Frank Parlato
This post is a continuation of: How Planet Labs VP Mike Safyan Secretly Teamed Up with Bloomberg Reporter Ellen Huet in OneTaste Hit Piece
Bloomberg published The Dark Side of the Orgasmic Meditation Company on June 18, 2018. It created an immediate sensation and launched an FBI investigation.
The US Attorney for the Eastern District of NY indicted OneTaste co-founder Nicole Daedone and company executive Rachel Cherwitz in 2023 on a single count of conspiracy to commit forced labor. Daedone and Cherwitz’s alleged 12-year conspiracy, which began in 2006 and ended in 2108, failed to produce a forced labor charge. In 2024, OneTaste retained me to investigate the case.
The Man Behind the Curtain
The criminal prosecution began with Ellen Huet’s story. Her secret, undisclosed source was Mike Safyan, a former OneTaste student and aerospace executive with Planet, the earth observation and data analytics company that designs, builds, and operates the world’s largest “constellation” of earth imaging satellites. Safyan makes a lot of money at Planet and spent a lot of money on OneTaste classes.
Safyan met a woman at OneTaste who persuaded him to pay for her courses. He promptly married her. A few months later, they divorced.
Mind Control
Safyan said he was mind-controlled by OneTaste, a dangerous admission for a man who works in a high-level position for a tech company with access to the space domain and sensitive data.
Safyan wrote to friends privately, never expecting that this would all come out:
I was in a cult. I don’t use this word lightly, OneTaste is very much a manipulative, mind-controlling organization that purports to be about transformation, growth, consciousness, and higher purpose, when in truth it is an evil, sales-driven ponzy scheme that ruins a lot of good people’s lives.
Accuse Anonymously
Safyan never expected his name to come out. He sought anonymity. Two years after he left OneTaste, he had a friend, Ellen Huet of Bloomberg, who would write what he wanted and keep him hidden. She promised and she kept her word.
On the strength of being kept a secret accuser, he got his ex-wife – Michal Neria – to speak to reporter Huet. Neria could remain anonymous too but, unlike him, she would be quoted in the story. Safyan liked women to do the front work for him, as he hid behind directing the narrative.
About 40 percent of the Dark Side story is about Michal. Huet begins and ends with Michal. She never mentions Safyan or quotes him. She never mentions Michal married her friend.
Instead, Huet obliquely references Safyan as “a man who worked in tech and had paid part of her (OneTaste course) tuition.”
Dark Begins and Ends With Neria
Huet wrotein her Dark Side story:
When Michal got married in August 2015, (she) spent the ceremony in a daze.
She knew she didn’t want to get married like this… yet she felt compelled to do it …
OneTaste …. in less than a year, gained sway over every aspect of her life….
Reporters have occasionally used the word “cult” jokingly… but Michal and others say OneTaste deserves the term’s full weight.
“I lost my understanding of money,” Michal says. “There was a lot of psychological manipulation. This is an organization that really preys on people’s weaknesses.”
… Michal’s OneTaste life started to break down. …Michal began to think of leaving …. She regularly woke up screaming from nightmares.
… Michal persuaded her husband to leave OneTaste with her in September 2015, shortly after their wedding… they divorced soon after… ..depressed and occasionally suicidal….
Neria Continues Anonymously
Michal Neria knew what she was, and she worked to establish the price.Emboldened by the success of the Bloomberg story, still hiding behind anonymity, Michal told the BBC more about the man she married and a bit about herself.
“He wasn’t my type. I wasn’t sexually attracted to him, and yet he had this great power because he was willing to spend thousands and thousands of dollars on me to take those classes… So you know, it’s not exactly prostitution, but it’s also not completely different.”
Toxic Couple Blaming Others
What never appeared in the Bloomberg story or anywhere else is that these two were toxic. She was 29; he was 28 when they married.
In an email not intended to be published, Safyan told friends he and Michal broke up because of what he learned at OneTaste:
“[O)]ur real downfall stemmed from a (OneTaste) practice called ‘Admissions.’ In an ‘Admission’, one person shares an unfiltered (often brutally so) truth, and the other person is to accept it and say thank you, all in the name of cultivating honesty and connection by sharing our “true selves” – no matter how painful that truth may be.”
Jealous and Unfullfilled
Possibly because he was still under mind control, even after he left OneTaste, Safyan took little responsibility for his habit of making admissions to Michal of his carnal desire for other women.
