Lauren Salzman may indeed be a victim. She worked for Keith Raniere as a slave for years.
Once in DOS, she worked even harder, recruiting slaves as quick as she could from those who worked under her and were dependent on their income from her. And slaves who were students and depended on her for teaching “wisdom” and getting therapy from her.
Some might call this abuse of power, along the lines of Keith Raniere.
We learned about how Lauren was branded in How Lauren Salzman Described Her Branding Session
And we learned how Lauren lied to Sarah Edmondson, recruiting her into DOS, knowing Keith expected Sarah, if he commanded, to give up her husband and child, and obey Lauren (and hence Keith) in the all the machinations and lies in their savage DOS scheme.
It was Lauren’s lying about Keith not being in DOS that formed the worst of the criminal case against her. She took a plea deal – of two felony counts – one of racketeering and the other of racketeering conspiracy – and signed a cooperation agreement.
We are studying this now to better understand the system. For she will be sentenced soon.
Some say she was a slave, and had no free will, no ability to think for herself or to reject evil. Others think this is nonsense. Lauren was an adult who got plenty of benefits in status and money for her obedient role.
On the other hand, she testified effectively in the trial against Raniere. Let us remember that, as undoubtedly, the sentencing judge will – that Lauren helped sink the monster.
Her late epiphany – after she was arrested – seemed to come only after she was facing decades in prison – in a looming joint trial with her odious lover Raniere. She had her epiphany or pretended to have it – and her testimony was among the most damning to Keith.
What should her sentence be? She did 20 years of evil for the monster. After he was arrested and the cult busted and after she was arrested and facing decades in prison, she turned on her Vanguard and helped the prosecution put him away.
Some say she was the most impressive, damning witness arrayed against him.
Here is part 3 of Lauren’s testimony as it relates to her invidious role in DOS. She is being examined by Assistant US Attorney Tanya Hajjar, as she explains how she recruited others and took collateral to hold over them, never telling any of her slaves that it was not her, but Raniere who controlled it and that she would have to release it upon his command.
A final point: It seems almost inconceivable that these seemingly intelligent women became slaves – even if they did not know about Raniere’s role. That they should agree to provide collateral and agree to lifetime obedience to Lauren seems hard to fathom.
Some say these are not rational women. They must be mentally imbalanced. Yet there was a lawyer and another with two others with high paying jobs. Two of them were married and lived affluently.
How could anyone, any intelligent woman, agree to nonsense such as being Lauren Salzman’s slave for life and assure it by giving collateral to her? All were Nxivm members, with a commitment to the company. Lauren was one of the top leaders. She could control income for some of them.
Maybe this is what Nxivm was – coercive, hypnotic. Maybe it really only attracted unstable people, who would agree to being branded and givoing collateral to ensure they would remain a faithful lifelong slave to someone.
Is there something deeply deficient in Nxivm women and in particular the women of DOS?
Or did Nxivm make them deficient?
*****************************************
Tanya Hajjar Q You said that you also recruited Audrey?
A I did.
Q How soon after Sarah was recruited did you recruit Audrey?
A Like three weeks.
Q Where did you first approach Audrey?
A Audrey was in Albany taking a course and she came to me and told me that she felt like she was losing her belief in herself to be able to grow and get through her issues and could I help her. And so … this was how I decided to help her. I offered her this option [of joining DOS]….
Q Can you describe your rank in ESP [Nxivm] and your role in ESP as it related to Sarah and Audrey?
A Sarah and I were the same rank but I had more stripes, so I was a higher rank in the same sash level. But Sarah was a green, I was a green. Audrey was a coach, so she was two ranks below and I was her center head as well.
Q What does that mean?
A I was co-head of the San Francisco ESP center, so she was a coach in my center.
Q … What happened after you approached Audrey? What did she do?
A Audrey submitted naked pictures as her collateral and additional collateral as well.
Q Can you describe generally the additional collateral she provided?
