Frank Parlato
Nancy Salzman’s Rehabilitation Tour
Wehrmacht Sturm, a thoughtful commenter, had this to say in response to my article on Nancy Salzman
Nancy Salzman Interview on New Podcast Focuses on NLP, Skips Raniere
“Hey Frank, Congratulations on calling out Nancy Salzman. Salzman seems to have conveniently ‘forgotten’ the damages she caused, turning ESP / Nxivm into an organization that relied on fear, slander and legal reprisals to root out and punish any dissent. It also conveniently lied about the qualifications of Raniere to self promote it’s legacy, gain falsely earned trust and bilk people of their time and money. And, this is only scratching the surface. Salzman betrayed people’s trust on a wholesale level. Her and Raniere both provided legitimacy to each other. She was just as guilty as Raniere. And, 515K in a shoebox in her attic is no joke.
“She is charismatic and seductive, plays the victim role well to provoke sympathy. I am hopeful you will keep calling her distortions of the truth out.”
Great comment, Mr. Sturm, and now let me wax poetic on Nancy Salzman in response.
Salzman, as readers know, was the co-founder and former president of NXIVM. Though she was sentenced to 42 months, she served only 18 at Hazelton and six months at a halfway house in Albany for racketeering conspiracy. She is now on probation and it seems a media rehabilitation tour.
In November 2025, she gave a two-part interview to Kate Casey’s Reality Life podcast. In January 2026, she appeared on Mind Games, a new iHeartPodcasts series about Neuro-Linguistic Programming.
With Kate Casey on the Reality Life podcast, she said: “I’ve been silent since leaving prison. This is the first time I’m choosing to tell the truth about what actually happened.”
In that interview, Salzman drew a bright line between “my company”—Executive Success Programs—and “his sorority,” DOS.
His being Keith Alan Raniere, AKA Vanguard.
The Prefect (that’s Salzman) said, “My company educated 18,000 people. We didn’t have problems in my company. We didn’t have branding or any of the things you saw on television. That was not my company. The media exaggerated this women’s organization.”
She also said she was “grossly underpaid” and didn’t get her “fair share” of ESP.
The FBI found over half a million dollars in cash in her home in assorted shoe boxes and other convenient hiding spots when they raided it in 2018.
One NXIVM insider told Frank Report she believed Salzman had more than $4 million hidden there before the raid and evacuated most of the loot.
She told my assistant it was only $2 million, but that was back in 2007.
The Interview Setting
On the NLP podcast, Mind Games, of which Nancy was known to play a few, host Alice Hines describes Nancy’s home, a suburban townhouse outside Albany, New York – a comfy couch, an upstairs office, with books on Buddhism and neuroscience, and lunch and a hairless cat.
Just Nancy, the warm hostess who wants to set the record straight about “media craziness.”
This Is Not an Interview About NXIVM
When asked if she’s still proud of her NXIVM programs, Salzman says: “Yes, I’m absolutely proud of it. I’m not proud of how everything ended up.”
What the Podcast Doesn’t Mention: The Court Record
Salzman pled guilty to racketeering conspiracy in March 2019, telling Judge Nicholas Garaufis: “I am pleading guilty because I am, in fact, guilty.”
FBI agents found over $515,000 in cash stashed in her home. They also seized $60,000 in Russian rubles.
She was sentenced to 42 months, fined $150,000, and ordered to forfeit properties—including Raniere’s “sex lair” at 8 Hale Drive, the NXIVM headquarters, the cash, a Steinway grand piano, and First Principles Incorporated, the Delaware corporation that owned the rights to teach NXIVM’s curriculum.
At sentencing, Judge Garaufis rejected her claim that she had no choice but to stay in NXIVM:
“You were Mr. Raniere’s second-in-command and shared his power. You enabled and facilitated Mr. Raniere’s heinous crimes. In your 20 years at NXIVM, the door was always open but you never left.”
The Credential Fraud
Salzman’s sentencing memorandum described her as “an intelligent, talented woman who, until meeting Raniere, had led a scrupulously law-abiding and productive life.”
