The investigation that led to Mr. Ray’s charges was prompted by a New York magazine article published in April.

Here’s what you need to know about the case.

Almost a decade of alleged abuse and extortion

In his time at Sarah Lawrence, Mr. Ray acted like a cult leader who exploited his victims — college sophomores at the time — by alienating them from their parents and convincing them that they were “broken and in need of fixing,” the authorities said.

At the college, Mr. Ray “laid the groundwork for psychological conditioning that would eventually lead these young adults to become unwitting victims of sexual exploitation, verbal and physical abuse, extortion, forced labor and prostitution,” William F. Sweeney Jr., the head of the F.B.I.’s office in New York, said at a news conference on Tuesday.

After Mr. Ray moved out of the dorm, the abuse continued for eight years, the indictment said.

In the summer of 2011, according to the indictment, Mr. Ray kept exploiting a group of the students who had moved in with him at a one-bedroom apartment on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. He would question his daughter’s friends during interrogation sessions that lasted for hours and often escalated into verbal and physical abuse, the indictment said.

He also forced his victims to work for him, according to the indictment. Around 2013, Mr. Ray took some of his victims to Pinehurst, N.C., where he forced them to do manual labor on his family’s property to repay money he said they owed him. From 2014 to 2018, he took more than $500,000 from the young woman he forced to work as a prostitute, prosecutors said.

Mr. Ray used tactics like sleep deprivation, psychological and sexual humiliation, physical violence and threats of legal action to get his victims to make false confessions, the indictment said. It also accused him of laundering about $1 million he obtained from his victims.

A man with a bizarre life

Mr. Ray, who was arrested on Tuesday at his home in Piscataway, N.J., has a strange history with mob figures and top law enforcement and military officials.