Safyan explained:
“I would have thought that I was attracted to another woman, so in an attempt to be honest and forthcoming, I would share that with Michal. This would deeply hurt her, but we kept the admissions going because we thought that “honesty” was more important than the pain it inflicted. This quickly spiraled out of control, and I would give admissions several times a week (mostly about women I had unfaithful thoughts about) – which put Michal under a great strain, made her completely lose her trust in me, and we would have these giant blow-out fights where she would rightfully doubt my fidelity and the worth of our relationship, and threaten to end the whole thing.
“I would be confused (she was supposed to just say thank you), and then would desperately try to win her back and set things right again. These fights continued throughout our relationship, usually occurring several times a week, and both of us became extremely on edge, nervous wrecks.
Need to Confess?
It got so bad, Safyan admitted, that if he didn’t tell her about women he lusted after, she would accuse him of holding back.
He wrote…
“I can’t tell you how many times I knew it was a bad idea to share a thought but somehow couldn’t stop myself, then Michal would explode and we’d be caught right back in the cycle. It got to the point where if I didn’t give an Admission to Michal for several days, she would grow suspicious and demand one from me.”
Pandering or Abuse?
Who knows the dynamics of lust and love? Maybe his wife wanted to hear her husband say he was not attracted to other women like he was to her, that beauty is skin deep, or that their relationship transcended the shallow attraction of the senses.
Instead, he indulged her childish obsession by telling her about other women. He had neither strength to say no, nor diplomacy to act with kindness and regard for another’s feeling. In telling Michal about the women he was attracted to, I can’t help but wonder if Safyan added that these women felt the same way about him.
Maybe he is not to blame. A mind so small that it can be controlled by another is not entirely at fault that his childish whimsicalities would express themselves in words that brought his immature wife pain.
His wife had made no secret she found him unattractive. “Aversion” is the word she used. She enjoyed making him jealous, she told people at OneTaste on a written intake form for a class he paid for. If she wasn’t so immature, she might have realized his desire to show he was attracted to other women was his way of showing he could be attractive to women, even if not to her.
Because he made a lot of money at Planet, Neria wanted to keep her rich, repulsive husband in tow. She wanted him to be attracted only to her while she saw his money, not him, as unusually attractive .
The Worm Is Turning
These two foolish, tiny people, who blamed OneTaste for their mistakes, formed the serious basis for Ellen Huet’s Bloomberg damning story that led to such disastrous consequences for OneTaste and two of its leaders.
None of this marital discord, their petty jelousy, their mutual abuse, her greed, his infantile needs, ever made it into Huet’s incompetent and unnuanced story.
Huet took Neria’s word about how OneTaste made her feel compelled to get married in a daze, as it swallowed all of her life – except her jealousy and love of money.
How OneTaste is to blame for two nearly 30-year-old adults causing themselves to have a bad marriage is hard to comprehend. To let them blame it anonymously, on others is not my idea of justice.
It will be easier to understand when we explore Huet’s secret relationship with Safyan in our next post.
Safyan has not returned calls from Frank Report seeking comment. Huet agreed to have FR send her questions but declined to answer them. Both are welcome to comment at any time. I can be reached at 305-783-7083 or frankparlato@gmail.com
Frank Parlato is an investigative journalist, media strategist, publisher, and legal consultant.
Please leave a comment: Your opinion is important to us!
If the case against OneTaste is so weak, why are the spending so much money on this PR campaign?
“80 years after Onetaste defeated Skynet…”
Onetaste: the San Francisco based company that taught Orgasmic Meditations classes about how to stroke a clit for fifteen minutes at a time.
And where Mike Safyan courted a mentally ill woman by offering elaborate gifts to brainwash her into marrying him.
This is so so so ridiculous. Everyone, and anyone, who has ever ever separated from a past lover, has these same thoughts, that they were “tricked into it.” Thoughts like “Why did I ever think that this was a good idea to get married to them.” The federal government is meddling in somebody’s romantic break up. And accusing innocent people based on other peoples pettiness. This should be in divorce court, not an indictment.
These two geniuses couldn’t tell from the results of their “admissions” that it was an ineffective strategy for their relationship?
Might they have gone to a one taste instructor to consult on how admissions was destroying, not helping their relationship?
Definition of insanity….Doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different outcome.
Mike needs to find a new cult.
Total hit job by Mike Safayan.
“Brainwashing” is a legal tactic, that is accepted void of criteria or measurement, that is used as a weapon to gain an advantage in court proceedings.
Prosecutors need to be held accountable for their abuse of power.
Don’t worry, it’s not her. I’m sure lots of folks find you repulsive.
Thanks for trying to cheer Mike up