4 ms·

Senior member of NXIVM told FBI about blackmail and branding, got no response

94 points by AndrewBissell 6y ago

daodedickinson 6y ago
Dismantling blackmail rings is the most important issue in politics and the same co-opted media that had Katie Couric and George Stephanopolous attend Jeffery Epstein's getting-out-of-"prison"-after-pimping-a-minor-at-his-New-Mexico-ranch-filled-with-blackmail-cameras party are not going to do it for us. Facebook, Google, Palantir, intelligence agencies - they are giant machines for harvesting blackmail material and that is their secretly most totalitarian, power-centralizing and abusive function.
- meowface 6y ago
  Maybe, or maybe the FBI were just incompetent in this particular case and at that time didn't consider it prosecutable. >Edmondson told the Times Union the FBI agent found the brandings disturbing, but said he did not see anything illegal about it — and said it “seemed like it was consensual.” One could argue that Scientology similarly blackmails its members and compels them to make humiliating acts of submission and servitude, but one could also argue that it's consensual and not necessarily illegal. That was probably something like the FBI agent's thought process.
  - nerdponx 6y ago
    That, or word came down from the top to leave the case alone. https://www.vox.com/identities/2019/8/14/20803950/jeffrey-epstein-conspiracy-theories-clinton-trump-acosta https://www.vox.com/identities/2019/8/14/20803950/jeffrey-ep... Acosta said he had signed the non-prosecution agreement because he had been told to “back off” of Epstein: “I was told Epstein ‘belonged to intelligence’ and to leave it alone,” he said, according to the White House official.
    - daodedickinson 6y ago
      That "belonged to intelligence" line haunts me as well, but I haven't seen it applied to NXIVM.
  - Spooky23 6y ago
    NXIVM had an “executive development” and self fulfillment training side that attracted a lot of people. It was more than a weird sex cult. There were rumors about potential connections that started when the local US Attorneys never took any action. Prosecution was run out of NYC. No idea if that is true, but the local paper reported on shady stuff and nothing happened. The Albany County DA was essentially implicated in helping the cult in various ways that has been documented in the press, so who knows. Albany is a weird, tightly connected place.
    - jacquesm 6y ago
      So does Scientology.
colatkinson 6y ago
This whole case in general is absolutely crazy. Literally decades of people telling various authorities about Raniere, and nothing. Even the Dalai Lama got duped into supporting Nxivm! If anyone is interested in this, HBO has a docuseries called "The Vow" out. It focuses on Edmonson's story, as well as on some other people she worked with to get the info out. The whole thing is absolutely nuts -- the rabbit hole just keeps going deeper.
- deng 6y ago
  > Even the Dalai Lama got duped into supporting Nxivm! Well, maybe the $1M he got for it also played a role.
JackFr 6y ago
Unreadable on mobile. I was able to find three paragraphs of text among the ads, but can’t seem to find the rest.
aokiji 6y ago
It is safe to assume the FBI helped turn a blind eye or actually helped this human trafficking and sexual slavery operation. All to enable an elaborate blackmail operation for high-profile decision makers. The FBI must be prosecuted. They send 15 officers to a Nascar driver's place because he decided to make a publicity stunt and say that a regular garage door noose was a hanging rope placed to scare him because of his skin color. Enough is enough. This could be my or anyone else's children. Disband the FBI. Prosecute them. Treason.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- arentyouspecial 6y ago
  You aren’t as well informed as you think. Bubba Wallace didn’t notify the authorities of the noose, his crew members did. Also it wasn’t his place, it was in the garage at the track. He wasn’t aware of the situation until after his team/nascar notified him of what was going on. He wasn’t the one who contacted the FBI, nascar did. Get your facts right. Also what is a regular garage noose?
  - aokiji 6y ago
    I am open to additional data points to expand my world view. But it appears to have been there for a while, as per the FBI itself (not saying I place faith in them): https://apnews.com/article/8eb942adcbcb45820e164dd03be4e7d0 https://apnews.com/article/8eb942adcbcb45820e164dd03be4e7d0 Bizarre development of events.
FooBarBizBazz 6y ago
They had an initiation ritual where they branded people next to the genitals. This is "how to run a cult" 101. We've had instruction manuals since the bronze age. The other funny thing about living in a cult, is you never realize you're living in a cult.
googthrowaway42 6y ago
The FBI is probably the most corrupt institution in America.
jerkstate 6y ago
Seems like the FBI gets told about lots of things and does nothing
pessimizer 6y ago
It's a weird case. If Raniere hadn't turned out to be a serial abuser/rapist of underage girls even outside of his cult, I doubt that they would have ever been arrested, and if they had been, they would have gotten off. He was a creep that ran a process/self-improvement cult and started a harem inside it, but that's not really a crime. If it hadn't been part of a larger (consistent) pattern, what is law enforcement really supposed to do about women branding each other and sending each other material expressly labeled as blackmail? If I sign a contract with you that says that in order for me to (for example) lease a property to you, I require nude pictures, an embarrassing interview, and a physical brand on your body (weird), and that if you skip out on the rent I'm granted the right to release that material - is that a crime? Maybe - you can't sell yourself into slavery, but the definition of slavery is loose. NXIVM was no worse than Scientology or Mormonism, which is to say it's horrible but protected, and its insularity hid stuff that was actually criminal but impossible to prosecute because everyone in the group would form a protective wall around the organization even if you made a bit of headway. It's a lot easier and more rewarding to set some 80 I.Q. kid up as a terrorist. The public would have absolutely no interest in this if there wasn't sex involved (as Oxenberg and Edmondson remarked at least a couple of times on the TV series.) We don't prosecute financial institutions for financial crimes (or even resource the agencies responsible to even theoretically prosecute them.) There's no chance we're going to be going after tiny cults. Maybe the CIA would have noticed them as they got a better foothold in Mexican elite circles and figured out a way to support them. NXIVM is a cautionary tale for cults. The Guardian's Office/OSA in Scientology is not just decoration, it's crucial to build an internal intelligence service to keep an enterprise like that together. Raniere was just trying to improv the response to defectors and potential defectors rather than building a bureaucracy. Maybe get that done before the harem.
- chromatin 6y ago
  > NXIVM was no worse than Scientology or Mormonism, You mean other than the branding, right?
  - pessimizer 6y ago
    On the scale of things, branding is lower than being banned from communicating with your children for decades and only finding out they're dead weeks later. Frats brand people. I was in a band when I was a barely out of my teens and we all got the same tattoo.
Kiro 6y ago
I think "The Vow" was really interesting where the first episode made you think "wow, they've really developed a revolutionary technique for self-help" but by the last episode you were completely disgusted. It made me realize why people actually get sucked into these things.

