32 ICSA TODAY 30
It Works is a multilevel marketing [MLM] company that sells
beauty, nutrition, and weight loss products through its network
of distributors. It Works is best known for its Ultimate Body
Applicators, which people wrap around their stomachs or other
areas in hopes of tightening, toning, and firming. Courtney
says she first learned about this product and the opportunity
to sell for It Works after she posted in a mom group about her
‘mom pouch’ about three weeks after having a Cesarean section.
Because recruiting and motivating thousands of independent
distributors is fundamental to how MLMs operate, it has caused
some to liken these companies to cults. ‘Multilevel marketing
companies do have some similarities to cults,’ Jennifer Chatman,
a professor at the Hass School of Business at UC Berkeley who
researches, teaches, and consults on how companies leverage
organizational culture to improve corporate performance, told
Business Insider. ‘What cults do is they try to recruit people based
on relationships. They say, here’s a person who is very similar to
you and you should forge a relationship with them and they’re
going to be really nice to you,’ Chatman said.” (Business Insider,
08/06/19)
What’s to become of NXIVM?
“As NXIVM leader Keith Raniere faces life in prison for sex
trafficking, forced labor and racketeering, the Capital Region-
based organization he commanded for two decades remains
shuttered. A federal jury’s quick conviction of Raniere, 58, on all
criminal counts and racketeering acts Wednesday [6/19] was a
resounding repudiation of the purported self-help guru known
within NXIVM as ‘Vanguard.’ According to one prosecution
witness, it could also prove to be a knockout punch for the
business that was built on his teachings. ’I don’t expect to see
NXIVM continuing in any meaningful way,’ said Rick Ross,
head of the New Jersey-based Cult Education Institute and a
longtime foe of Raniere. NXIVM pursued Ross in an unsuccessful
14-year legal battle that he described on the stand in U.S. District
Court in Brooklyn earlier this month. NXIVM was never charged
in the federal prosecution the purported self-improvement
business must now contend with not only the loss of Raniere but
the guilty pleas of its operations director and Seagram’s heiress
Clare Bronfman, president Nancy Salzman, her daughter
Lauren Salzman—who testified at Raniere’s trial—and longtime
NXIVM bookkeeper Kathy Russell. All four women, along with
NXIVM member and TV actress Allison Mack, pleaded guilty
to federal felony charges in March and April.” (Times Union,
06/22/19)
Judge to keep NXIVM jurors’ identities secret for their own
safety
“The Brooklyn federal court judge who oversaw the trial of
convicted NXIVM sex cult leader Keith Raniere says he won’t
release jurors’ names—he’s afraid the group’s litigious acolytes
might go after them in court or smear them in the media.
‘The court is concerned for the jurors’ security,’ Judge Nicholas
Garaufis wrote in the Tuesday [7/2] decision. Prosecutors argued
at trial that NXIVM targeted suspected foes in a variety of
ways, including litigation, and the judge said he didn’t want to
open jurors up to the possibility of reprisals. ‘Evidence at trial
suggested that Raniere’s associates would go to great lengths to
antagonize his perceived enemies,’ the ruling reads. ‘Additionally,
the government has informed the court that a NXIVM defector’s
collateral was released during trial and published by the Mexican
media, suggesting that Raniere’s alleged criminal enterprise may
continue to exist notwithstanding his incarceration.’” (New York
Post, 07/02/19)
NXIVM doctor who conducted brain studies loses license
“The state Health Department has revoked the medical license
of a physician who conducted human brain-activity experiments
and other unsanctioned research on people associated with the
NXIVM corporation. Brandon B. Porter, who has been involved
with NXIVM for many years, was served with 25 misconduct
charges by the state Health Department’s Office of Professional
Medical Conduct in April 2018, a month after NXIVM leader Keith
Raniere was arrested and charged with multiple federal crimes,
including sex trafficking. The board that reviewed his case
sustained 24 of the charges. In June, at the end of a two-month
trial, a federal jury in Brooklyn convicted Raniere, 58, of all the
charges he faced, including racketeering acts of identity theft,
obstruction of justice, wire and visa fraud, forced labor, human
trafficking, money laundering, child exploitation and possession
of child pornography. Porter, 45, who attended medical school at
the University of Iowa, has been living in a Waterford residence
owned by NXIVM associates and working in a private sector job.
His license to practice medicine was suspended when he was
served with the misconduct charges last year.” (Times Union,
08/22/19)
NXIVM must pay private eye’s legal bills
“A federal judge ordered the now-defunct sex cult NXIVM to
foot $1.3 million in legal bills incurred by private investigators
that it hired to follow an anti-cult specialist. Billing itself for years
as a self-help group, NXIVM shut down in 2018 after its leaders,
including ‘Smallville’ actress Allison Mack, were arrested as
part of a sweeping racketeering and sexual slavery case. The
group’s founder, Keith Raniere, was convicted of sex trafficking,
forced labor and wire fraud earlier this year. The secretive and
bizarre group had a history of investigating critics, including
allegedly trying to hack into [the] computer of billionaire
Edgar Bronfman Sr., the former chairman of the Seagram
beverage company who spoke out against NXIVM as two of his
daughters became increasingly involved as members. In one
such investigation, the group retained Interfor Inc. to investigate
the 2003 disappearance of one of its members, Kristin Snyder.
Allegations that Snyder was pregnant with Raniere’s baby have
led some to speculate the woman was murdered or killed herself.
