What Is Nxivm? Part 2 — Raniere’s Harem Secretly Ran Nxivm

This is Part 2 of What Is Nxivm?

What Is Nxivm? Part #1

Some people who have not been following the Nxivm story for long have asked for a basic primer to explain the background of Keith Raniere and his followers.  This is my response. It is a beginner’s guide to Nxivm.  Long time readers perhaps will not find this post of interest as they know most of what is contained in it.

In the beginning, recruiting for Nxivm went well.

One man, a Mexican named Edgar Boone, a trust fund baby, became one of their most prolific recruiters. He began recruiting prominent Mexicans – including the son and daughter of former Mexican president Carlos Salinas, the daughter of former Mexican president Vincente Fox, and the daughter of the nation’s leading newspaper publisher, Alejandro Junco.

Many wealthy Mexicans joined because of the glamor of the elite Mexican membership.

This made the company an international success.

Keith Raniere ordered that money in cash paid by wealthy students in Mexico was to be smuggled northward to him without bothering to report it to the IRS.  He had students carry it – as mules – across the border – and, to keep him in the clear, handing it over for safekeeping to the company president, Nancy Salzman.

There were times she claimed she had more than $2 million in cash stored at her home. When the feds raided her house in 2018, they found $520,000 in cash. Where the rest of it went is unknown.

Since the company was not in his name, Raniere felt confident that if anyone had to take the fall, it wouldn’t be him. In this, he was mistaken.

In 2002, less than four years after founding the company, Raniere got his next big break.  Two Seagram’s heiresses, Sara and Clare Bronfman – both in their 20s, became students. Both became enamored and bought into the dream of creating a “more noble civilization” using the teachings this wonderful man created for the welfare of the world.

Leaving their lives in New York City, London and Paris behind, the sisters relocated to Albany NY where Nxivm headquarters were and where Raniere – who was referred to as Vanguard – and Salzman – who was called Prefect – lived.

At first, the two sisters believed Raniere was not only a genius but an extraordinary guru in the tradition of the celibate monks of India and Tibet. He was higher than any high lama, they believed, and he gave them a greater purpose for living.

Finally, they could use their wealth for the good of the world and not just for vain and selfish endeavors.

They had never worked for money. They had inherited it and so they felt that this was their life work – to use their great wealth to support the noblest of all men in his noble mission.

With their wealth and dedication – and his brains and great heart – they would change the world.

Keith wisely assigned Nancy Salzman to watch over them and they soon were groomed and prepared to invest their entire fortune to advance this new wonderful teaching method that would uplift the world.

They recruited their father, billionaire Edgar Bronfman Sr., former president of the World Jewish Congress, who, at first, endorsed the programs, claiming privately it had, among conferring other benefits, cured his impotence.

He would later become disenchanted when Clare told him she lent several million dollars to the group.

During those early days, the Bronfmans did not know that Raniere was not celibate. He kept a harem and his harem doubled as teachers of his Executive Success Programs.  The Bronfman sisters would find out in time. Both sisters would have sex with Raniere – with Clare, who previously identified herself asd a lesbian, eventually joining his harem.

The women of his harem are a fascinating study. Many came to an unfortunate end.

Two of his longest-serving harem members, who were with him before he started Nxivm, died of cancer. New evidence I uncovered shows that they and others may have been poisoned before contracting their fatal diseases. Both women died leaving seven-figure estates to Raniere.

Pam Cafritz, daughter of DC developers and socialites William and Buffy Cafritz, was his pimp woman recruiting other women and underage girls to his bed.  She died of renal cancer. Her body was moved shortly before she died from her hospital bed to Raniere’s home where she was placed in a bathtub filled with ice.

Raniere claimed that he was about to invent a method of bringing the dead back to life and wanted to preserve her body in ice until he could transfer it to a cryogenic tomb.  He kept her death a secret from most of his followers for weeks. It is still not known where her body wound up. What is known is that Pam willed her entire estate – about $8 million – to Raniere and that he arranged to use her bank accounts after she died.

Then there was Barbara Jeske, his top recruiter. She was in his harem – and, in fact, aborted three pregnancies per his orders.

Barbara had money coming in from her downline after recruiting hundreds if not thousands of people to take the Nxivm classes – who, in turn, recruited thousands of others.

She was to contract brain cancer, but she did not know it first. She came to Raniere as did all the women when they were ailing.  Raniere told her she had carpel tunnel syndrome. So, she delayed getting checked by a doctor.  Finally, she was so ill that she went to a doctor who diagnosed her with brain cancer.

She went to Raniere for treatment rather than follow normal medical treatment.

Jeske’s sister told me that Raniere prescribed something called “Doo-Doo balls” – little malodorous brown balls which she said Barbara told her contained excrement.

Another source informed me that the late Pam Cafritz was also prescribed Doo Doo balls – and, in addition, a milky white drink that some have speculated contained his semen.

When Jeske died, she left her entire estate to Raniere.

Then there is Karen, who Raniere took under his wing when she was 17. She was his longest-serving harem woman – for more than 40 years.

Tests I made on her hair for a film for Investigation Discovery showed Karen had been poisoned with barium and bismuth – leading up to her bout with bladder cancer. It was odd that all the women Raniere lived with wound up with cancer.

Another harem member who got cancer was Kristin. She was astonishingly diagnosed with cervical cancer at the same time she was eight months pregnant. At that late-term, Raniere could not order an abortion and the child was born, a boy, believed to be his firstborn child.

