Reader Asks Nasty, Probing Questions About Me and My Role With Toni Natalie, and Keith Raniere; I Give Smack Down Replies

A commenter named Anonymous posted a comment recently where he or she asks some snarky questions of me.  I guess if others have their detractors, why not me? And since this is my forum, I think I will take the time to answer Anonymous’s questions.

Anonymous wrote:

In article you wrote, that “Heidi told me that Toni told her that I was cheap gangster – Buffalo style – not like the cool Brooklyn gangsters that she could really go for.”

Didn’t you say that Keith was paying you $75,000 a month when you were working for the sex cult? What the hell sort of stuff is Toni doing if she thinks $75k per month makes your services “cheap”? Or is that price tag actually considered “cheap” for the type of work you were doing for Keith’s sex cult?

And the fact that you blame one low-life woman for thwarting your investigation for two years doesn’t really reflect very well on your investigative abilities, if you actually think about it. LOL

But I suppose if Jonnie Snyder is really devout and read some of your more overwrought articles and was turned off by the gleeful and salacious tone of your writing along with some of the more disgusting images you used to illustrate those articles, you helped make a case against yourself.

And if Toni did call you “a criminal” well, to be fair, it’s not like you aren’t currently under criminal indictment.

And did Heidi Clifford say why she didn’t tell police that Kristin was claiming she was pregnant with Keith’s baby even if the other NXIVM folk didn’t?

***

A great group of questions.

I will now answer them one by one. Before I do, I will address Anonymous’ initial remarks about Heidi Hutchinson.

Anonymous is quoting something I wrote, which was that “Heidi told me that Toni told her that I was cheap gangster – Buffalo style – not like the cool Brooklyn gangsters that she could really go for.”

That is what Heidi told me.

Toni said to Heidi,  “You need to get away from Frank Parlato… they want him and I keep tellin’ him, but he just keeps pokin’ the bear. He won’t listen. He’s one of these small fry that think they’re big shot Buffalo Italian guys with no class. Not like the Brooklyn Italian guys. They’re slick. I could go for one of them. But I know these Buffalo guys. They don’t listen to nobody. Are you kidding, I’d kill a guy like that.

“They want Frank. They’re gonna get him and he’ll take you down with him… He thinks he’s so smart but, I don’t know… Look at how easy they got Joe O’Hara. Joe’s real smart. I tried to save Joe, too, but they got him. Look, you’re not Frank’s Mom…. He’s just using you to be near Catherine. That’s why they’re after you now. They don’t want you, they never wanted you, they want Frank.

“Get rid of Frank. Stay away from him and all the shit will go away, I’m telling you. … Are you, O.K.? You sound nervous. They don’t want you and I don’t want to see anything happen to you and your son because of Frank. No, you shouldn’t have done that CBC interview, I told you not to, but it’s Frank they’re after not you and he’s doin’ it to himself. He just keeps poking the bear. You can’t tell him nothing.”

***

Toni’s purported message to Heidi is a little mixed up. I was in Los Angeles not to get to Catherine, as Toni cleverly was saying, but to film for Ample Entertainment a promotional or “sizzle reel” which was used, like a trailer, to persuade a network to invest in a film.

This was successful. I made a two hour “special event” film for Discovery ID which will air on Sunday Dec. 8, 2019 called the “Lost Women of Nxivm.”

***

Now back to Anonymous’ questions:

Question #1. “Didn’t you say that Keith was paying you $75,000 a month when you were working for the sex cult?

Yes, I was paid $75,000 per month when I was working for Nxivm. I was not paid by Keith but by Clare and Sara Bronfman.

I would call Nxivm a sex cult but I did not know it was a sex cult then.  I was not a member, but a consultant, so I did not have privy to everything they were doing.

Still, I knew pretty soon after I started working there that Keith was having sex with a number of his women. They told me but they seemed to be happy about it. DOS had not been created then. No one was being branded. If women were being blackmailed, I did not know about it.

If they were being sleep-deprived or semi-starved I did not know it either.  I had many a dinner with Kristin Keeffe who was my liaison for Nxivm and she ate well. I also dined at Nancy Salzman’s house with Keith, Clare and Kristin – and the meals were replete with ample servings, albeit vegetarian fare – and wine.

Question #2 “What the hell sort of stuff is Toni doing if she thinks $75k per month makes your services “cheap”?

