Keith Raniere called himself Vanguard. His followers celebrated his birthday as a holiday. He claimed abilities no one could verify. And he built an organization so tightly engineered that when it finally collapsed, everyone around him flipped — except him.

NXIVM ran for two decades as a multi-level marketing self-improvement company in Albany, New York. The courses cost thousands. The sash hierarchy rewarded recruitment. The inner circle grew more exclusive — and more controlled — the deeper you went. At its peak, the organization attracted around 700 members, including billionaire heiresses who poured over $100 million into its operations and a television actress who became one of its most recognized recruiters.

Behind the curriculum, federal prosecutors proved Raniere operated a criminal enterprise. He created a secret society where women were branded with his initials, surrendered compromising material as collateral, and were coerced under a master-slave hierarchy he controlled from the top. Seven federal counts — racketeering, wire fraud conspiracy, forced labor conspiracy, trafficking — with eleven racketeering acts under the fraud charge alone.

When authorities found illegal material on a hard drive connected to Raniere, every co-defendant rushed for a deal. He alone went to trial, was convicted on all counts, and sentenced to 120 years. The campus was sold for $700,000. NXIVM was dissolved. The machine is gone.

Episode one of a four-part Hidden Killers investigation into Keith Raniere and NXIVM.

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