NXIVM sued anti-cult crusader Rick Ross around the same
time, accusing that Ross had infringed the group’s copyright by
publishing several pages of a NXIVM manual on his website. Ross
obtained the manual from a former member of NXIVM, then
known as Executive Success Programs Inc., who had signed a
nondisclosure agreement.” (Courthouse News Service, 08/26/19)
VOLUME 11 |ISSUE 1 |2020 1933
Polygamist allegedly scammed United States out of a half-
billion dollars
“On the afternoon of Aug. 23, 2018, federal agents fanned out
across the Salt Lake City airport. They were looking for Jacob
Kingston. He was 42, with short, dark hair and a salt-and-pepper
beard. According to the IRS, Kingston had defrauded the U.S.
government of more than a half-billion dollars, and now he was
fleeing to Turkey. The agents feared that if he boarded KLM flight
6026, he’d never come back. Kingston is a member of the Order,
the largest Mormon polygamist clan in the U.S. Authorities
call it an organized crime group. Concentrated in Salt Lake
City, its 10,000 members control more than 100 businesses in
the West, including a casino in Southern California and a cattle
ranch on the Nevada border. Closer to home, it runs a tactical
arms company that specializes in semiautomatic weapons.
The government had spent years investigating Kingston and a
company he ran called Washakie Renewable Energy LLC, the
most successful in the Order’s portfolio. At a plant along the
Utah-Idaho border, Washakie made biodiesel that it shipped out
on rail cars, but the bulk of its profits came from $1-per-gallon
tax credits that the IRS administered. The credits—cash from
the government, basically—had made Kingston wealthy. He sat
in a suite at Utah Jazz basketball games, hobnobbed with state
power brokers, and moved one of his wives, Sally, into a mansion
in a leafy Salt Lake suburb. For more than a year, the government
had also been probing Kingston’s ties to a man named Lev
Dermen. An Armenian immigrant, Dermen sat atop a small
oil and gas empire in Southern California with a string of gas
stations and truck stops. The feds suspected that Kingston had
been running a sophisticated scam for years with Dermen’s help.
Evidence that the Environmental Protection Agency obtained
suggested that Washakie’s plant didn’t produce the type of
biodiesels eligible for tax credits. Yet the company had claimed
more than $500 million in credits by allegedly falsifying records,
sending diluted loads or tanks of water to co-conspirators, and
recirculating the vegetable and animal fats and used cooking oil
needed to make biodiesel on ships that shuttled from Panama to
Houston. The government also accused Washakie of laundering
$134 million to Turkey.” (Bloomberg, 06/24/19)
Trustee of UK charity “covered up abuse” by Buddhist guru
“A British charity founded by a disgraced Buddhist guru, who
died last week after he was accused of sexual misconduct
towards some of his followers, faces further controversy after
it emerged that one of its trustees was found responsible for
covering up abuse. Patrick Gaffney was a trustee of the Rigpa
Fellowship, which was founded by the Tibetan guru Sogyal
Lakar, known as Sogyal Rinpoche, who died aged 72 in
Thailand on Wednesday [8/28] after going into hiding following
the claims. Weeks before Lakar’s death, Gaffney—the guru’s
right-hand man who co-edited his bestselling The Tibetan Book
of Living and Dying—was banned by a watchdog from working
with charities for eight years.” (The Guardian, 09/02/19)
Mother of baby burned to death in satanic ritual arrested
after 2 years on the run
“The mother of a two-day-old baby that was burned to death as
part of a satanic ritual has been apprehended by police after
evading capture for two years. ...Natalia Guerra was detained
on Tuesday [July 9th] in the Maipo district of Santiago, Chile,
along with another person who helped keep her hidden as a
fugitive from justice. The 33-year-old was sentenced to five years
in prison in 2017 for her involvement in the death of her infant
son. Just two days after giving birth, Guerra agreed to have baby
‘Jesus’ killed after the leader of the ‘Antares de la luz’ cult and
father of the child, Ramon Gustavo Castillo Gaete, declared
the infant to be the Antichrist and that the sacrifice would help
prevent the end of the world on December 21, 2012.” (Newsweek,
7/12/19)
Planned Twelve Tribes deli stirs concern in South Bend
“...Growing awareness of the [Twelve Tribes] group’s plans to
open a business in South Bend has generated intense interest.
A local woman’s July 9 Facebook posting regarding Yellow
Deli and Twelve Tribes was up to 329 comments and 37 shares
by noon July 16. The tenor of comments ranges from hostility
and calls for a boycott to defenses of their choice to live how
they choose, so long as laws are obeyed. A number of these
individuals were careful to state that while they are concerned
based on the research they have done, they are also willing
to listen and be open-minded. The Twelve Tribes’ approach to
physical discipline of children is a special area of concern for
several commenters, along with objections to its stance on
gender roles and other subjects. It is unknown when the Yellow
Deli is set to open. No business license is currently pending.
The city manager declined to speak on the record about the
deli. ...Twelve Tribes now owns farms, hostels and Yellow
Delis internationally—from Argentina to Australia, Canada
to Spain—but this is their first known location in the state of
Washington. According to the Twelve Tribes website, members
live communally ‘like an extended family, sharing all things
in common, just as the first disciples did in the first century.’
All members are required to contribute 100% of their income
to a ‘common purse’ where funds are distributed to families
and individuals equitably. Income from the Yellow Deli will go
directly into the same fund. Because of this system, those who
work at the delis are unpaid and considered volunteers. ...The
SLPC [Southern Law Poverty Center] published an article in
2018 that details the history and beliefs of the Twelve Tribes.
The article, titled ‘Into Darkness: Inside an American White
Supremacist Cult,’ includes conversations with a number of
former Twelve Tribe members, and leading religious scholars
who have studied the group.” ...The group’s “website also
provides an emphatic denial of racism. However, the group
makes no effort to deny anti-LGBT sentiment, stating ‘We
do not approve of homosexual behavior. We do not regard it
as a genetic variation, a valid alternative lifestyle, or a mere
psychological quirk.’” (Observer, 07/15/19) n