‘Extreme’ self-help group leader nabbed in Mexico

‘Vanguard’ faces U.S. sex trafficking charges after arrest

Authorities caught up with the alleged fugitive self-help guru behind the walls of a luxury gated community near Puerto Vallarta, Mexico.

The villas inside, according to court documents filed this week, had a price tag of up to $10,000 a week, not a place to expect a man who claimed for years he was penniless and didn’t even have a driver’s license.

But Keith Raniere — known to his followers across the world as “Vanguard” — was living inside one of the properties with several women, according to federal prosecutors. Mexican authorities took him into custody and delivered him to Texas on Monday on charges of sex trafficking and forced labor.

OnTuesday, he appeared in federal court in Fort Worth, Texas. Sporting a blue T-shirt, close-cropped gray beard, dark-rimmed glasses and chains, Raniere waived his right to an identification hearing.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Jeffrey Cureton granted Raniere's request to have his preliminary and detention hearings take place in the court prosecuting him in the Eastern District of New York.

Since 2003, Raniere has been the head of NXIVM, rendered by authorities as Nxivm. The self-help organization promises to introduce “a new ethical understanding” in adherents with a mix of New Age jargon and Ayn Randian self-determination. But according to federal authorities, Raniere used his position of power to lock women into a bizarre masterslave relationship.

“Raniere has maintained a rotating group of fifteen to twenty women with whom he maintains sexual relationships,” the criminal complaint states. “These women are not permitted to have sexual relationships with anyone but Raniere or to discuss with others their relationship with Raniere. Some of the Nxivm curriculum included teachings about the need for men to have multiple sexual partners and the need for women to be monogamous.”

The followers, the complaint alleges, were coerced into sex with Raniere out of devotion or fear of public exposure. Authorities also accuse Raniere of forcing women to undergo a bizarre branding ritual where his own initials were allegedly burned into their pubic region with a cauterizing pen.

The arrest, based on FBI interviews with eight alleged victims, comes after years of scrutiny of NXIVM from media and state authorities, with critics blasting the Albany, N.Y.-area organization as a cultlike operation preying on susceptible subjects.

Court records do not list an attorney for the defendant. But in a statement on the NXIVM website, Raniere denied any wrongdoing. “These allegations are most disturbing to me as nonviolence is one of my most important values,” the statement says.

In a bio on his website, Raniere claims to have “devoted his life to studying the complex issues that face our modern world, and to developing tools to enhance the human experience through community, social action, science, technology and education.”

In 1998, Raniere founded Executive Success Programs Inc.; in 2003, NXIVM was founded as an “umbrella organization for ESP and other Raniereaffiliated entities,” the complaint states.

“Nxivm maintains features of a multilevel marketing scheme, commonly known as a pyramid scheme, in which members are recruited via a promise of payments or services for enrolling others into the scheme,” the complaint claims. For example, fiveday workshops “promising personal and professional development” run up to $5,000.

“The Nxivm curriculum taught that women had inherent weaknesses including ‘overemotional’ natures, an inability to keep promises and embracing the role of victim,” the complaint alleges.

Raniere allegedly sits at the top of the organization. “In my opinion, NXIVM is one of the most extreme groups I have ever dealt with in the sense of how tightly wound it is around the leader, Keith Raniere,” cult expert Rick Ross told the Albany Times Union in 2012.

In recent court documents, the government has alleged Clare Bronfman, the heiress to the Seagram’s liquor fortune, is one of Raniere’s main financial backers. She has not commented.

Keith Raniere ‘has maintained a rotating group of fifteen to twenty women with whom he maintains sexual relationships.’