NXIVM Case Archive

Keith Raniere founded NXIVM, an Albany-based self-help company whose Executive Success Programs charged participants thousands of dollars for classes built on his teachings. In 2015 he created DOS, a secret society inside NXIVM in which women recruited as "slaves" handed over "collateral" to "masters" who answered to him. Federal prosecutors charged him in 2018, and each of his five co-defendants pleaded guilty before trial.

Over six weeks in 2019, the government called 23 witnesses, among them former DOS and NXIVM members, cooperating co-defendant Lauren Salzman, and FBI and New York State Police investigators. The defense acknowledged that Raniere created DOS but disputed coercion, criminal intent and the commercial element of the sex trafficking charges, and asked jurors to rely on contemporaneous messages over later accounts. Raniere did not testify, and the defense called no witnesses.

On June 19, 2019, the jury found Raniere guilty on all seven counts. Judge Nicholas G. Garaufis sentenced him on October 27, 2020, to 120 years in prison and fined him $1.75 million. His conviction has been affirmed on appeal, and in October 2026 the Supreme Court declined to review the denial of his new-trial motions.