The record tells a different story. Salzman seems to have resume padded (though not nearly as bizarrely as Raniere) when she said she earned a Bachelor’s degree, a Master’s degree, was a “Psychiatric Nurse,” an “Oncologist Nurse,” and a “Licensed Psychologist”—none of which were actually true. She had worked as a nurse for one year in general practice. She never held any license to practice psychotherapy.
Before meeting Raniere, she allegedly billed Medicaid for psychological services she wasn’t qualified to provide, submitting her billings through another person who was an eligible Medicaid provider and kicking back a portion of the payments.
Susan Dones, a former NXIVM member who spent nine years in the organization, wrote in her victim impact letter to Judge Garaufis:
“Nancy Salzman told people she was a psychiatric nurse. When I asked her where she got her training, Ms. Salzman attempted to tell me that her training in NLP qualified her to be a psychiatric nurse. This was a LIE she told all the time.”
What Nancy Claimed Not to See
Nancy’s sentencing memorandum described Raniere as “an egotistical, self-important, sex fiend” whom she never recognized as such until after her arrest. Her attorney wrote that Raniere’s “undeniable powers of control over the human will” had “neutralized” her judgment.
That would be a good argument against ever availing oneself of her therapy and life coaching services if it were true.
Yet did she really not know he was a bit of a perv.
Barbara Bouchey described a Halloween party at Nancy’s house where Raniere appeared in a flasher costume—a bathrobe with an artificial penis—hitting on a teenage girl while Nancy looked on. A pharmacist who attended the party with his wife and daughter later left NXIVM, telling Bouchey he had realized while looking around the room: “Oh, my God, he is having sex probably with most of the women in this room.”
That included Nancy, by the way.
The pharmacist and his wife, who barely knew Raniere, could see troubling things. Nancy, who worked alongside him for twenty years and shared his bed, claimed she could not.
The Victims Speak
Eight victims addressed Judge Garaufis at Salzman’s sentencing. Five spoke by audio; three in person. Among them was Camila—the woman Raniere was convicted of sexually exploiting when she was 15.
Camila lived in a house Nancy owned. She was Nancy’s maid. Salzman and Raniere were, in Camila’s words, like her parents.
Camila blamed Nancy for separating her from her family as a child.
Judge Garaufis was offended by Salzman’s role in Camila’s guardianship. He lectured Nancy on exploiting her.
“She Normalized the Assault”
Ivy Nevares, who spent nearly 17 years in NXIVM and reported directly to Salzman, submitted a victim impact statement describing Salzman:
“Just as the sex trafficking crimes within DOS could not have existed without Allison Mack, the entire range of crimes within NXIVM would have never existed without Salzman.”
Nevares described a 400-500-calorie-per-day diet, daily weigh-ins at Nancy’s house—in her underwear—and being available to work 24/7. When she resisted, Nancy’s response was always the same: Nevares owed the organization because of her “ethical breach” with Raniere.
Her “ethical breach”? Not weighing 95 pounds.
Nevares also disclosed that Raniere sexually assaulted her when their relationship began in 2002. The following morning, she told Salzman what had happened. Salzman “normalized the assault,” telling Nevares the traumatized state she was in was due to Raniere’s “energy.” She insisted Nevares was lucky he had singled her out for his sexual assault.
Sexual Harassment and Cash Smuggling
Susan Dones described an incident. She was in Nancy’s car going to Starbucks when Salzman reached over and put her hand on the inside of Dones’ thigh.
“She started to rub my thigh and she said, ‘You know, Susan, when we start to sleep together you cannot tell anyone about it because I’m the Prefect.'”
Dones froze. Nancy knew she was in a committed long-term relationship. T Eventually, Nancy demanded Dones write her a “love letter”—which later appeared in litigation, with NXIVM’s attorneys attempting to make Dones look like a “jilted lover.”
Dones told Frank Report: “She knew and did nothing to stop Raniere. She fucking helped him.”