94 points by AndrewBissell 6y ago

Dismantling blackmail rings is the most important issue in politics and the same co-opted media that had Katie Couric and George Stephanopolous attend Jeffery Epstein's getting-out-of-"prison"-after-pimping-a-minor-at-his-New-Mexico-ranch-filled-with-blackmail-cameras party are not going to do it for us. Facebook, Google, Palantir, intelligence agencies - they are giant machines for harvesting blackmail material and that is their secretly most totalitarian, power-centralizing and abusive function.

meowface 6y ago
Maybe, or maybe the FBI were just incompetent in this particular case and at that time didn't consider it prosecutable. >Edmondson told the Times Union the FBI agent found the brandings disturbing, but said he did not see anything illegal about it — and said it “seemed like it was consensual.” One could argue that Scientology similarly blackmails its members and compels them to make humiliating acts of submission and servitude, but one could also argue that it's consensual and not necessarily illegal. That was probably something like the FBI agent's thought process.
- nerdponx 6y ago
  That, or word came down from the top to leave the case alone. https://www.vox.com/identities/2019/8/14/20803950/jeffrey-epstein-conspiracy-theories-clinton-trump-acosta https://www.vox.com/identities/2019/8/14/20803950/jeffrey-ep... Acosta said he had signed the non-prosecution agreement because he had been told to “back off” of Epstein: “I was told Epstein ‘belonged to intelligence’ and to leave it alone,” he said, according to the White House official.
  - daodedickinson 6y ago
    That "belonged to intelligence" line haunts me as well, but I haven't seen it applied to NXIVM.
- Spooky23 6y ago
  NXIVM had an “executive development” and self fulfillment training side that attracted a lot of people. It was more than a weird sex cult. There were rumors about potential connections that started when the local US Attorneys never took any action. Prosecution was run out of NYC. No idea if that is true, but the local paper reported on shady stuff and nothing happened. The Albany County DA was essentially implicated in helping the cult in various ways that has been documented in the press, so who knows. Albany is a weird, tightly connected place.
  - jacquesm 6y ago
    So does Scientology.

colatkinson 6y ago

This whole case in general is absolutely crazy. Literally decades of people telling various authorities about Raniere, and nothing. Even the Dalai Lama got duped into supporting Nxivm! If anyone is interested in this, HBO has a docuseries called "The Vow" out. It focuses on Edmonson's story, as well as on some other people she worked with to get the info out. The whole thing is absolutely nuts -- the rabbit hole just keeps going deeper.

deng 6y ago
> Even the Dalai Lama got duped into supporting Nxivm! Well, maybe the $1M he got for it also played a role.