A Initially she provided a letter accusing a past relationship — former relationship, a former romantic partner, of violence, domestic violence basically and it was untrue but wrote it in a way that would have gotten him or could have most likely gotten him fired from his job which was a very good job. And then additionally … we filmed a number of videos similar to Sarah’s videos where she told various stories that would discredit people who were important to her of alleged affairs that she had had with coworkers who were married saying that that’s how she achieved the level of position in the company she was working. Things that would have been embarrassing or humiliating to other former boyfriends and also that she worked in a humanitarian organization and that basically [she was] saying that she was posing as a humanitarian to try to scam people out of money.
Q And before —
A And then afterwards, too, Audrey provided a bunch of assets. She promised her car and she provided bank account information as well, investment accounts.
Q And before Audrey provided all this collateral did you lie about the defendant’s role in DOS?
A … yes.
Q Did you give Audrey the impression that this was a women’s group?
A: Yes
[Lauren then testified about how she enrolled the Garza sisters from Mexico]
Q How did that happen, can you explain that process?
A Jimena and Carola were in Mexico, so I did the same process with them that I did with the others just over Skype, so over video conference. Exactly the same way, I told them that there was something I wanted to tell them. I asked for collateral to keep the secret. They provided the collateral and then I shared the four elements of enrollment [lifetime vow of obedience to Lauren – master/slave concept; the collar, which was a necklace; and branding.] and they decided to join and submitted further collateral.
Q And what did they give you as collateral?
A One of them gave me a video speaking about a family member having an addiction problem that would have been very damaging, hurtful to the family, the whole family. Another one gave a video of an alleged affair that they had had on their spouse. And then later they gave additional collateral. I think one gave naked pictures, another one signed over part of their business to me if they were to default on their agreement. There were other things, I can’t recall what those were among them.
Q How did they give these items to you?
A Some they gave in person, some they gave over Telegram.
Q Did you send those further along, did you send those on?
A No, I held on to them.
Q Did you check the sufficiency of the collateral with anyone?
A No. I asked — … at least one of two or them [collateral] were in Spanish and so I asked Loreta [Garza] if she would evaluate it for the weight [if it was damaging enough] and like to see if it was sufficiently meaningful that it would secure the agreement. And it was Loreta’s sisters so I felt she would know, so I sent it [the collateral] to Loreta to check.
Jimena Garza with her husband, trust fund baby Omar Boone, who is one of the current leaders of Nxivm Mexico.
***
Q Who else did you recruit into DOS?
A Amanda and Charmel.
Q And who is Amanda, what was her background?
A Amanda’s an attorney in California. I don’t know as much about her background but…
Q Did she provide collateral to you?
A She provided collateral to me, yes. She was also a coach in my center in San Francisco as well.
Q What kind of collateral did she provide you?
A She provided an account of alleged abuse in her family and then additionally sexually explicit photographs, a video accusing her partner of abuse and that could have gotten … him fired from his job and as well as something… that could have gotten her disbarred.
Q Were you under particular pressure to recruit Amanda?
A Well, I had scheduled the branding ceremony for the first four that I had enrolled, so I wanted to give Amanda the opportunity to be part of that. So I enrolled Amanda in an expedited fashion to try to get her to be part of that and she wanted to and so her enrollment was similar to mine, it took place in like 2 or 3 days from enrollment to branding.
Q And for each of these DOS slaves that you recruited did you conceal the defendant’s role in DOS?
A Yes, all of them.
***
Q Ms. Salzman, did your slaves recruit their own slaves?
A They did, yes.
Q And … did their recruits provide collateral to them which was shown you?
A Yes. Given to me ultimately.
Q Did Audrey recruit a slave?
A She did, yes.
Q And did any DOS slaves express concerns about the collateral they submitted?
A Yes. Her — yes, in particular the slaves that she enrolled did.
Q Can you explain that further?
A She submitted something that she felt went against something that she believed in, so she wanted to get it back. And she specifically said …. ‘please don’t turn it in. I do want to have it back.’ … Amanda enrolled somebody, too, who submitted something and she afterwards was very upset that she had submitted it and really struggled with that.
Q Ms. Salzman, did you ever review a spreadsheet in connection with DOS enrollment?
A Yes.
Q Who prepared it?
A Rosa Laura kept track of the enrollment and at some point in time Loreta helped put it in Excel for us.
Q Where did you see it?
