Frank Parlato
Prosecution Faces Backlash Over Allegations FBI Agent McGinnis Obstructed Justice
The US Attorney for the Eastern District of NY has a weak case against Nicole Daedone and Rachel Cherwitz – better known as the OneTaste case.
Perhaps the blame lies with the lead case agent, FBI Special Agent Elliot McGinnis.
Or that the forced labor conspiracy charge had no merit.
FBI Special Agent McGinnis has misled the prosecution team through several dishonest and illegal actions, including:
– Hiding evidence,
– Obstructing justice,
– Instructing witnesses to conceal evidence,
– Collaborating with witnesses to hide evidence,
– Intimidating witnesses,
– Threatening witnesses,
– Accepting stolen documents,
– Concealing the existence of stolen documents from both the defense and likely the prosecution,
– Demonstrating a reckless disregard for Justice Department rules regarding suspected privileged documents, particularly the requirement for immediate submission to a filter or taint team,
– Advising witnesses—and in one case, an attorney representing a witness—to deliberately breach a contract, thereby exposing the witness to a civil lawsuit, which ultimately occurred,
– Committing perjury before the court regarding a seizure.
Case Built on Misunderstandings of Consensual Adult Activities
After a five-year FBI investigation, it led to a single, standalone, non-substantive conspiracy charge with no actual offense brought by accusers whose main complaint has turned into regretting their adult actions.
They attended a sexual wellness education program and consented to sexual activity. Later, they claimed to be victims because they had engaged in sex.
People paid for courses they believed would help them overcome their fears and lifelong inhibitions. The curriculum at OneTaste emphasizes that students must take responsibility for their adult decisions. It teaches that consent—personal and individual, free from fear, societal taboos, or past experiences—is the foundation of healthy relationships. It encourages living in the present while maintaining optimism and confidence in the future.
Current and former students have shared their experiences, expressing that they gained perspective through the courses. They believe that embracing the inherent sexual energy often condemned by outsiders as inappropriate has helped them achieve freedom from guilt, improved their mental and physical health, and empowered them to take control of their lives—whether they chose to continue with OneTaste or left with the support and best wishes of the community.
The defendants have been wrongfully charged with conspiracy to commit forced labor, although there was no charge of actual forced labor.
Against the vast number of satisfied students and friends of OneTaste stood only a few individuals who did not grasp the goals of self-determination and freedom that OneTaste promoted.
These are the government’s “victims.” I investigated their stories and found them dishonest.
Agent McGinnis should have conducted an objective investigation, as I have done. The accusers are dishonest.
Relying on a few disgruntled former OneTaste customers and employees out of thousands sets a dangerous precedent. Any company, religion, or school could fall victim. It is troubling that less than one percent of OneTaste dissatisfied customers could control a prosecution.
Evidence Was Written 7 Years After the Fact
Through my research, I discovered the government intends to use as evidence some of the alleged journal writings of Ayries Blanck, AKA Ares Milligan, to demonstrate the guilt of Cherwitz and Daedone.
The government plans to use a false journal written in 2022 and tell the jury that Ayries wrote it in 2015. Evidence indicates FBI Special Agent Elliot McGinnis knows the journals are fake. Evidence shows Agent McGinnis conspired with Ayries Blanck to delete her email account, which would contain information about when she wrote the journal.
Agent McGinnis advised her sister, Autymn Blanck, to hide the “journals” from a subpoena, suggesting that Agent McGinnis knows the journals are fake.
Ayries Blanck wrote a counterfeit “journal” that the government wants to present as best evidence. This will be a significant embarrassment for the government when this journal is revealed to have been written by five women collaborating for a purplish prose fake journal to read in a documentary on OneTaste which was published by Netflix. If Ayries Blanck testifies, she will have to take the 5th for every question about her journal.
Privileged Docs Count if You Admit You Have Them
On January 26, 2021, FBI Special Agent McGinnis visited Mitch Aidelbaum’s home. Aidelbaum confessed to hacking OneTaste’s servers, which is a federal crime. This information is part of the public record. Agent McGinnis took possession of stolen documents—including one marked “Attorney-Client Privileged.”
Did he turn these documents over to a taint team for review? He did not. He took the document from Aidelbaum on a thumb drive and told no one.
The court should conduct an evidentiary hearing to investigate what happened to that document marked attorney-client privileged. The question is not whether it is a privileged document, but whether FBI Special Agent McGinnis, should have hidden it from his superiors or turned it over to a taint team. He did not turn it over.
Agent McGinnis hid potentially attorney-client privileged documents. Why?
Because the document was marked attorney-client privileged, and, by Justice Department rules, he had to turn it over to a taint team, also known as a filter team, to determine if it was privileged. He could not read the documents or use them in any way to help his investigation until the taint team determined if they were privileged. So he hid them.
If that’s the kind of agent the FBI wants, okay, so be it. But don’t be surprised if he blows a five year investigation.
If I had access to the protected documents, I might build a case that he used this attorney-client marked document as a roadmap for the investigation, while concealing it from the prosecution – who would have required to surrender it unread to the filter team. He could have taken it on a thumb drive but he had to turn it over without reading the document.
One does not need access to information in any protective order to deduce that Agent McGinnis illegally hid the document he took from Mitch Aidelbaum, the man who stole it, for no other reason than to use it improperly in his investigation.
Witness Intimidation
One also does not need access to protected documents to speak to Alisha Price, who tells a harrowing tale. I bet you won’t find her on the government witness list, which I don’t have access to. However, FBI Special Agent McGinnis visited her and told her she is an important victim witness. When she disagreed, he intimidated her. He terrorized her for a year, causing her to lose her job, as he tried to coerce her into victimization. He tried to craft a false narrative with other witnesses, like Jenny Slusher.
