to create people who would be deployable agents

for NXIVM, that they would do whatever Keith Ranieri wanted, give him all their money, work long hours for very little compensation. It was all about just serving Keith Ranieri and his co-founder, Nancy Salzman. They actually would call Ranieri Vanguard. That was his title. And every year there would be what was called Vanguard Week, which would be the celebration of his birthday.

People would bring him gifts, praise him. And Nancy Salzman was called Prefect. So they ruled over this community, which eventually would include thousands of people in the United States and Canada, in Mexico. There would be celebrities that would become involved. The actress Alison Mack from the television series Smallville.

For a period of time, Catherine Oxenberg, who starred in Dynasty, the television series from the 80s, she was involved. And her then-husband, Caspar Van Diem, and their daughter also was involved. So this became a very large operation. And in particular, two heirs to the Seagram's liquor fortune, Sarah and Claire Bronfman, became involved. And they control hundreds of millions of dollars.

And it has been reported that Ranieri got approximately 100 million from the Bronfmans that was then used by him at his... behest for whatever he wanted. So this went on for a number of years, and I did interventions for this family in New Jersey, getting three of their family members out, but one son would remain. and much to their sorrow.

I think he stayed in until almost the bitter end when Keith Ranieri was arrested. And what happened within NXIVM was what happens with a lot of totalitarian cults where the leader has no accountability. Ranieri, like many of the cult leaders I've dealt with, In my opinion, he would fit, and many people have described him, mental health professionals, as a psychopath or a malignant narcissist.

So this kind of individual just gets worse, especially in a cult environment where everyone is agreeing with him constantly and there are no checks or balances. So his behavior became more and more outrageous. He sexually exploited women in the group. And then this escalated until, in the end, he created a kind of secret society, a cult within a cult, that were sex slaves. Sex slaves. Sex slaves.

And these women would be branded with a cauterizing iron, with no anesthetic. and in their pelvis would be engraved what later was understood to be his initials. And it was that that was finally the tipping point. How many women were part of that?

The women that were branded, I'm not sure exactly how many. I think it's safe to say that there were a number of women that were branded. One would eventually, Sarah Edmondson, would allow the brand to be photographed, and it was on the front page of the New York Times.

And that was the beginning of the end for Keith Raniere, who was eventually arrested for sex trafficking, racketeering, fraud, and also he was found to be in possession of child pornography. And so it was a horrible, horrible cult, but it was a process of years that this went on.

And I was a witness to the escalating destructive behavior of Ranieri and how no matter how much money he had, no matter how much power he acquired, he wanted more and more and more. And it was about humiliating women, having control over women, and just plundering money from his followers.

Eventually he would be arrested by Mexican authorities in Puerto Vallarta, and then he would be brought to the border and deported, and he would stand trial in Brooklyn. and I would testify against him as a fact witness. Ranieri, I was the first person to expose Ranieri and talk about what he was doing. And there were two doctors, a psychiatrist,

and a psychologist, a clinical psychologist, who wrote papers that I published at the Cult Education Institute database, which were a review of the process that Ranieri was putting people through. And they would use Lifton's eight criteria, Schein's three stages of coercive persuasion, to offer an analysis of what he was really doing.

which was he was breaking people down, manipulating them, indoctrinating them to become essentially his deployable agents, his slaves. And those papers became the subject and focus of a lawsuit that Ranieri filed against me that would go on for 14 years. in federal court in New York and New Jersey.

Ultimately, the lawsuit was dismissed before he was arrested, but that's how long he continued to harass me. And he wanted me to take these papers down from being online.

But I never did and they were used by so many people that were traumatized by Keith Ranieri families individuals that that he Manipulated who eventually would leave some would actually go through a kind of breakdown where they would be hospitalized and then leave the group and