Lawsuit targets Keith Raniere and NXIVM associates Complaint details fraud, sexual slavery, unethical human experimentation

Keith Raniere and the top members of a secret slave-master club that he created were a central part of the federal criminal case that led to his conviction last year. Keith Raniere and the top members of a secret slave-master club that he created were a central part of the federal criminal case that led to his conviction last year. Photo: U.S. Justice Department Evidence Photo: U.S. Justice Department Evidence Image 1 of / 30 Caption Close Lawsuit targets Keith Raniere and NXIVM associates 1 / 30 Back to Gallery

BROOKLYN — A blistering federal lawsuit filed Tuesday in Brooklyn accuses NXIVM co-founder Keith Raniere and 14 of his key associates of running a corrupt organization that physically and psychologically abused people — including many who were bilked out of large sums of money, forced to perform labor or serve as sexual slaves, or subjected to unauthorized and traumatizing human experiments.

The lawsuit, which seeks unspecified monetary damages, targets Colonie-based NXIVM and three related business entities, including a foundation that was used to facilitate unsanctioned scientific studies. It casts Raniere and his inner circle as diabolical manipulators who perfected methods for stripping people of their psychological defenses and exploiting them for gain.

It also outlines the Ponzi-scheme structure of an organization that lured thousands of "students" who signed up for professional development training courses only to become trapped in a labyrinth of high-priced and ever-changing curriculums. Pushed to recruit new enrollees, NXIVM's victims were drained of their financial resources as they tried to ascend within its ranks.

The lawsuit claims that fewer than 100 of the more than 16,000 people estimated to have taken NXIVM's courses earned income from its business interests — with most of the revenues flowing to the group's inner circle.

Previously: NXIVM founder Raniere guilty on all counts

Raniere loses battle to keep NXIVM 'tech'

Raniere opposes victim anonymity at sentencing

Complete NXIVM coverage by the Times Union

"The longer someone was immersed in this system, the more likely it became that they would suffer moderate-to-severe psychological and emotional injuries, including post-traumatic stress disorder and complex post-traumatic stress disorder," the federal complaint states. "Many of the plaintiffs in this action were injured in this way and still struggle with the effects of their time in NXIVM and exposure to defendants’ programs."

The 189-page civil complaint is the first of its kind against NXIVM and Raniere, who was convicted of racketeering charges last year and faces up to life in prison. He awaits sentencing in a federal detention center in Brooklyn.

The lawsuit was filed on behalf of 80 alleged victims of the organization, most of whom are listed in the complaint as "John Doe" or "Jane Doe," except for three outspoken NXIVM critics: Canadian actress Sarah Edmondson, Raniere's former girlfriend Toni Natalie, and filmmaker Mark A. Vicente.

Edmondson, who published a book last year detailing her years as an influential NXIVM member, and Vicente helped trigger the downfall of NXIVM in 2017 when they defected from the organization and encouraged others to follow, waging a public campaign that also helped expose Raniere's secret club in which numerous women were branded with his initials and some were coerced to be his sexual partners.

The complaint asserts a series of claims under the federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act against Raniere and his five co-defendants in the criminal case brought by the U.S. attorney's office in Brooklyn. After the others pleaded guilty, Raniere was convicted of all counts against him at the end of a seven-week trial last summer.

Raniere's co-defendants in the criminal case — all of them included as defendants in the federal lawsuit — are NXIVM President Nancy Salzman and her daughter, Lauren Salzman; actress Allison Mack; former NXIVM bookkeeper Kathy Russell, and Clare Bronfman, an heiress to the Seagram's liquor fortune who, along with her sister Sara, pumped an estimated $150 million into NXIVM's endeavors.

Although Sara Bronfman was not accused of wrongdoing in the federal criminal case, she is listed as a defendant in the lawsuit and accused of, among other things, helping fund the human experiments that "seriously damaged many people."

The Bronfmans' money, according to the lawsuit, also helped fund NXIVM's operations and was used to pay for a litigation machine that sought to use "vexatious" and "meritless" court claims to silence the organization's critics, including injecting themselves into the bankruptcy proceedings of people who had already been financially destroyed. NXIVM's leaders and their attorneys also initiated criminal complaints that were built around false accusations lodged against their perceived enemies and critics, according to the lawsuit.

The lawsuit targets many of Raniere's other top acolytes, including four women with ties to Mexico and two physicians — Dr. Brandon Porter and Dr. Danielle Roberts — who have faced intense scrutiny of their medical credentials.