This presented a problem for Raniere because other than his harem, his students believed he was celibate. He sent Kristin away for a time and she came back with the baby and a fictitious story.  Keith told the community that the baby was an orphan whose mother died giving childbirth and the father was unknown and that they had chosen to take this child and raise it.

The lucky child would have the advantage of being tutored by the smartest man in the world.

In fact, Keith devised a new childhood teaching method that he would place the child in – and allow the parents of his wealthy students to participate [at $10,000 a month]. It was a revolutionary method for teaching children.

Some years later, when the boy was 7, Kristin fled the cult with her son. I gave her refuge and provided her with housing. She became a source for me – and was able to provide the DOJ with information about the many crimes of Raniere.

With regard to the cancer his closest women got, Kristin told me she suspected she had been poisoned for years.  In fact, Keith admitted that it might be so but put the blame on someone else.

He claimed that the Bronfman’s father, upset about his daughters working for the welfare of the world, which might upset his greater Zionist plans – and his connections to the Illuminati – was trying to poison Raniere but lamentably infected the harem women instead.

They would be martyrs all, Raniere said.

There were many other harem members.  Dawn Morrison, a beautiful blonde who dedicated her life to Raniere and wound up broke.

Barbara Bouchey, a successful financial manager, who he stripped of her life savings of $1.6 million by losing it in commodities trades.

Nancy and Lauren Salzman ran Nxivm’s day-to-day operations.

Kathy Russell, the bookkeeper.

All of them became part of his harem.

Kathy and Lauren routinely participated in one of Raniere favorite pastimes and arguably one that was efficient for him – threesomes.

There were also TV actresses Allison Mack and Nicki Clyne who both gave up their acting careers to be in his harem. In order to keep Nicki, a Canadian, in the US, Raniere ordered Allison to marry Nicki in 2017.

Then there were the Mexican women who moved up to Albany to be part of his harem.  Daniella Padilla, Rosa Laura Junco, Monica Duran, Loreta Garza, Melissa Rodriguez, and others.

 

 

 

 

 

 

There was the beautiful Ivy Nevares who did his writing for him. He lied to Ivy – telling her she was the only one and that he would have with her an avatar baby.

When she fell out of favor, he told her to never cut her hair until she could cure her “ethical breach.” She let her hair grow down below her feet, so earnest was she to show she would sacrifice for him.

Behind her back, he would mock her to others [not telling them that he had told her not to cut her hair] – saying “Have you seen how long Ivy’s hair has grown?”

Raniere loved pitting his women against each other.

There was Daniela, a highly intelligent young woman, who was confined to a solitary room for 700 days because she kissed another man.  She became a source for me after she escaped – and was a star witness at the trial of Raniere.

Raniere also had in his harem two of Daniela’s sisters. Mariana, who he fathered a child with shortly before being arrested.

 

And Camila, who began having sex with Keith when she was 15. Cami became Keith’s undoing for he chose to keep her nude photos – which he took when she was 15 – in his library after he fled to Mexico. It was more than a year after the feds arrested him when they realized that among the hundreds of graphic nudes of his harem seized from his home, were pictures of Cami when she was 15.  It was Frank Report that first published the fact that Raniere had begun having sex with Cami when she was underage.

This revelation led to a second superseding indictment which included charges of possession of child pornography and sexual exploitation of a minor.

Up until this point, all five of Raniere’s co-defendants seemed to be prepared to face trial.  But this ugly new charge – of child porn and exploitation of a minor – sent them scrambling.  His female co-defendants all made motions to sever their trials from his.  The judge denied their motions. Knowing that they would be tried alongside a possessor of child porn seems to have prompted them to promptly take plea deals.

Raniere stood trial alone.

There are so many other women who came into his harem – all with unique and fascinating stories. We will get to them in their proper place.

Most of them paid a heavy penalty for being near him.  All of the women were on restricted diets – all of them were slender, some to the point of emaciation. It was one of Raniere’s goals that women should eat so little that they should stop menstruating.

In fact, disciplining women and keeping them on diets were obsessions for Raniere and for all the women he allowed in his harem.

He would punish them if they gained a pound and would examine their bodies, naked, telling them that fat disrupted his spiritual energies – interfering with the growth that he was seeking for them through having sex with him.

Raniere always told his women that the sex he had with them was not for his enjoyment but strictly for their spiritual growth.

In fact, he told them that his semen had magical properties and that if they drank it or acquired in on their bodies, it would inure to their great spiritual benefit.

He taught the women of his harem that their own orgasm was not important – for this was not about pleasure. It was his semen that was all-important – that they should get some of it and ensure the greatest boon of spiritual progress.

With all of his women it was a hard and fast rule that while he could have sex with any and all of them as he pleased, none of them could ever be with another man the rest of their life – not after he had bestowed the boon of his semen. Once he offered his precious sperm, they were – by his decree – his slaves forever.

Should they touch another man, the effect might be so disastrous, he told them, that he might die – because of the deep spiritual connection he had with the women.  And if he died, the world would lose this fabulous mission that otherwise was destined to save the world and the world would be destroyed.

Under these curious conditions – with his harem women actually operating his company, Nxivm prospered and grew.

The average student knew nothing of the behind-the-scenes life of Raniere and his harem.

Click here for Part 1: What Is Nxivm?