For the low price of only $5000, I’ll take anyone here out for a really awesome extended weekend of hiking in a national park, eating really good food from local restaurants, and honest heartfelt conversation. If you don’t feel more fulfilled after that, then you’re a bastard, and I have no qualms about not delivering for your $5k. If you enjoy yourself, then bingo service provided!
And… I promise no carving of my initials on your person. No weird sex slave stuff. No exploitation.
I think that I’ll have fewer customers than this creep though…
EST got a bit of cultural relevance with “The Americans”. Where it was useful in getting protagonist Philip Jennings through his issues of constantly murdering people all around the DC metro area for the USSR.
Oh, wait, am I supposed to give YOU $5K, or you give $5K to me? 'cause I will definitely give you $5K worth of “hiking in a National Park” for your $5K
Proving that the judge and prosecution were “corrupt?” by soliciting nxium’s remaining members to concoct evidence to this end? That’ll run afoul of Prison regs. I really don’t know how to read the prosecution’s sentencing memo. Apparently it’s bad form to claim actual innocence after conviction.
Trump looks on and laughs at this amateur. On a serious note, I read that some of this dudes victims were women with degrees, doctors and lawyers which begs the question as to HOW he got them to do what they did. Surely a person smart enough to be a doctor could see through this guys con?
Book smart people aren’t necessarily street smart or smart in all things. Some can be damaged people, some can be greedy people. Some people with degrees are just privileged idiots whose parents bought their way in.
A confidence man like Raniere finds lots of ways in. For example, his grift --like the Cult of $cientology’s – involved getting his marks to give up blackmail material on themselves when they wanted to advance in what they still thought was a self-help organisation.
Can’t remember where I read the article but Raniere used a pile of work in progress pending patents to lure yuppies. Carefully calculated social engineering based on the knowledge people are suckers for credentials
After actress Kristin Kreuk became involved with NXIVM in 2006, Salzman and her daughter Lauren went to Vancouver, British Columbia, to recruit Kreuk’s Smallville co-star Allison Mack.[23] The younger Salzman (herself a junior NXIVM leader)[19] bonded with Mack, and the latter became involved,[23] though Kreuk subsequently left NXIVM.[36] Mack became “an enthusiastic proselytizer” for NXIVM, persuading her parents to take courses, and, after wrapping production of Smallville in 2011, moved to Clifton Park, New York, near NXIVM’s home base in Albany.[23]
