How Planet Labs VP Mike Safyan Secretly Teamed Up with Bloomberg Reporter Ellen Huet in OneTaste Hit Piece

I began writing about OneTaste in 2018 based on a story written by Ellen Huet for Bloomberg Business Week. I relied on her reporting to write what I now realize were flawed stories. In 2024, OneTaste retained me to investigate with the condition that I would publish whatever I found, good, bad or indifferent, without its approval or preview of any story before it was published. By that time, two of their executives were under indictment.

If my investigation confirmed the government’s theories, I would help the prosecution.  If it did not, I would write that and do what no one in the mainstream media ever seems prepared to do: Stand up to the government; call out the prosecutors and investigators and the mainstream media or anyone else who got the story wrong, who out of malice or ambition or because power corrupts, blithely prosecutes the innocent, or spreads false, damning stories. I would not only tell them they are wrong but show them in granular detail.  I know because I was once falsely prosecuted myself.

The prosecution of OneTaste co founder Nicole Daedone and former OneTaste executive began with a reporter for Bloomberg News, Ellen Huet and her friend concealed, a former OneTaste student, an aerospace tech executive named Misha Safyan, known professionally as Mike Safyan.

In June 2018, Bloomberg Businessweek published “The Dark Side of the Orgasmic Meditation Company” by reporter Ellen Huet.

The sub-headline read:

OneTaste is pushing its sexuality wellness education toward the mainstream. Some former members say it pushed them into sexual servitude and five-figure debts.

Criminal Charge

With such serious claims, soon after Bloomberg’s publication, OneTaste closed. Within weeks, an FBI investigation began, which Huet announced.

This was followed by negative media – often quoting Bloomberg as its source, with some crediting Huet for writing such a startling story that it got the FBI involved, This is what enterprising journalism is supposed to do.

After a five year FBI investigation, the US Attorney in Brooklyn indicted two company executives. The charge is forced labor conspiracy. A Brooklyn federal judge scheduled the trial for January.

Book Deal

The story’s impact led to media appearances for Huet and renowned book publishers Farrar, Straus, & Giroux offered Huet a contract with an an advance payment to write a book about OneTaste.  Farrar, Straus & Giroux announced the book will be released in 2025.

Huet Conceals Key Witness in OneTaste Takedown

The real issue is the original story. Not in what Huet reported but in what she left out.

In “The Dark Side of the Orgasmic Meditation Company,” Huet did not name her primary source. She concealed him.

Misha ‘Mike’ Safyan was evidently angry about marrying a woman he met at OneTaste and spending too much money on OneTaste courses. He took the path of blaming one’s own mistakes on anybody but the one who made them.

During his time as a student and coach at OneTaste, he married a slightly older but equally immature woman who like him was very enthusiastic about the promise the company offered of a new kind of lifestyle -one of sexual liberation, of freedom from envy and hatred and jealousy. One where he could understand his libidinous nature and help him overcome his admitted sexual dysfunction. He was successfully employed in the tech industry. He liked the communal lifestyle and even moved in with several students in a San Francisco house. He began to explore and found out a lot about himself. Along the way he met a OneTaste student, Jewish like him, petite, pretty and into exploring.  His wife of four months – married in haste in August 2015 was the daughter of a famous psychologist and professor.

None of this would be anybody’s business and the couple certainly wanted to keep their names unknown, though they wanted their story told to the world, except for the fact that their stories do not corroborate with others who knew them and in fact husband and wife’s do not corroborate each other.

Much like their marriage, they disagreed on much and agreed on little. The only thing they seem to agree upon after they divorced was their desire to blame OneTaste for their mistake in marrying each other.

Had Mike Safyan not known Ellen Huet, their private mistake would have been theirs alone to know.

Create a Cult

How do you blame someone else – even a group or a company for your adult decisions? These two married each other. They were educated and came from stable families. No one on earth could have stopped them. So determined was the wife to wed, that she kept it a secret from her orthodox Jewish parents. No one told her to keep it a secret. OneTaste people told her to slow down. But she wanted marriage. So did Mike Safyan.

So how does what you did in 2015 – rush to marry, against the advice of people all around you at OneTaste, another OneTaste student – become the fault of OneTaste?

You call it a cult. Once it becomes a cult, you are  excused from thinking for yourself. They take over your brain, and you have nothing left. You are excused for all your mistakes.

Safyan made a fool of himself at OneTaste, then left OneTaste with his wife. They had lied to her parents and so they set up an elaborate scheme to have a mock wedding to fool her mom and dad that it was a real orthodox Jewish wedding with a Rabbi. They did not let them know they were already legally wed. This they did after leaving OneTaste, though no doubt they blamed OneTaste for this deception. The fake wedding never came off. Before it happened, the jealous, bickering couple decided to break up.

How such personal matters should capture the attention of the public when it should have been a private affair is one well worth exploring, which we will do in our next post in this series.

But if we must search for blame, we should begin with ourselves. I am convinced that the culprit of all of life’s woes always begins with oneself and nine times out of ten it ends there too.  Mike Safyan wanted to blame OneTaste for his mistake in marrying a woman who was not right for him. His mistake, not OneTaste’s.

He thought he could lash out at OneTaste and do it anonymously. He wanted to bury OneTaste and he nearly did. But he made the mistake of thinking he could keep his name out of it. He went to his friend, Bloomberg reporter Ellen Huet and with her agreement to keep him concealed he went after OneTaste.

Ellen Huet helped him and helped herself.

To be continued…

Frank Parlato

Frank Parlato is an investigative journalist, media strategist, publisher, and legal consultant.

Frank Parlato

Frank Parlato is an investigative journalist, media strategist, publisher, and legal consultant.

See Full Bio