A … we shared a DropBox folder, so it was in an Excel Spreadsheet in the DropBox folder.
[Lauren is shown the Excel spreadsheet as an exhibit.]
A Yes. This is — it’s an Excel Spreadsheet that has a list of everybody who was enrolled at the time it was made.
A It’s a list of the first-line DOS masters and how many enrollments they had in each line below them that we used for readiness drills.
***
Q Okay. And does this spreadsheet reflect some of the participants in DOS?
A Yes.
Q And can you just explain what these columns are starting with first that column that says, “First”?
A Sure. First shows that it’s the first line, so it lists the first-line masters, Cami, Dani, Nicky, Loreta. And then on the subsequent pages are the rest of the first line. Rosa Laura, Monica, Allison, and myself.
Q And each of the names you read are the names of the first line DOS masters that we discussed before?
***
{Lauren is shown another line in the spreadsheet]
Q And does this reflect the slaves that are under you in DOS?
A Yes, it does.
Q And which column is that in?
A The slaves that are under me are the column listed — titled Second.
Q What about the numbers in red that are at the top of the column … what does that reflect?
A It reflects the number of people who are enrolled in that line at that time.
Q Can you explain that; so, what does the 8 signify?
A The eight of us first line and then 38 shows that we have collectively enrolled 38 people under us, and those 38 people in the next column had enrolled 43 people under them, and those 43 people had collectively enrolled 13 people under them in the column labeled Fourth.
Q So, at the time this spreadsheet was prepared what is the total number that the spreadsheet reflects?
A 102.
***
Q What does the yellow highlighting mean, the asterisk at the top that says two asterisks means second payment is not complete?
A It means they’re not fully collateralized.
Q What does that refer to, second payment?
A It refers to the collateral, that they haven’t given the second collateral. So, they gave the first collateral for secrecy but not fully collateralized in the vow.
***********************
One hundred and two slaves – at the time of the spreadsheet.
Frank Report has not obtained a copy of the entire spreadsheet. But here is a copy of a page of it.
******************************************************
It is reasonable to note that Frank Report broke the news of DOS and branding, with a story entitled Part 1: Branded Slaves and Master Raniere; Sources: Human branding part of Raniere-inspired women’s group, on June 5, 2017 [followed up by more posts].
Its publication helped stopped a number of slaves from being branded [according to them] and helped inform others that DOS, despite Lauren’s lies to them, was headed by Raniere.
This caused a number of them to quit immediately, they told Frank Report.
Yet, it was a simple blog. Anyone could start one. But it helped rescue dozens of women, according to the women themselves.
From over 100 women, DOS reduced within a month of my reporting to less than half.
By August, the Nxivm cult itself seemed to have reduced in size. Based on reliable reports, the attendance at Vanguard Week was down from nearly 500 at V-Week 2016 to 125 at V-Week 2017.
All of this occurred months before the New York Times came out with their blockbuster branding story that prompted the FBI to investigate the monster and his minions and ultimately arrest and convict him.
Which brings us back to Lauren. She was out there recruiting up until that day her Raniere-led world fell apart.
Does she deserve leniency or harsh punishment?
Frank Parlato 
Janine Morrison 
J.J. O'Hara 
Richard Luthmann 
Marie White 
Paul Serran
Please leave a comment: Your opinion is important to us!
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she is anything but a victim…
20 years of criminal life, working as one of the absolute main recruiter, using “medical” techniques against her victims, making money on her victims (she was living in a millions dollars house…how did she paid?)…
She willingly accepted to be a long term member, she didn’t had the excuse that some have and she is one of the executive of Nxivm!
How can she even be considered as a victim?
You have someone consistently acting wrong during 20 years of her life (about half of it) and she is a victim…whatever.
What’s next? Nancy is a victim?
[…] your article Lauren Salzman Describes Collateral She Got From Her Slaves, After Lying to Them About DOS is […]
Nobody has to be tried in court after being charged with being a victim because being a victim isn’t a crime.
People are tried in court for the crimes they have been charged with.
Lauren will go to jail for the crimes she committed.
If she suffered any abuse, that’s a shame, but she’s still a criminal, and still needs to be sent to jail.
