HBO’s ‘How-To’ John Wilson Solves Mystery of Who Trashed NXIVM Hotel Room and Yelled at Allison Mack

Frank Report published a report by Leo Helmar about a controversy between the collegiate a cappella community and NXIVM.

As Helmar reported, there were allegations that members of an a cappella group trashed a hotel room, even strewing feces and urine about, to protest NXIVM’s attempt to infiltrate the a cappella community.

The perpetrators were unnamed.

Last week documentarian John Wilson, star of How-To With John Wilson, brings the story to his HBO series, How To With John Wilson, in the episode, “How to Appreciate Wine.”  Wilson was a college student at Binghamton University, a member of the a cappella group, the Binghamton Crosbys.   He and others trashed the room.

He was forced to apologize to Clare Bronfman, who paid for the room, over the hotel incident.

The Back Story

In 2007, Keith Raniere began cultivating an interest in NXIVM in a cappella, the vocal performance art performed without instrumental accompaniment.  Raniere formed a NXIVM-members group called Simply Human..

A sketch made to promote Simply Human – with Keith directing the group.

While Keith did not sing, he coached the singers; for them it was an opportunity to be trained by the smartest man in the world.

Clare Bronfman, who also did not sing, funded two festivals called ‘A Cappella Innovations,” a several day-long workshop, crowned with a live performance of college a cappella groups and Simply Human, at the Egg in downtown Albany.

Invitations were made to college a cappella groups, with the offer to pay for hotel and travel expenses. NXIVM’s role in the festival was not disclosed.

It was announced that, at one of the workshops, Clare’s brother, Edgar Bronfman Jr, then president of Warner Music, would attend and it was inferred that some lucky group might wind up with a recording contract.

TV stars, Smallville’s Allison Mack and Kristin Kreuk, and Battlestar Gallactica’s Nicki Clyne would host the concert.

It was not mentioned that the three were students of NXIVM.

Kristin Kreuk, Nicki Clyne, and Allison Mack 

The first A Cappella Innovations, in December 2007, went off well. IN 2008, A Cappella Innovations again was assembled.

At this second festival, references were made to Raniere’s Rational Inquiry. Attendees were asked for social security numbers, home addresses and other contact information. It seemed to some that there was surveillance of attendees, and feedback and tone of the conference, instead of focusing on input from judges and other singers on vocal performance, focused on “existential topics”.

At the concert, a banner with Raniere’s name was displayed on stage.

He also appeared at some of the events.

According to HBO’s Wilson, Raniere “lurked around the venue all evening, giving lofty speeches about the transformative power of a cappella.”

In an interview with for Esquire, Wilson said, “He just floated around the Egg in Albany. To everyone else that worked for the A Capella Innovation event, he was this sacred figure… He spoke in all these grand overtures about discovery and expression and uplifting voices. And he would refer to us as a collective.”

An Online Thread Discusses NXIVM’s Role in Festival

While the festival was ongoing, on the online forum for RARB [Recorded A Cappella Review Board] and CASA [Contemporary A Cappella Society, founded by Deke Sharon], a thread appeared entitled “A Cappella Innovations,” started by an anonymous poster who claimed to be “a member of a collegiate a cappella group”.

The thread had links to articles about NXIVM on cultnews.com, Forbes, and cult expert Rick Alan Ross’ website.

The thread ran 14 pages and 204 posts.

Allison Mack, Kristin Kreuk, and Nicki Clyne

Bronfman joined the thread to defend Raniere, telling the a cappella community that Raniere is “one of the top 3 problem solvers in the world” and “in the Guinness Book under highest IQ, 1989”.

 

 

Deke Sharon, known as the father of modern a cappella, weighed in on the thread questioning NXIVM’s involvement and challenging Bronfman.  This, in turn, led to NXIVM beginning an investigation into Sharon, which was revealed during the trial of Keith Raniere in 2019.

Keith Alan Raniere said he wanted to promote a cappella.