Dones also described Nancy disclosing cash smuggling. Mexico was NXIVM’s “cash cow,” and members paid for courses in cash. Nancy told Dones they brought the cash across the border and kept it “in the safe in her basement” to avoid paying taxes.
Nancy Built
Salzman incorporated NXIVM in Delaware and served as its president. She trained the trainers. She developed the curriculum—including the teachings that the age of consent should be as low as 12 if the child is sexually mature, that “many women enjoy being raped,” and that rape is part of the natural order for men.
After Raniere allegedly raped Camila when she was trying to leave, Nancy added a new segment to the Jness curriculum teaching that when men sense their partner is trying to leave, they rape them as “a natural way of marking their territory.”
Camila allegedly attempted suicide, slashing her wrists in the bathtub. Raniere found her bleeding and in shock. He scolded her, explaining that had she been successful, it would have led to serious reputational consequences for him. He forbade her from going to a hospital. Instead, he sent photographs of the wounds to Salzman, the nurse.
Salzman said nothing. Camila received no medical or psychiatric care.
Credible
Co-host Zoë Lescaze remarks during the Mind Games episode: “I actually find Nancy credible here.”
Host Alice Hines allowed Salzman to make her a hypnobirthing tape, which she listened to regularly—though she did transcribe it first to check for “subliminal messages.”
Even journalists approaching Salzman with “professional skepticism” find themselves drawn into her orbit, accepting her help, finding her credible. This is precisely the skill that built NXIVM: the ability to seem warm, helpful, wise—even to people who know her history.
Support
Nancy’s sentencing memorandum proudly noted that 23 “members of the NXIVM community” had written letters singing her praises as “a communicator, a facilitator of positive change in troubled lives, and an extraordinarily compassionate and effective life coach.”
Salzman filed her sentencing memorandum under seal without following court procedures. When Judge Garaufis ordered it made public, her attorneys redacted all 23 letters. Her attorney blamed The Frank Report, writing that the publication “weaponizes statements made in support of the NXIVM defendants, and exists for virtually no purpose other than to damage the reputation and fortunes of remaining ‘loyalists.'”
The Real Mind Game
The Mind Games podcast promises to explore “the hidden power and dangers of Neuro-Linguistic Programming.” By leading with Salzman, the podcast inadvertently demonstrates exactly what it claims to investigate: how persuasion techniques can reshape reality.
She is proud of her programs. Her company “fell apart” due to “media craziness.” She never says Raniere’s name.
Meanwhile, Judge Garaufis’s words remain: “You enabled and facilitated Mr. Raniere’s heinous crimes. In your 20 years at NXIVM, the door was always open but you never left.”
That’s the real mind game: the gap between the Nancy Salzman serving lunch to podcast hosts and the Nancy Salzman who stood before a federal judge, crying, as she was sentenced to 42 months in prison.
She was originally assigned to FPC Alderson, nicknamed “Camp Cupcake”—a minimum-security facility where Martha Stewart served her sentence. But after seeking a delay to report—claiming she needed to take her 94-year-old mother to a medical appointment that six adult grandchildren and a sister living nearby apparently could not handle—she was reassigned to FCI Hazelton, nicknamed “Misery Mountain,” a high-security facility.
Her attorney’s letter criticizing Alderson’s COVID response may have cost her the cushy assignment.
She was released in March 2024. She is currently on probation with special conditions: she must undergo a mental health evaluation, cannot contact anyone affiliated with NXIVM or DOS, and must disclose any self-employment to the probation department.
Now she sits on her couch in Clifton Park, surrounded by books on Buddhism, telling sympathetic podcast hosts that her company “fell apart” due to “media craziness.” She draws a line between “my company” and “his sorority.” She claims the media “exaggerated” DOS. She says she was “grossly underpaid.”
The record doesn’t fall apart. It doesn’t vanish due to media craziness. And Susan Dones is still waiting for an apology.
Frank Parlato is an investigative journalist, media strategist, publisher, and legal consultant.
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