Maybe she’ll do better when she’s released.
Maybe not.
Fuck Lauren and fuck Laura Junco. She was an organizer of this. So much power to hardly be mentioned in any news reports 🙁
This is Multi-Level Marketing in the form of human trafficking.
The “product” was Vanguard, the smartest man in the world. He set himself up as a product at the top of the recruitment pyramid. He was it, with minions to serve him instead of selling him.
He established himself at the top of the pyramid with bows, sashes, sneak glimpses, lies, brainwashing, coercion, sleep deprivation, starvation, Vanguard week and more.
Clearly, this was human trafficking, MLM style. This is how Vanguard built his harem.
Remorse? Who knows. In my opinion, doubtful.
The women were used. Every single one. Remorse will depend on whether they realize that yet.
All excellent points!
Agree!
Great insightful insights!
I had not thought of the Vanguard as the “product”. It had not cross my mind.
Thank you for sharing!
One of the most mind boggling things about this whole thing is these women really seemed to love Keith Raniere! And they would do anything for this man. They wanted the long promised avatar baby. It’s madness.
100% the question on my mind, as well
I equate this, quite honestly, with the rise of Hitler–the pomp and circumstance of it all.
They had to bow to his picture. They wore sashes, but he did not. The sneak peaks of him at volleyball on Friday night. The secret handshake.
His arrival and viewings were like Hitler’s orchestrated parades.
To this day, some Germans that lived through it remain devoted followers.
Throw in BULLSHIT about the highest IQ, super sperm, intelligence that jammed police radar, and voila! Same wolf, different clothing. It’s almost an exact parallel.
Oh, let’s not forget the Jesus look.
But even Hitler had help being groomed. So did kAR. This is a very dangerous man.
Just my opinion.
Yes. And KAR played the long game to accomplish everything. The slow boil analogy is how he did it. While the slow boil was going on, he’d ostracize anyone who dared to question him.
This asks some of the really crucial questions and illustrates Lauren Salzman as another case where it’s challenging to determine to what extent she was victim or perpetrator.
The judge’s ruling is going to tell us more about the Salzmans’ legal guilt, than their moral or psychological culpability, though the latter may be taken into account. Eichmann was found guilty and hung even though he never pulled a trigger or turned a gas valve, and probably never met any of his victims face-to-face or even saw them in a crowded boxcar; his infamous defense that he was just an ordinary bureaucrat following orders that he had no choice but to obey, may have had a certain truth to it but did not save him from his judicial fate.
Cult experts generally conclude that members are actually fairly typical including in terms of intelligence, except that they tend to get recruited at points in their lives when they are particularly vulnerable. However, I suspect that long-term and dedicated members of extreme cults like NXIVM or Scientology, and particularly those who are part of the inner core of diehard followers like DOS or Scientology’s Sea Org, actually have deficits in their reasoning abilities and dependent personality traits, though I’m not aware of experts weighing in on that, and research is only starting to look into it, such as:
“Cult membership and addictive disorders share some characteristics: persistence despite damage, initial psychological relief, occupation of an exclusive place in the thoughts of members, high psychiatric comorbidity prevalence, high accessibility, leading to social precariousness and the importance of familial support when leaving.”
‘Moreover, active involvement in the cultic group could lead to affective dependence on the cult leader or on the group, which explains why people stay despite threats to their physical and psychological integrity. The protective factors that enable a member to leave the group always seem surprising and are seldom predictable given the magnitude of the hold and the constraints of the cult.”
“Burke and Permanente asserted that immersion in the dysfunctional and manipulative culture of the cult may lead to the development of a temporary dependent personality disorder (Burke and Permanente, 2006).”
Cult membership: What factors contribute to joining or leaving?
M.Roussele O.Duretetec J.B.Hardouinb M.Grall-Bronnecab
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.psychres.2017.07.018
retrieved from https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0165178116319941
Was she guilty? Is Allison guilty? It appears that Mr. Raniere normalized deception as part of the recruitment process, and spun it as “for the greater good” of the women involved. They probably thought they were doing a service for the others they recruited. A forgivable white lie.
But more important, I’ve noticed that Raniere appears to have had a cocky certainty that he could get away with it.