I don’t think Toni meant my pay as a Nxivm consultant had anything to do with her opinion of me as a cheap Buffalo gangster.

I think Toni was measuring my level of class for Heidi’s benefit. Toni said I was a cheap Buffalo mafia-style guy – small time Dago who thinks he’s a big shot. Not like the Brooklyn mobsters who she would consider dating.

I think what she was trying to do was make me look cheap.  As far as I know, I was never in the mafia – either in Buffalo or Brooklyn but that would not stop Toni from implying I was. Others have too in the past.

Not that being in the mafia is necessarily a bad thing for Toni, as long as one is a Brooklyn style topnotch “made” guy.

She claimed her dad was a member of the mafia. He was, I believe, a small time bookie.

She also claims in her book that she was married to a young man in order “to prevent a mob war.”  That dubious claim is not backed by any facts.  Her father in law, Thomas Didio Sr., was a mobster, said to be acting head of the Rochester mafia for a time in the 1970s.

He came to an unfortunate end about a year after Toni was married to his son. Didio was executed by a rival mob, which rather discounts Toni’s theory that she stopped a mob war by her wedding his son.

Question #3  “Or is that price tag [$75,000 per month] actually considered “cheap” for the type of work you were doing for Keith’s sex cult?”

I would say it was not cheap. Neither was I overpaid. I did one thing for Nxivm that no one had done before, or after – I gave them a period – however brief  -where they were not getting bad press.

My naturally charming personality was deployed with the media who were covering Nxivm and I got a couple of stories where the word “cult” was not mentioned in the articles. I also short-circuited several other articles and tried to get Raniere and Salzman to be transparent and work with the media.

I got to know Jim Odato, a great guy, and Chet Hardin, another good guy, notwithstanding his unfortunate stint with Toni.

As I have written before, Chet pretty much wrote what Toni told him and made the same mistake I did:  he trusted her to tell the truth. Although he is an investigative journalist, that was not his role in co-writing Toni’s book.

The other work I did for Nxivm was opposition research and I explained this on Vice News. I was paid to find out information about Nxivm enemies including Toni Natalie, Joe O’Hara, and Rick Ross and use it against them.

At that time, I thought these were really vile people, based on what Keith told me.

After doing my own research, I advised Keith to stop going after all three of them. Keith disagreed with my recommendation and I stopped working on opposition research on these so-called “enemies.”

I thought that Joe O’Hara had not done anything wrong and there was nothing to gain by getting him indicted.

And that Nxivm would spend more in legal fees than they could hope to collect from him concerning a loan the Bronfman sister’s made to him on a real estate development project. He was trying to repay them but they would not let him.

They did not want money from Joe – they wanted him to be bankrupted and go to prison.

I firmly believe that Joe would not have gone to prison had they not bankrupted him first and put him in a position where he could not afford proper legal representation to fight a bogus case against him in El Paso, Texas.

I thought it was stupid to try to gag Rick Ross – for it could only work in reverse. The whole First Amendment community would rise up against Raniere.  And on top of that, Nxivm could not bankrupt Ross because he had pro bono attorneys.

I think Nxigm spent about $20 million in legal fees to get some anti-Nxivm materials off Ross’ website. Had they let Ross alone, they could have used even a 1/10th of that money for positive PR and no one would have paid much attention to Ross.

But they didn’t like my advice and went ahead with the lawsuits.

As for enemy #3, Toni Natalie, I deemed her to be not a major threat to Nxivm. Keith and Kristin Keeffe said she was a fraudster – doing bank fraud, using her mother and brother and herself to swindle restaurant leasing companies then doing serial bankruptcies.

It amounted to about $300,000 and I wondered, if it was true, why Keith would spend more than a million dollars trying to get this aging, former girlfriend in trouble. I did not know then that she was out there trying to provoke a fight with him.

I remember that federal law enforcement was reticent to go after her – not because she was not guilty but because the amount was too low for a federal case and there was no political motive to get her.

I told Raniere that Toni, at worst, was a petty thief and should not be the object of interest for a life coaching company. That Nxivm should focus on positive things.

I think little to nothing was done about Natalie until Toni herself got the war going by hacking into Mary Jane Pino’s Nxivm account and then stealing the Nxivm members’ list.

After using the hacked info for months by herself, I think Toni realized she needed some cover and told her friends and some reporters that she had permission to use the password of Pino, when she didn’t.

