In court papers filed Friday, a former high ranking officer of NXIVM depicts the cultlike group as a self-help and ethics school that is secretly a place for its leader to explore opportunities for sex and gambling money, the Albany Times Union reports.
Susan Dones, a trainer who ran the Colonie-based company’s former Tacoma, Wash., center, told a bankruptcy court last week that Keith A. Raniere, the creator of the teachings used in NXIVM’s self-improvement courses, may have motives beyond the education of human potential.
Dones said NXIVM presents Raniere “as the most honest, ethical, Nobel (sic), man who had the answers to mankind’s problems” yet his training sessions are “used as a venue to stalk their students … who might fit into Raniere’s profile of sexual conquest and who might be willing to ‘give’ Raniere money to feed his gambling problem.”
The NXIVM business, also known as Executive Success Programs, treats Raniere, 50, of Clifton Park as its intellectual guru.