On the a cappella community thread, one of the questions was “Why would NXIVM invest resources into this festival with nothing to show for it in return, especially given that the sponsorship was not disclosed or advertised in advance”?

Raniere joined the thread to respond: “With respect to a product such as Red Bull, I believe in free enterprise and shameless plugs (I just typed pugs!) Nxivm is different. Nxivm is a method to inspire humanity and its primary objective is not to earn money for the owners. In this way, Nxivm and a cappella are sisters—both derive from the same thing. Products like Red Bull provide a value for the purpose of earning money for the owners, this is different…

“I’ve always found it suspicious when nobody says anything good about something except for the something itself (say that 5 times fast)—except I view it the opposite way from most: even Charles Manson has others claiming he is good. If there is no good, I start to think of censorship and bias…

“But it is so much more important if you come to your own conclusions than if I argue with you about them. You may find the smoke comes from a surprising source.”

Another question posed was why NXIVM hadn’t been more upfront about sponsorship considering it was collecting information like social security numbers and home addresses of people in the a cappella community.

Raniere responded: “It is a very important ethical question: under what conditions should people who share in a given activity disclose this to others. If you examine this generalized situation and apply such a study to the current situation (as we have), you may get some surprising results.”

Lauren Salzman added her thoughts.

Lauren Salzman entered the thread, suggesting that people from the a cappella community come to NXIVM’s headquarters and meet Raniere to get more “data.”

Salzman challenged Sharon and other members of the community to reveal what “data” they would need to trust Raniere.

Controversial After Party

At the end of the festival, there was a party.

Wilson claims that the festival had been set up to recruit people into 10C, “a new, ambiguous social network that you had to sign up for,” Wilson told Esquire.  “At the closing night party…  there was a big reveal that this is what the event was actually for.”

Things escalated.

Mack, who hosted the party, described how she and Nicki Clyne were cornered by a group of men firing questions about NXIVM and their intentions. She claimed they invaded her physical space, conducting a “witch hunt”.

“I think we were cocky because there were 12 or 13 of us, and we were going to try and sound the alarm for the other a capella groups and events, Wilson told for Esquire. “We made a full semicircle around Alison Mack and others and interrogated them about who these people were, like the woman who took herself out in a rowboat and drowned herself after one of those executive success programs.”

“We screamed at Allison Mack and Keith Raniere in front of the rest of the a cappella groups and scrawled the names of the suicide victims on the whiteboards they had set up on the walls,” Wilson said in the episode, “How to Appreciate Wine.”

[Editor’s note: According to one eyewitness, Raniere was not at the party. This person has photos of the party, she says.]

Women who died in Nxivm under suspicious circumstances include Kristin Snyder, Barbara Jeske, Gina Hutchinson, and Pamela Cafritz

Now to explain, Wilson’s reference to suicide, as readers of Frank Report know, there were at least two purported suicides connected to Raniere: Gina Hutchinson in 2002, and Kristin Snyder in 2003.

The reference to the woman in the rowboat was Snyder, who purportedly went out in a kayak in Resurrection Bay in Seward Alaska in February 2003 to commit suicide. Her body was never found,

The Lost Women of Nxivm on ID Network

My film on Investigation Discovery, The Lost Women of NXIVM  offers evidence that it may not have been suicide, and that Snyder disappeared after claiming she was pregnant with Raniere’s child.

According to one witness, the men cooled off and there was an amicable conversation between them, including Wilson.

“I am somewhat of a celebrity having over 6 million viewers per week” Mack wrote in the thread, referencing her role on Smallville. She said the attacks on NXIVM from Ross, Forbes, etc. came from detractors targeting NXIVM.

Allison Mack on stage with Simply Human.

A Shitty Hotel Room

After the festival, the hotel where the groups stayed informed Clare Bronfman that one of the rooms was damaged and asked her to pay for the cleanup. Mack accused students of defacing the room with urine and feces.