Shortly after it exploded and not only was Toni sued and arrested but she had ample company.  I suspect Toni knew it was better to have several co-defendants than stand alone and that may be why she lied to her friends to get them on the Nxivm website.

***

Getting back to Anonymous– Anonymous writes,  “And the fact that you blame one low-life woman [Toni] for thwarting your investigation [into Kristin Snyder’s disappearance] for two years doesn’t really reflect very well on your investigative abilities, if you actually think about it. LOL.”

I don’t think I said Toni thwarted my investigation into the Snyder disappearance for two years. I believe I said Toni blocked my access to the Snyders and to Heidi Clifford for a few months.

I started investigating the disappearance of Kristin Snyder in earnest only after Raniere was convicted in June 2019, although I had written about it before. After his conviction, I began to dig deeply into Snyder. That was when Toni did her best to stop me. She blocked me with the Snyders and Heidi Clifford, Kristin’s spouse.

If it was not for my superb skill as an investigator and by my exposing Toni as a liar and cheat, I would not have gotten access to either the Snyders or Clifford. As it was, I did get access – in less than six months.

Anonymous, you might consider when you say Toni is a lowlife, that sometimes lowlife people can cause a lot of havoc. Consider the man that I often think of as Toni’s soulmate – Keith Alan Raniere.

He caused a lot of trouble for a lot of people for years – including me – and I think even you would admit he is a lowlife.

***

Jonnie is a fine person and probably would be offended by some of the salacious and sarcastic articles I wrote, especially before Raniere was arrested.  But I always wrote respectfully of her daughter, Kristin.

The reason I wrote salacious stories about Raniere is I wanted to demystify him.  His followers thought he was a demigod, capable of supernatural powers.

It was something Nancy Salzman said to one of Raniere’s followers that gave me the clue. She said “Don’t read the Frank Report because it will ruin your internal representation of Keith.”

I wanted to ruin everyone’s internal representation of Keith. I wanted to mock him, make him look ridiculous and – “a man in Vanguard’s position cannot afford to be made to look ridiculous.”

Here are some photoshopped images of Keith I published before he was arrested.

They were meant to make him look ridiculous – in front of his followers.  I knew many were secretly reading the Frank Report.

.

I wanted his followers to see that I could openly mock him and make him look preposterous with impunity.

He could do nothing. He was impotent. He did not sue. He did not fight back. This helped as much as the more serious allegations I made against him and provided comic relief.

Overall I think my strategy worked.

***

Anonymous brings up my indictment, writing, “And if Toni did call you ‘a criminal’ well, to be fair, it’s not like you aren’t currently under criminal indictment.”

Thanks to the Bronfman’s filing a criminal complaint against me with the FBI, I was indicted by a dishonest and now retired Assistant US Attorney, Anthony Bruce.

While the Bronfman charges were dropped, the Feds still have some lingering charges against me which I will soon reveal to be utterly false both on this website and at trial.

It will be a very embarrassing moment for the Feds when the time for presenting actual evidence [as opposed to allegations] comes into play – for there is no evidence.

In fairness to them, the case was put together by AUSA Bruce – who retired right after indicting me.  The new AUSA assigned to the case has perhaps not truly had a chance to understand the enormous fraudulent nature of the charges against me.

Much more on this later.

As soon as I finish the work for my current Discovery ID film [which airs on Dec. 8, at 9 pm] and weigh out two distinct offers for an additional film  – on another case I am investigating, I will be addressing the totally bogus nature of the federal charges.

By the way, Anonymous, in the USA, a person is not a criminal if they have not been convicted. I have not been convicted of anything.

I plan to expose a great deal about this in due course of time. That’s what I do – explain things, and get at the truth. I hold myself to the same standard I hold others – the truth

Finally, Anonymous asks, “Did Heidi Clifford say why she didn’t tell police that Kristin was claiming she was pregnant with Keith’s baby even if the other NXIVM folk didn’t?”

This last question is a reasonable one. Heidi told me she was clearly intimidated by the Nxivm crew and with good reason.

I think she was genuinely afraid of telling the police, thinking that Nxivm would try to pin the blame on her and I think she thought they were crafty enough to do so, and perhaps also make her disappear as well.

In retrospect, you wish it was otherwise, and she had told the police about Kristin claiming to be pregnant with Raniere’s child, but she had a pretty good reason to be silent.

Frank Parlato