JackFr 6y ago

Unreadable on mobile. I was able to find three paragraphs of text among the ads, but can’t seem to find the rest.

aokiji 6y ago

It is safe to assume the FBI helped turn a blind eye or actually helped this human trafficking and sexual slavery operation. All to enable an elaborate blackmail operation for high-profile decision makers. The FBI must be prosecuted. They send 15 officers to a Nascar driver's place because he decided to make a publicity stunt and say that a regular garage door noose was a hanging rope placed to scare him because of his skin color. Enough is enough. This could be my or anyone else's children. Disband the FBI. Prosecute them. Treason.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
arentyouspecial 6y ago
You aren’t as well informed as you think. Bubba Wallace didn’t notify the authorities of the noose, his crew members did. Also it wasn’t his place, it was in the garage at the track. He wasn’t aware of the situation until after his team/nascar notified him of what was going on. He wasn’t the one who contacted the FBI, nascar did. Get your facts right. Also what is a regular garage noose?
- aokiji 6y ago
  I am open to additional data points to expand my world view. But it appears to have been there for a while, as per the FBI itself (not saying I place faith in them): https://apnews.com/article/8eb942adcbcb45820e164dd03be4e7d0 https://apnews.com/article/8eb942adcbcb45820e164dd03be4e7d0 Bizarre development of events.

FooBarBizBazz 6y ago

They had an initiation ritual where they branded people next to the genitals. This is "how to run a cult" 101. We've had instruction manuals since the bronze age. The other funny thing about living in a cult, is you never realize you're living in a cult.

googthrowaway42 6y ago

The FBI is probably the most corrupt institution in America.

jerkstate 6y ago

Seems like the FBI gets told about lots of things and does nothing

pessimizer 6y ago

It's a weird case. If Raniere hadn't turned out to be a serial abuser/rapist of underage girls even outside of his cult, I doubt that they would have ever been arrested, and if they had been, they would have gotten off. He was a creep that ran a process/self-improvement cult and started a harem inside it, but that's not really a crime. If it hadn't been part of a larger (consistent) pattern, what is law enforcement really supposed to do about women branding each other and sending each other material expressly labeled as blackmail? If I sign a contract with you that says that in order for me to (for example) lease a property to you, I require nude pictures, an embarrassing interview, and a physical brand on your body (weird), and that if you skip out on the rent I'm granted the right to release that material - is that a crime? Maybe - you can't sell yourself into slavery, but the definition of slavery is loose. NXIVM was no worse than Scientology or Mormonism, which is to say it's horrible but protected, and its insularity hid stuff that was actually criminal but impossible to prosecute because everyone in the group would form a protective wall around the organization even if you made a bit of headway. It's a lot easier and more rewarding to set some 80 I.Q. kid up as a terrorist. The public would have absolutely no interest in this if there wasn't sex involved (as Oxenberg and Edmondson remarked at least a couple of times on the TV series.) We don't prosecute financial institutions for financial crimes (or even resource the agencies responsible to even theoretically prosecute them.) There's no chance we're going to be going after tiny cults. Maybe the CIA would have noticed them as they got a better foothold in Mexican elite circles and figured out a way to support them. NXIVM is a cautionary tale for cults. The Guardian's Office/OSA in Scientology is not just decoration, it's crucial to build an internal intelligence service to keep an enterprise like that together. Raniere was just trying to improv the response to defectors and potential defectors rather than building a bureaucracy. Maybe get that done before the harem.

chromatin 6y ago
> NXIVM was no worse than Scientology or Mormonism, You mean other than the branding, right?
- pessimizer 6y ago
  On the scale of things, branding is lower than being banned from communicating with your children for decades and only finding out they're dead weeks later. Frats brand people. I was in a band when I was a barely out of my teens and we all got the same tattoo.

Kiro 6y ago

I think "The Vow" was really interesting where the first episode made you think "wow, they've really developed a revolutionary technique for self-help" but by the last episode you were completely disgusted. It made me realize why people actually get sucked into these things.