It makes me think there is a really big piece of this story that is still missing.
Average criminals would never attempt these kinds of acts unless they were certain they’re protected.
And therein lies the explanation for why there will likely NEVER be any criminal prosecutions in the NDNY. Do you think the FBI, the U.S. Attorney’s Office and/or the NYS Police are going to risk having their two decades of incompetence and corruption – exposed? Not in this lifetime…
KR Claviger,
I am still shocked John Connolly of the FBI was prosecuted, and still alive!
Great articles . Thanks
Anonymaker,
The Evolutionary Psychology perspective is that some humans are naturally inclined to desire to belong to cults; As a genetic adaptation to support group cohesion and insure group survival as well as individual survival.
Many of the Nxivm members have real psychological problems no doubt; However, I personally do not believe all of the Nxivm members are deeply flawed, but have “natural selection” adaptations causing them to have a predisposition to joining cults. Their predisposition is evolutionary and part of their DNA and ancestry.
I believe all of the Nxivm members should still be held accountable for their actions. I just do not believe individuals joining cults are necessarily doing so as a function of free will or stupidity. Its encoded in their DNA.
I guess it all depends if you believe in free will.
A decent article, Frank.
Granted, it is true that Lauren didn’t stop recruiting DOS slaves until ‘after’ she was arrested.
According to Frank, this makes her non-deserving of any leniency by the judge (and) non-deserving of any mercy by the world at large.
Why? …Because Frank is saying that Lauren only turned against Keith for SELF-SERVING REASONS (i.e., she only turned against Keith when it was beneficial for her future freedom).
Frank is implying that if you see the light (and leave NXIVM) for your own SELF-SERVING reasons, then you’re a scumbag for life regardless of how much help you provided the prosecution in convicting Keith.
FACT: Every single person who left NXIVM and/or stopped associating with Keith — from Barb Bouchey to Kristin Keeffe to Ms. Manzana — did so for SELF-SERVING REASONS.
None of these ladies did it for SELFLESS reasons.
For instance, although Kristin Keeffe left NXIVM years ago, it’s still true that Keeffe left NXIVM for SELF-SERVING REASONS to protect herself and her son. She was not leaving NXIVM to help protect humanity from Keith. As long as she and her son were safe, she didn’t give two shits about who else Keith might harm.
Also… Keeffe didn’t leave NXIVM until AFTER she had already outlived her sexual ‘usefulness’ to Keith. It was at this late stage that she finally realized — for her own SELF-SERVING reasons — that both she and her son were better off without Keith dictating their lives.
So, she left with her son. Good for her. It was the right decision.
But if we’re keeping score, Kristin Keeffe spent YEARS digging up dirt on NXIVM’s enemies and making their lives a tormented hell. Kristin Keeffe was part of the corrupt Albany County DA’s investigation into NXIVM enemies.
We can all argue about the ‘timing’ of Lauren’s departure from NXIVM, and how SELF-SERVING it was.
We can all argue that Lauren’s lies (told to DOS slaves) were more egregious than Keeffe’s many years of dirty behavior.
However, that ‘argument’ amounts to nothing more than personal bias, not journalism.
MOST IMPORTANTLY…
Kristin Keeffe had a strong REASON to leave NXIVM when she did (her son). She had a loved one to take care of. She had a LIFE waiting for her outside of NXIVM.
Whereas Lauren had NOTHING outside of NXIVM to look forward to. Her entire world was NXIVM, Keith and DOS. Her mom was Prefect. Her sister was in too. She had no financial, social or family resources outside of NXIVM.
So, naturally she ‘stayed put’ until a 9.9 earthquake shook her entire world to its core, aka the indictment.
Her behavior after leaving NXIVM has been to totally disavow Keith and his teachings. Whereas Allison has not shown such a change of heart.
I believe Allison is still sitting on the fence and, therefore, Jesus has told me that she’s a rancid twat, totally undeserving of leniency. 7 years for Allison. The big guy upstairs has given me this info.
I am confused as to why she did not get any charges for keeping that woman locked in a room for two years. Did Keith get charged for that? I think she should have been as well.