Wilson told Esquire, “They accused us of doing some pretty gross stuff. We did damage to the hotel room, but nothing near what they were suggesting…

“… we went back to Binghamton and people were talking about it on an a capella message board. The conversation blew up and NXIVM—through Allison, Clare and Keith—was trying to put out this fire on the thread. There were long paragraphs from Keith where he was trying to defend himself and the event.”.

Clare Bronfman with Nicki Clyne
Wilson added, “Clare contacted the school about the hotel room incident, which people were talking about on the message board. She was trying to get me expelled.”

Bronfman entered the thread and issued an ultimatum for the perpetrators to apologize within three days for damaging the hotel room or face consequences.

The Dean of Binghamton University spoke with Wilson and told him to apologize or risk being expelled.

Wilson told for Vanity Fair, “I did have to have a frank conversation with the dean of my college at the time and try to explain to her who these people were and why they were so malicious. She just didn’t believe me.”

Wilson told Esquire, “Everyone was so upset with me because I was the president of the a capella group at the time. Clare agreed to call the pursuit off as long as I apologized personally to her for some reason. I had no idea who she was though. I really didn’t know how nefarious NXIVM was then, and how much more steam they had in them to do what they did next. I didn’t realize Clare was the heiress to the Seagrams fortune. I didn’t realize how deep the money went with this organization and how many people would defend them. I felt powerless for a while.

“I just said, ‘Sure, I’ll apologize to Clare’ because I did feel genuinely bad that we damaged this hotel room. That was taking it out on the hotel staff, not NXIVM. The emotions were so high. We felt like some kind of statement needed to be made, and we felt powerless.”
Wilson told Esther Zuckerma for Thrillist.com  “I felt shame… because I was like, ‘I’ve embarrassed my a cappella group, I’ve embarrassed my parents, I almost get kicked out of school. Nobody understands that this guy is evil.'”
Kristin Kreuk, Nicki Clyne and Allison Mack on stage for “A Capella Innovations”. Notice the banner behind them.

 

Kristin Kreuk, Nicki Clyne and Allison Mack on stage at “A Cappella Innovations”.

 

Vindication

Raniere went on trial in 2019, Wilson told Vanity Fair, “I was texting with my a cappella friends when that started. We were like, ‘Oh, my God!’ We just felt so vindicated.’

He told Thrillist.com, “I feel like NXIVM fever really wasn’t where it is today. I’ve been sitting with this story since 2007…  Then, when the tabloids started picking up the story, I started to get this rush and I started to watch it snowball. I realized, ‘Okay, now is the time to do this.’ It was a real catharsis.”

About the author

Frank Parlato

63 Comments

Click here to post a comment

Please leave a comment: Your opinion is important to us! (Email & username are optional)

  • Good for the students for posting about this at the time and typical of Nxivm that it would stoop so low as to try to get a student excluded from college (and probably made out the hotel room damage was worse than it was).

  • I compare KR and his cult following to the doc/movie Kumare. People are so desperate to have a sense of self worth and purpose they will become detached from reality and follow false prophets without thinking twice.

  • But the research on pseudo-profound bullshit proves that “people with higher intelligence and better critical-thinking skills are the likeliest to detect BS.”

    • Sounds interesting and still, despite the odds, there are more intelligent and critical-thinking people who fall into cults than one would think, perhaps because many cult leaders are more intelligent and critical-thinking than they also seem to be the problem at heart. Is that if someone is convinced that he is a special person with a defined objective that no one else has and has the strength to follow a path to follow and do it, over time other people mistakenly convince themselves that it is someone special that! YES! He knows what he is doing, of course, what he does is NOT what others believe.

      • I haven’t seen any examples of critical thinking people who joined Nxivm. Even the ones who (eventually) jumped ship were mystical minded gullible fools. Like Vicente, with his “what the bleep” movie which was a pastiche of spiritualism and half-digested factoids about particle physics. Or Sarah Edmondson, daughter of California hippies and now a follower of Eckhardt Tolle’s mystical ramblings. Or India Oxenberg.

