Keith A. Raniere

Early Life

Keith Allen Raniere was born on August 26, 1960 in Brooklyn, New York to mother Vera Oschypko, a professional ballroom dancer and father James Raniere, an advertising executive. Keith and his parents relocated from Brooklyn to Suffern, New York when Keith was 5. Three years after relocating, Keith’s parents separated and eventually divorced, Keith living most of the time with his mother.

When Keith was 13 his mother was diagnosed with a heart condition that required her to have open heart surgery and Keith had to come to terms with the fact that his mother could die at any given moment. This led him down a path of heavily drinking as a teen.

Keith was described as a bright student, but he had few friends. He attended Suffern High School for freshman year and transferred to Rockland County Day School for sophomore and junior year. Former classmates remember him as “creepy”. They said he didn’t seem to hangout with anyone, but he was very good at chess. He was accepted early admissions to Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 1977. He graduated in 1982 with a GPA of only 2.26 but had reportedly bragged to people about the upper-level math and science courses.

• Author note* It appears in a few articles they try to excuse his behavior because of the difficult childhood that he faced, but I would like to make it clear that this is not the reason he committed such horrible acts. Many people go through trauma and do nothing of the sort. Although it may help people understand what he did, it is by no means an excuse for anything he did and my heart goes out to all of his victims.

Early Adulthood

Beginning nearly right out of college Keith ran a pyramid scheme known as Consumers’ Buyline which was a multi- level marketing company that claimed that it had products and services at a significant discount. Keith was very successful with this, signing up 250,000 people to the scheme and bringing in $33 million a year.

In 1993 Customer Buyline was sued for being a pyramid scheme but Raniere never admitted to any wrongdoing and settled for $40,000 instead.

NXIVM Creation

NXIVM, pronounced Nexium, was founded in 1998 by Keith Raniere and Nancy Sulzman who was formerly a psychiatric nurse. Although the website no longer exists, Raniere’s website once described him as a prolific inventor and writer. NXIVM claimed to be a self-help multi-level marketing company near Albany, New York. The mission statement of the organization was, “NXIVM is a community guided by humanitarian principles that seek to empower people and answer important questions about what it means to be human”.

Most people who were involved with NXIVM were enrolled through its “Executive Success Programs” or ESP which was said to be a series of workshops that were designed to “actualize human potential” and they cost up to $7,500. There was an estimated 18,000 people who were enrolled in these workshops, and they were some that after the workshops became staunch followers of Keith Raniere and began to call him “Vanguard” and they believed he was the most ethical man in the world.

2003 – First major public recognition as a cult

In 2003 Forbes released a piece calling NXIVM a cult for the first time publicly. It stated the “Detractors say Reneire runs a cult-like program aimed at breaking down his subject psychologically, separating them from their families, and inducting them into a bizarre world of messianic pretensions, idiosyncratic language, and ritualistic practices”. Although at this point the cult was still thriving, it was the first recognition of the public that it was not just a pyramid scheme, but a cult.

2012 – Cult experts confided in the media

In 2012, cult expert and tracker, Rick Ross, went to the media to inform then that it was likely that what Raniere was doing was showing signs of a cult. He stated that the cult, “was one of the most extreme groups [he had] ever dealt within the sense of how tightly wound it was around the leader, Keith Raniere.” At this point the public was very aware of what was happening in the NXIVM “company”. People were watching the movements and actions of the key people very closely.

2017 – The Beginning of the End

Former members of NXIVM asked New York State Authorities to start an investigation into the group. They asked to focus specifically on a secret subgroup called “The Vow” or D.O.S. which was an acronym for the Latin phase that means, “Lord/Master of the Obedient Female Companions”. The members stated that the members of this group, all female, were branded by Keith Raniere and assigned to have sex with him. It was referred to as a “sisterhood” and an “empowerment group” when in reality, it was a leader trying to recruit more people to be a part of the cult.

Once in the D.O.S. it was nearly impossible to leaving on your own accord. This is because the women were forced to hand over collateral upon joining. It was often in the form of embarrassing or incriminating photos or information that would be publicly released if they shared that the D.O.S. existed.