The “kidnapping” took place in the Northern District of New York (NDNY) – and, as a result, will have to be prosecuted in that location. Unfortunately, local law enforcement officials – especially the FBI, the U.S. Attorney’s Office, and the NYS Police – have a long history of doing NOTHING when it comes to NXIVM.
Were any such prosecutions to be initiated now in the NDNY, you can be sure that the defense attorneys would threaten to expose all the corruption that went on for the past two decades. That’s why I am very dubious about anything ever being done here.
Thank K.R. Claviger. I kept wondering why I was not hearing about that. Makes sense. I do wonder why NYS police did not get involved. I wonder if someone in a high position was being paid off. Hmmm. Makes you wonder.
According to Lauren’s DOS spreadsheet – Nicki Clyne was the poorest performing recruiter for DOS. Nicki must have the most disintegrations. lol
According to the spreadsheet, Lauren’s decent line and Rosa Laura’s line were the ones that most successfully recruited.
I deplore the misuse of the word “collateral”.
None of the materials in question were collateral in the true sense of the word.
Those materials were blackmail material pure and simple.
And this blackmail material was all part of a sex trafficking conspiracy.
This Orwellian corruption of the English language proves how corrupt Lauren Salzman, Allison Mack, Keith Raniere and the NXIVM Flying Monkeys truly are.
Once they get out of prison, they will be back to their old tricks.
I appreciate the point you’ve made and will leave off using that term, “collateral.” It has always bothered me, too. But I hadn’t paid enough attention to how come this has felt weird or uncomfortable, somehow. Now, you have given me more insight. The word “blackmail” isn’t varnished and is more frank and exact. Thanks, shadowstate 1958, very much.
Your welcome, Shivani.
I’ve always appreciated the writings of George Orwell (Eric Blair) who taught us to always use the true words to describe things instead of euphemisms.
Euphemisms are used to lie to people and conceal harsh truths.
NXIVM DOS was always about blackmailing women into have sex with Raniere.
It’s typical that groups like cults engage in re-definition of words, including to get people to accept abusive practices by co-opting terms that are normally innocuous.
I’d suggest that at a minimum, “collateral” should be put in quotes like that to offset it as being a NXIVM usage – and dubious.
and as always for you it all comes down to the evil Allison mack and company, as I remember one of your most used criticisms against allison is that only a depraved woman like Allison would guarantee a false story that could destroy her family, but as you can Seeing Lauren’s testimony shows us that his recruits did not have much trouble doing exactly the same thing, but obviously this is not important for you since you cannot recognize that what convinced these women to do these things was the blind trust in the goodwill of their teachers, and the same thing happened to them with keith, and as someone else said in a comment before mine I mean .Anonymous
December 14, 2019 at 6:06 p.m. -It seems that Mr. Raniere normalized deception as part of the recruitment process, and made it “for the common good” of the women involved. They probably thought they were doing a service for the others they recruited. A forgivable white lie.
Frank, it is known Mark Vicente took a plea deal, like Lauren Salzman.
Could you confirm if Sarah Edmondson took a plea deal also?
The point being, all three knew about criminal activity and took plea deals to save themselves from prosecution.
Lauren Salzman did so to get a lesser sentence. Mark Vicente went to the authorities and press as he was too high up to slip away quietly, but what about Edmondson?
I do not believe that either Mark Vicente or Sarah Edmondson took a plea deal. They were not charged. Undoubtedly they got an immunity agreement. Both Mark and Sarah were proactive and were sharing information before the government got interested in the case. Unlike Lauren – they came forward before not after Ranieres arrest.
They both cooperated with the feds to help take Raniere down.
Would you say that either knew about criminal activity and/or participated in it? If they were investigated, could the feds charge either with crimes?
I don’t know the answer to the question positively, but I don’t think Mark or Sara knew much of the secret underbelly of Nxivm. That’s my opinion.
They went so far being loyal to their lover then they realised the jig was up. Then the tears start because they had to take a plea deal and confess things to nail him and get a light sentence. It’s hard to feel sympathy for those and their courtroom tears. I hope the judge sees through them
A conversion compelled by a Federal indictment is not a true conversion.
The NXIVM Flying Monkeys are as evil as they ever were.