        A person can pass their exams with aplomb and score high on the SAT and yet have not a whit of common sense. Intelligence and wisdom are not the same thing.

        Add to this viewpoint bias. People are disinclined to look critically at the the worldview they already have. People who are into Eastern mysticism won’t look critically at what their guru tells them. People with a history of buying into self-improvement schemes are an easy mark for the next self-improvement scheme to come along.

        • — Even the ones who (eventually) jumped ship were mystical minded gullible fools.–

          Put Kristin Kreuk on that list, too. Often those seeking self improvement might actually be seeking someone to do their thinking for them.

      • The poorly written, quasi-cohrent post by Anonymous December 15, 2021 is representative of a person who fell for pseudo-profound bullshit and just can’t look themself in the mirror and admit they were an idiot hoodwinked by another idiot.

  • Thank you for remembering the “suicide” victims. I”m heartened and impressed that John Wilson and his Binghamton Acapella team, along with the community’s International leaders like Deke Sharon, were sensitive to the perils that befell Kris Snyder and my sister, and were able to repel a full-on NXIVM takeover attack. I’m sorry that it was such a trauma at the time and, again, congratulate you on ultimately protecting your Acapella colleagues from the infiltration and likely ruination of their community and lives.

  • I think I remember John Wilson. He shouted a lot but he was ok. If only he had spent some quality time with Keith, he might have had a totally more integrated experience. He’s smart and he might have been unified. Someday,he may regret that he had an opportunity to be with someone who could elevate him and he trashed the hotel room and his soul with it. And if he strewed feces and urine, he gave up the bread of life.

    • Monte Blu:
      Where have you been?

      “And if he strewed feces and urine, he gave up the bread of life.” Monte Blu

      Your friend Pea Onyu knows all about the fertilizer value of urine and feces.

      • Pea Onyu comes from a rural area, there you know such a thing.
        If you’re a farmer and you raise animals, you know what shit means
        and what it’s good for.

  • It’s classic that once NXIVM had people hooked on coming, at the second event all of a sudden Keith the guru was being featured, including quotes from him – rather than say from someone actually renowned.

    And there are a couple of classic examples of what researchers actually call “pseudo-profound b.s.” in the message board exchanges, especially this from Raniere::

    “It is a very important ethical question: under what conditions should people who share in a given activity disclose this to others. If you examine this generalized situation and apply such a study to the current situation (as we have), you may get some surprising results.”

    What does that mumbo-jumbo even mean? But clearly, in a lecture to followers (perhaps falsely cloaked as a dialog), he can turn it to come out in favor of his position.

    Here’s a good piece about it

    Deep? Or Pseudo-Profound B.S.? Psychologists Explore Why Some Can’t Tell
    > https://www.wbur.org/news/2015/12/04/pseudo-profound-b-s-psychology

    • Excellent link!

      There is nothing creative or masterful about writing bullshit. Look at Raniere’s BS, it’s just big words combined in tortured syntax.

      So much for him being a master manipulator.

      Some people are easy marks for BS. The spiritual fools, the believers in crystals and ‘higher planes of thought’. Take a few words and phrases from a book on Buddhism and splice them together and you’ve got the suckers thinking you’re a guru.

      These are the fools who join cults.

      • Many of the actresses and other women were into yoga before NXIVM. Yoga is good physical exercise, but it can also teach too much Eastern mysticism and obedience to the yoga master guru. Easy pickings.

    • That’s so funny. Yeah it means nothing.

      “How do you all know each other?”

      Is the most normal, common place and least deep, ethical question ever.

      It comes up at parties. Weddings. Bars. The beach. Bowling alley. Any setting.

      Only total weirdos consider it a CIA level “disclosure”.

      Dear Lord. What rubbish.

    • ==What does that mumbo-jumbo even mean?

      It’s his way of saying secrecy of intent/purpose can be ethical. It’s the same rationalization used for not disclosing what the brand of DOS actually meant. Or what Nicki and Danielle exhibit when they are questioned about the notion of uninformed consent and brush it off with the excuse that it wasn’t any of their business to disclose certain information to their slaves.