Roberts is being investigated by the New York state Health Department for branding women in Raniere's secret slave-master club with a cauterizing tool; Porter saw his medical license in New York revoked last year for conducting unsanctioned human experiments, including "fright studies" and bogus treatments of individuals afflicted with obsessive-compulsive disorder and Tourette's Syndrome.

The medical background of Nancy Salzman, who held a nursing license in New York, is also assailed in the federal lawsuit. It states she claimed to have a background as a psychiatric nurse and had helped develop an "inherently dangerous form of psychotherapy" called "Exploration of Meaning" that left many people psychologically damaged.

"In fact, she worked as a nurse for only one year in a general practice and did not have a license to practice psychotherapy," the complaint states.

Canadian television actress Nicki Clyne, who joined NXIVM roughly a decade ago — around the time Mack became involved with the organization — also is a defendant in the civil case, and is alleged to have helped run Raniere's slave-master group, which was known as "DOS" or "The Vow."

Clyne was an alleged "first-line master" in the club with six other women named in the lawsuit: Mack, Lauren Salzman, Rosa Laura Junco, Daniela Padilla Bergeron, Loreta J. Garza Davila and Monica Duran.

"First Line Masters were tasked with selecting attractive, trustworthy women who could become sexual partners for Raniere," the complaint states.

Karen A. Unterreiner, who like Raniere attended Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and lived for years in a townhouse next to Raniere's former residence in Halfmoon, is also named as a defendant in the civil case. Unterreiner, 60, is a NXIVM devotee who was Raniere's caretaker and had been one of his many girlfriends. Despite being one of Raniere's closest confidantes, she eluded being pulled into the government's federal criminal case, even as a trial witness.

Unterreiner, who was a member of NXIVM's executive board and also involved in its finances, had worked for Raniere at Consumers' Buyline, Inc., which Raniere founded in 1990 in Clifton Park. CBI was forced to close in 1997 under an agreement with the state attorney general's office, which investigated it for operating as a pyramid scheme. That structure became a model for NXIVM.

In painstaking detail, the federal complaint gleans information from much of the evidence and testimony from the federal criminal case, outlining years of nefarious dealings by NXIVM and Raniere, who was known to his followers at Vanguard.

Neil L. Glazer, a Philadelphia attorney who is a lead counsel in the case, has amassed a large client list of people who were allegedly harmed by NXIVM and Raniere.

Glazer, whose firm has researched NXIVM for years, takes aim in the complaint at the fraud perpetrated by Raniere on his thousands of followers through the years, including holding himself out as a genius whose teaching programs could cure illnesses.

The corporation, Glazer wrote, "promoted NXIVM’s programs in part by representing that Raniere was the world’s smartest man, who allegedly had an IQ of 240 and was a child prodigy, speaking in complete sentences at age one, mastering college level mathematics in two days at age 11, winning championship judo and track tournaments, and graduating college with three degrees. None of this is true."

In a statement Tuesday, Glazer said Raniere and the other defendants “systematically stripped women of their self-esteem, and those who fit certain criteria were then groomed to become Raniere’s sexual partners. ... NXIVM preyed on earnest, intelligent people who wanted to better themselves and the world through what they thought to be a humanitarian undertaking of unprecedented scope.”

Numerous NXIVM defectors have for years held that members of Raniere's inner circle had engaged with him in various crimes to silence critics and further his businesses through a pattern of extortion, computer hacking, money laundering, tax evasion, identity theft and various other forms of fraud, as well as kidnapping plots.

But the accusations were repeatedly brushed off by law enforcement agencies until 2017, when the U.S. attorney's office in Brooklyn launched the probe that would lead to the sweeping racketeering indictment filed against Raniere and his closest disciples.

The federal criminal charges also confirmed that Raniere had a "decades-long history of abusing women and young girls," noting that he "had repeated sexual encounters with multiple teenage girls in the mid-to-late 1980s and early 1990s."

Those earlier criminal allegations, however, were outside the reach of federal criminal statutes.

The racketeering acts leveled against Raniere in both the criminal case and the federal lawsuit include allegations that he sexually exploited a 15-year-old Mexican girl in 2005, including photographing her naked body in explicit poses. She is listed as one of the unidentified plaintiffs in the federal lawsuit.

Prior to his arrest in Mexico in March 2018, Raniere had led a reclusive lifestyle — never driving, holding no bank accounts in his name — and conducted many of his social activities after sunset, including meetings with women, long walks, workouts at 24-hour gyms and late-night volleyball games that were popular with his NXIVM associates.

The federal criminal case was a crippling blow to the organization. Although NXIVM still exists on paper, its operations — including offices in Vancouver, Los Angeles and Mexico — have been suspended, and many of its followers have scattered.