On October 17, 2017 the New York Times posed an expose about NXIVM and its brutal branding rituals and sex slave allegations in regards to the D.O.S. This further sparked the investigation in Keith Raniere and he fled to a villa in Mexico

March 26, 2018 – The Arrest

Keith Raniere was arrested in Mexico on March 26, 2018 and upon a hearing in Texas was extradited back to Brooklyn to face rape charges. The affidavit that was used in his arrest stated that he has “maintained a ‘rotating group’ of 15 to 20 women with whom he maintained sexual relations”. It was then announced to the public that Mr. Raniere “has spent his life profiting from pyramid schemes and has otherwise received financial backing from independently wealthy women”. Two of these wealthy women mentioned were Clare and Sara Bronfman, who were heirs to the Seagram’s liquor fortune.

June 12, 2018 – The Shut Down

On this date NXIVM suspended all of its operations. The statement on their website was as follows, “It is with deep sadness that we inform you we are suspending all NXIVM/ESP enrollment, curriculum and events until further notice.

We will be in touch with more information for anyone currently enrolled in upcoming events/programs.

While we are disappointed by the interruption of our operations, we believe it is warranted by the extraordinary circumstances facing the company at this time. We continue to believe in the value and importance of our work and look forward to resuming our efforts when these allegations are resolved.”

After the arrest of Raniere and the extreme press that was received from that arrest, the company could no longer keep things going and chose to shut it down for the time being.

July 24, 2018 – The Indictment

An indictment charged Raniere and five other women which included Ms. Salzman, Clare Bronfman and Allison Mack, an actress on ‘Smallville’ with racketeering conspiracy involving identity theft, extortion, sex trafficking, forced labor, money laundering, wire fraud and obstruction of justice.

March 12, 2019 – One Founder Down

Salzman, the cofounder of NXIVM, known as “Perfect” to other cult members, pleaded guilty to identity theft and altering records to influence the outcome of the lawsuit against NXIVM. She admitted that she edited recordings to remove parts that she didn’t want to turn over to opponents in a lawsuit.

Later in March, her daughter, Lauren Salzman pleaded guilty to racketeering and racketeering conspiracy in relation to the NXIVM cult.

April 2019 – Two More Jailed

Allison Mack and Clare Bronfman pleaded guilty to their charges. Mack pled guilty to racketeering and racketeering conspiracy, admittedly lured women into D.O.S. by saying that they would be part of a female mentorship program. Bronfman pled guilty to two charged of identity theft and immigration fraud. Although she was a member of NXIVM, she was a legal enforcer and not a member of D.O.S.

May 7, 2019 – Start of the Trial

Raniere’s six-week trial began in the beginning of May. Brave former members of both the D.O.S. and just NXIVM testified against him reiterating that he used psychological manipulation to make his followers obedient and any people who criticized the cult were sued and faced retaliation. This created a culture where it was impossible to dissent.

Majority of the trial focused on the D.O.S. which was revealed to have been created in 2015. It also came out that the point of this group was to “provide him [Raniere] with a flow of submissive women” and these women were subjected to punishments such as standing barefoot in the snow.

In the middle of June 2019, after only a half hour of deliberation Keith Raniere was found guilty on all charges. Those charges were racketeering, sex trafficking, conspiracy, force labor, identity theft, sexual exploitation of a child and possession of child pornography. He was sentenced to 120 years in prison, a $1.75 million fine and $3.5 million restitution to 21 victims pursuant to the Trafficking Victims Protection Act and Mandatory Victim Restitution Act.

The Present

Keith is currently imprisoned at USP Tucson. He will remain in prison for the rest of his life. Many in the cult were unhappy with the conviction and came out and said everything was consensual and some even danced in front of the jail. Fortunately dancing will not release him and the 25 victims recognized by the U.S. Attorney got their justice. The NXIVM cult remains stagnant.

Sources

https://www.nytimes.com/article/nxivm-timeline.html https://www.vanityfair.com/style/2020/11/nxivm-loyalists-keith-raniere https://www.lohud.com/story/news/local/rockland/2020/10/27/nxivm-founder-keith-raniere-childhood/6047275002/ https://www.investigationdiscovery.com/crimefeed/crime-history/5-facts-to-understand-about-the-complex-and-controversial-nxivm-sex-cult https://www.insider.com/what-is-nxivm-keith-raniere-explainer-2019-4