    • That article was pure gold Anony, thanks! In that article is this link:http://sebpearce.com/bullshit/

      Some dude was sitting through Deepak Chopra and decided to make a website that spews out random bullshit for people to pass off as deep intellectual thought. The author describes what he did:

      “After sitting through hours of New Age rhetoric, I decided to have a crack at writing code to generate it automatically and speed things up a bit. I cobbled together a list of New Age buzzwords and cliché sentence patterns and this is the result.” (aka word salad)

      Here’s a sample. Is it Vanguard word salad or Bullshit Generator, because frankly it’s impossible to tell the difference:

      “Yes, it is possible to shatter the things that can eradicate us, but not without insight on our side. Without love, one cannot exist. Ego is the antithesis of sharing.”

  • Spectrum News

    Halfmoon restaurant looks to escape from NXIVM’s shadow
    By Jaclyn Cangro Halfmoon
    UPDATED 7:43 AM ET Dec. 14, 2021 PUBLISHED 8:05 PM ET Dec. 13, 2021
    NXIVM co-founder Keith Raniere has been sentenced to spend the rest of his life, and then some, behind bars, and co-conspirators, including actress Allison Mack and heiress Clare Bronfman, have been sentenced for crimes related to NXIVM, as well.

    While the group has dismantled, there are still some signs of the secretive organization in the Capital Region, including its former Colonie headquarters.

    In Halfmoon, there’s the Route 9 property that was once home to Apropos. The building was forfeited by Bronfman in 2019. Today, it’s undergoing a complete renovation and will soon be home to a new restaurant, Emma Jayne’s.

    Local restaurateur and executive chef Michael Fortin, who owns Joe’s Tavern and Max410, is expanding his footprint in what he calls an ideal location.

    “The past is the past and that has nothing to do with me,” Fortin said. “This is a prime piece of real estate, and I think we can do really well here and let sleeping dogs lie.”

    Fortin plans to close Joe’s in order to focus more heavily on Emma Jayne’s, which is named after his young daughter.

    Before being forfeited, the property was used by NXIVM members to meet and hold occasional classes.It was not open to the public.

    Raniere was found guilty of a number of charges, including racketeering, sex trafficking and forced labor conspiracy in June 2019. He was sentenced to 120 years in prison.

    Fortin and others in the area say they’re ready to move on.

    Construction is currently underway, with plans to include additional seating on a new deck. Fortin says it’s the first time he’s been able to completely design one of his restaurants.

    “We want to be a place where you can come on a regular Tuesday night dinner with the family, or a place that you come to celebrate one of your biggest achievements and most special occasions in life,” Fortin said.

    The restaurant is hiring. Fortin hopes to open Jan. 20, 2022.

    https://spectrumlocalnews.com/nys/capital-region/news/2021/12/14/new-restaurant-looks-to-escape-nxivm-shadow

  • Great article!

    I believe Pyriel mentioned a similarly story.

    Clare really was NXIVM’s head enforcer or dare I say she was the embodiment of OSA.

  • Date Filed: Dec 10, 2021

    ORDER re 124 Letter, filed by John Doe, Jane Doe, Jane Does, Toni Natalie, Souki, Sarah Edmondson, Anthony Ames, Ana Ceclia, Mark Vicente, Jane Doe, Bonnie Piesse, India Oxenberg, Jessica Joan Salazar, Tabitha Chapman, Daniela, Camila, Nicole, Ashley McLean. The extension is granted. Plaintiffs shall file their letter in further support of their motion for a protective order by December 17, 2021. Pursuant to Rule I.C.1 of this Court’s Individual Practices and Rules, requests for extensions of time must be made at least two business days prior to the scheduled deadline. Failure to comply with this rule without showing good cause may result in denial of such requests in the future. In addition, pursuant to Rule II.A.3 of this Court’s Individual Practices and Rules, all requests for relief from the Court shall be designated as a motion on ECF.Ordered by Judge Eric R. Komitee on 12/10/2021. (Iseman, Eugenie)

    • Shadowstate-

      One of Jim Belushi’s greatest lines:
      “What am I — a zit!”