Evidence Challenges Neria’s Claims of Forced Marriage to Aerospace Executive
Then there is the Michal Neria. She claims she felt forced to marry Mike Safyan. Though one look at him makes it believable that a woman would have to be forced to marry him.
But it must be put in context. Neria loved money, and Mike Safyan was vice president of Planet Labs in San Francisco, an aerospace engineer, meaning he made good money. I have evidence that I did not need to get from a protected material that shows she was not forced to marry.
Just the opposite, the two were eager to marry, and OneTaste tried to slow them down.
Neria’s story is absurd and laughable, and we would laugh at her except two women’s freedom is at stake.
Prosecution Hopes to Recast Veteran BDSM Enthusiast as ‘Victim’ of OneTaste
According to the government’s Motion in Limine, it appears the strategy is to suppress the cross-examination of witnesses and introduce documents without bringing in the witnesses themselves, allowing them to avoid perjury.
The government also wants to keep the past sexual history of witnesses secret from the jury. One of these witnesses – and I know he is a witness because he publicly said so – is Bob Gower.
The government wants to hide his sexual history so they can tell the jury that he got into BDSM (I think the government referred to him walking another man on a leash). Gower later regretted it and I expect if he testifies he will cry at the appropriate moment. He felt coerced to practice BDSM (which is legal) because of OneTaste.
What the government does not want the jury to know about Gower’s past sex life was he was a BDSM practitioner before he came to OneTaste. This dude advertised for couples he could tie up with rope. The government wants to present this old BDSM dude – with an admitted love for sadism – as a witness shocked, shocked that he walked some dude on a leash.
Tying up women and couples with ropes and doing foul deeds to them before OneTaste is relevant to his testimony about how shocked he was to walk a man on a leash and get aroused by it. Look for a weeping Gower on the witness stand. But what would the jury think if he cried and said he didn’t want to do it, if they knew he had some similar or more extreme things 100s of times before?
The government wants to prevent the jury from hearing old BDSM Bob loves to tie people up and see them squirm for his sexual delight – so the jury can feel repulsed not by the old Sadist but by OneTaste for taking Virgin Bob and making him pervy.
Big bad Bob – who goes by the moniker Flame Tender – can only be a victim if the government lies by omission, by not letting the jury know about how he tends to tend his flickering flame.
The prosecutor outrageously wants the judge to forbid the defense from putting his OneTaste experience in context by forbidding the defense from bringing up his sexual history.
No, Tender Flame was not surprised he practiced BDSM at OneTaste. He was not sad about it at the time. He had done it for years, but at OneTaste maybe he found something else about himself – something during the exploration he did not like.
Maybe he found he did not like being a sadist for sexual fun. Maybe he became more thoughtful. After he left the good company of kind and gentle people at OneTaste, he reverted to his old ways – a gross being delighting in the primitive and savage, so he resented OneTaste not for what he did there, but for what he had become there – a more sensitive human being.
For a sadist, his period of sensitivity caused him shame.
For him to fool the jury he is a victim, the prosecutors must present him as some kind of virgin or a straight-laced man who never would have done such things as vile BDSM. If the jury believes Bob Gower only practiced BDSM while associated with OneTaste, they will get a phony view of Gower and OneTaste.
As phony as Ayries’ journal.
Prosecution Seeks to Suppress Evidence of Witness’s Past in Effort to Shape Jury Perception
I’ll give you another example of why the government does not want the sexual history known to the jury: A prostitute came to OneTaste, and while there she chose to leave her profession. The government wants the jury not to know what she did before. They want to prevent the defense from bringing up her sexual history other than what she did at OneTaste. The government then can frame her as a woman shocked by the notion of having sex with different men.
I have seen this woman on a video say she wants to have sex with everyone.
But the government wants to hide from the jury that she was a prostitute before and had sex with innumerable men. She was a prostitute before and after her OneTaste experience. But the government wants the jury not to know. Why? So that the jury contextualizes her OneTaste experience in accordance with their own – perhaps more sexually conservative experiences.
They do not want the jury to measure her experience with the yardstick of a prostitute, but the yardstick of the most conservative, prudish jury the prosecution can line up. Why do you think this case is being tried in Brooklyn instead of San Francisco, where almost everything that allegedly happened occurred?
By the way, the only reason she wasn’t a prostitute when she took OneTaste classes is that OneTaste teaches selling sex as a cheapening of oneself.
When she left OneTaste, she cheapened herself again which is something that the jury might need to know in judging the whole truth.
If her exploration into sex – even sex without charging a man money to access her body – now seems unpleasant, perhaps because she is annoyed that she did not charge money for her tail, and was taught instead to use sex not as a mercenary deed, but perhaps to have a little love for the partner you share it with.
But that’s the kind of case the government has against the defendants, prostitutes and BDSM masters, whining they were shocked, shocked that sex was going on at a sexual wellness company.
And a dishonest woman with a dishonest journal and a gold-digging money grubber who later claimed she was forced to marry the rich man.
That’s the case against OneTaste. That’s my position. That’s what I’ve published. I didn’t need a breach of a protective order to reach these conclusions. They are self-evident to anyone who takes the time to investigate this misguided prosecution.
Frank Parlato is an investigative journalist, media strategist, publisher, and legal consultant.
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Preying the prosecution crash and burn. will it be live streamed?!
Ummmmm Nicole has widely & openly talked about being a high end call girl. They don’t mind prostitutes at all. They had many there as students. They loved their money. Try again.
They need McGinnis. Unless FP makes him too much of a casualty. Then they’ll ditch him and quickly find a replacement.