      “How much for your women?”
      -Blues Brothers

  • “even Charles Manson has others claiming he is good” -Raniere

    …and this makes Keith’s followers no different than Manson’s followers.

  • Looking at these photos, taken before the DOS starvation started, makes obvious the kind of women Raniere finds attractive: no tits, slim hips and square jaws.

    Keith is into women who look like boys. Nicki looks especially masculine.

    He must be having a field day surround by all the lads in his Tuscon chomo resort.

    • Reminds me of an old joke that those old enough might get:

      What is old, wrinkled and smells of ginger?……….Fred Astaire’s face.

    • The pix in the post, Kristin Kreuk looks very pretty, like a cute 16 year-old. But she was 24 or 25 then. She’s personifies Keith’s cream-dream waif, even without the DOS diet.

  • Most or all of the photos are from the first festival, but all the bad vibes come at the second (10c, SSNumbers) that Mack and Clyne hosted.

    Why no photos from year 2, and who took these photos anyway?

    And with a hundred people attending and NXIVM in the news, why haven’t more come forward like John did?

  • Dickhead college students, trashing a hotel room.

    But even they were clever enough to spot Raniere & Company’s clumsy ruse. Not even these dumbass kids, glee club losers, were stupid enough to join a cult.

    It takes real naïveté, true stupidity, to join a cult.

    Just look at how clumsy this attempt was. Mack, Clyne, and Kreuk up there onstage like zombies promoting Raniere. They worshipped the ground he walked on. To anyone not a cult zombie, it was obvious that he was just a cheap grifter, a sad-sack loser with an inflated ego.

    Nobody with half a brain would fall for it.

    Just look at that crap statement by Raniere, larded over with ‘deepities’. Empty jargon. He’s so stupid he didn’t know “profound”and “deep” mean the same thing and so just repeats himself. What an ignorant fool. “The universe was created with sound”? What nonsense. Laughable, pretentious bullshit.

    Kreuk has a lot to answer for, having promoted this fraudulent criminal cult. Mack’s in federal prison dodging shivs, Clyne’s unemployable and getting her ass sued. Kreuk is going on with her life like nothing happened, lying about her role in this criminal enterprise and claiming she just took a couple of courses.

    She ought to be ashamed.

    • >>Kreuk has a lot to answer for,

      To who? Outside of those who post here, no one seems to care — no supposed victims of the cult named her, nor did the law care to investigate her as a suspect. The worst she did was probably to herself — spent a couple hundred grand on its courses (instead of getting a real education), waste a bunch of her own personal time in it, and pick up some of the stench of being associated with the sex cult even if she wasn’t a part of DOS. But that’s probably about it.

      Like you said in a previous comment, if you aren’t bothered by what some anonymous blowhard says online, why would an actress who is a multimillionaire and whose career hasn’t been affected by it care one bit?

      • Oh look, a Kristin Kreuk simp (Spanky?) has to come to Kristin Kreuk’s defense like her PR agent.

        Your pathetic dismissals don’t matter. But questions and points made about Kreuk do matter in this story.

        Can’t you just masturbate without pretending she is your wife?

          • “She rejected you back in the early 2000s…it is time to move on.”

            She did? Did Ally Wack, Nicki Clyne and Grace Park too?

            Simpy white knight cuck boy! Stop worshipping celebrities!

        • >> (Spanky?)

          >> Sultan-

          I don’t know what the obsession is here with a number of you commenters labeling me “Sultan” or “Spanky”, but my name is Jen Salazar. Nor do I know who this Alanzo is you speak of, but I can assure you I never brought him here.

      • Don’t project your incelness onto others, Spanky. Worshipping Kristin Crooked will not fill the void.

        Kristin Kreuk has one primary spanker, SultanOfSix and a bunch of likely ugly female spankers. Sad.

    • Once again, your Wurst is well-grilled, Aristotle.

      Only someone lacking in substantial intelligence and wisdom would fall for the cosmic slop Raniere served up.

      Ex-culties always want to claim that cults target extra-smart people, because they feel foolish in retrospect. Those types are well-represented here on the Frank Report.

    • Years ago, Kreuk’s friends formed an intervention to get her to leave the sex cult. But they changed their minds when Kreuk offered to blow them.

  • Au naturale Clare looks way better than Nicki in that photo.

    And that’s not even taking Nicki’s pre DOS doughy body into account as shown in those a Capella photos.

    Looks were so important to DOS and Keith. Even how a slave’s spread hairy vag photographed.

    No wonder Nicki is still so thirsty for compliments on selfies.Her self worth is really tied to appearance.

    • “Au naturale Clare looks way better than Nicki in that photo.”

      Clare’s face has great bone structure that just needs proper makeup, and with her long slim body and real tits, she’d look so good in stylish clothes that she’d make most other women jealous.

  • TDLR: John Wilson and his friends are total assholes who, as a group of mostly men, surrounded and confronted several women because he didn’t like what they believed while also significantly damaging a hotel room by “strewing feces and urine about”.

    He got out of expulsion somehow but should not have. Putting feces on anything besides a toilet bowl and toilet paper is unacceptable past age 3. Doesn’t matter what you think of NXIVM or any other person or thing, Its a shame he will likely never suffer consequences from it. Especially for being part of a large group of what sounds like mostly men surrounding several women with no escape in a confrontational manner (that is nightmare fuel for anyone but especially for women).

    What is worse is that I suspect Wilson feels he is in the “right” for this. Even all these years later. None of that is EVER a proper response and he should lose sponsors and supporters over it. No, not saying he should be canceled, but definitely given the financial equivalent of a big slap on the back of the head so when he relates the story in the future, it’s done from the perspective “This was a horrible response” Instead of “let me tell you that time I showed up NXIVM cultists, am I not awesome!.”

About the Author

Frank Parlato is an investigative journalist.

His work has been cited in hundreds of news outlets, like The New York Times, The Daily Mail, VICE News, CBS News, Fox News, New York Post, New York Daily News, Oxygen, Rolling Stone, People Magazine, The Sun, The Times of London, CBS Inside Edition, among many others in all five continents.

His work to expose and take down NXIVM is featured in books like “Captive” by Catherine Oxenberg, “Scarred” by Sarah Edmonson, “The Program” by Toni Natalie, and “NXIVM. La Secta Que Sedujo al Poder en México” by Juan Alberto Vasquez.

Parlato has been prominently featured on HBO’s docuseries “The Vow” and was the lead investigator and coordinating producer for Investigation Discovery’s “The Lost Women of NXIVM.” Parlato was also credited in the Starz docuseries "Seduced" for saving 'slave' women from being branded and escaping the sex-slave cult known as DOS.

Additionally, Parlato’s coverage of the group OneTaste, starting in 2018, helped spark an FBI investigation, which led to indictments of two of its leaders in 2023.

Parlato appeared on the Nancy Grace Show, Beyond the Headlines with Gretchen Carlson, Dr. Oz, American Greed, Dateline NBC, and NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt, where Parlato conducted the first-ever interview with Keith Raniere after his arrest. This was ironic, as many credit Parlato as one of the primary architects of his arrest and the cratering of the cult he founded.

Parlato is a consulting producer and appears in TNT's The Heiress and the Sex Cult, which premiered on May 22, 2022. Most recently, he consulted and appeared on Tubi's "Branded and Brainwashed: Inside NXIVM," which aired January, 2023.

IMDb — Frank Parlato

Contact Frank with tips or for help.
Phone / Text: (305) 783-7083
Email: frankparlato@gmail.com

Archives