August 30, 2025 • 49 mins
Here's a special episode of American Criminal: NXIVM
From our friends at Airship — the studio behind American Scandal, Business Movers, and History Daily — comes an exclusive episode of American Criminal. The show dives deep into the lives and misdeeds of history’s most notorious criminals, as well as some of the wildest crimes you’ve never heard of. Fraud, theft, murder, and worse — whatever the case, whoever the criminal — you don’t know the whole story… until now. Past seasons have covered:
From our friends at Airship — the studio behind American Scandal, Business Movers, and History Daily — comes an exclusive episode of American Criminal. The show dives deep into the lives and misdeeds of history’s most notorious criminals, as well as some of the wildest crimes you’ve never heard of. Fraud, theft, murder, and worse — whatever the case, whoever the criminal — you don’t know the whole story… until now. Past seasons have covered:
- A series of bombings that shook Salt Lake City, with rare Mormon documents at the center of the mystery.
- The woman who built the modern adoption industry by stealing babies and selling them to desperate parents.
- A serial killer duo who claimed responsibility for as many as 600 murders across the country.
- The shocking assassinations of civil rights leaders Medgar Evers and Harvey Milk.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
The world tomorrow.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
The Worldwide Church of God presents Herbert's w Armstrong.
Speaker 3 (00:08):
And I'm here to bring you the truth.
Speaker 4 (00:11):
No one else is telling you the things that God
is telling you through me.
Speaker 3 (00:16):
He's speaking through me the Lord. Let me experience what
it is to be a new bride. You know, I'm
not worried about what I'm about to say, though it
may be graphic. We're coming to the Lord and if
you can take it, beyond the veil is the chamber.
That's the wedding chamber. The Lord told me that.
Speaker 4 (00:37):
But from then on, visions begin to come. When this
comes up on me, it produces the vision. I'm able
to tell people what's wrong with them, what they must
do in life, and the sins that they are holding back.
Speaker 3 (00:50):
In their life.
Speaker 4 (00:51):
God is going to be moving vitally in fot like
he has before. Both judgments.
Speaker 5 (00:59):
Of the Hello Everyone and Welcome back to the Cult
Next Store podcast have a little bit of a different
episode dropped today. This is not one of our Cult
Next Doore episode drops. This is an episode from American Criminal.
So American Criminal is from Airship, which is the studio
behind American Scandal, Business Movers and History Daily those are
(01:21):
podcasts you might have heard of. American Criminal in particular,
delves deep into the lives and misdeeds of some of
history's most notorious criminals, as well as some of the
wildest crimes that you maybe have never heard of. So
things like fraud, theft, murder, and worse. Whatever the case,
whoever the criminal, you don't know the whole story until now.
(01:41):
So previous seasons of this podcast have included the jaw
dropping story of a series of bombings that rocked Salt
Lake City to its core, with rare Mormon documents holding
the key to this puzzle. The woman who laid the
foundation for the modern adoption industry by stealing babies and
selling them to desperate parents. The serial killer team, who,
(02:03):
if you believe their stories, were responsible for some six
hundred murders across the country and the assassination of civil
rights leaders Medgar Evers and Harvey Milk.
Speaker 1 (02:13):
This season, they're diving into Nexium, the so called self
help group that turned out to be one of the
most infamous modern cults. Back in twenty seventeen, Nexium suddenly
hit headlines across the country one day. Almost no one
had heard of it. The next it was being called
a cult. Reports came flooding in about a secret society,
(02:35):
psychological manipulation, imprisonment, even sexual abuse. At the center of
it all was Keith Runiery, a self proclaimed genius that
his followers called Vanguard. For decades, he'd been quietly building
his empire, using charm, manipulation and slick salesmanship to pull
people in, but behind the curtain, his real goal was control,
(02:59):
as especially over the women closest to him. When some
of them began to push back, Ranieri doubled down, using
blackmail and coercion to keep them trapped as his victims. Eventually, though,
he went too far and people started speaking out. This
is the story of Nexium. Find American Criminal on Spotify,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen.
Speaker 2 (03:23):
This episode contains descriptions and details that some listeners might
find disturbing. Listener discretion is advised. It's January twenty seventeen
(03:45):
in Vancouver, Canada. Thirty nine year old Sarah Edmondson sits
at a kitchen table and SIPs from a mug of tea.
Behind her, her best friend, Lauren Salzman, wipes down the
counter top while chatting away. That's something Sarah really admires
about her friend. She's always multitasking. It's like she can't
(04:05):
be still. So when Lauren puts down the rag and
finally sits at the table, Sarah knows that she must
want to talk about something important. Lauren clears her throat
and starts slow. It's about Nexian, the self help business
they both work for. There's something big going on within
(04:26):
the company, and Lauren wants to bring her in on it.
Speaker 3 (04:29):
Something transformative.
Speaker 2 (04:32):
Sarah sits up a little straighter when she hears that
Lauren is one of the most successful people she knows,
the type of woman who wakes up before dawn to
get in a workout, then stays up late.
Speaker 3 (04:45):
Working into the night.
Speaker 2 (04:47):
Sarah would kill to know what keeps her going, But
despite the fact that she brought it up, Lauren seems
hesitant to go on. She tells Sarah that she can't
just give away her secret. She has to be absolutely
sure that Sarah will never spread this around no matter what.
Sarah chuckles uneasily. Lauren's acting like she's about to share
(05:11):
the nuclear launch codes.
Speaker 3 (05:13):
I mean, surely it can't be that serious, but it is.
Speaker 2 (05:18):
Lauren tells Sarah that she has Nexium's formula for prosperity,
the secrets they've never shared with any of their customers.
When Sarah pushes for more specifics Lauren gets cagy and
won't go into detail. All she'll say is that this
is life changing, but there's a cost. Lauren slides a
(05:40):
pen and pad a paper across the table. If Sarah
wants in, she has to provide some kind of collateral.
Sarah just stares at it for a moment. Then Lauren
explains that Nexium needs something embarrassing on her, some piece
of information they could use against her, just in case.
(06:02):
She doesn't use the word blackmail, but that's exactly what
she's asking for. Before her own initiation into this group,
she handed over a nude photograph, but the collateral could
be anything, a written confession, a piece of evidence tying
her to a crime.
Speaker 3 (06:19):
Whatever.
Speaker 2 (06:21):
The request seriously unnerves Sarah, but she trusts her friend,
and more than that, she believes Innexion, So after thinking
for a minute, she writes out the worst thing she
can think of, something she did back in her twenties,
then slides the pad back across the table. Lauren looks
(06:42):
it over and shakes her head not good enough. It
has to be something that would ruin Sarah's life if
it became public. Sarah goes pale, but she wants this.
She needs to be on the inside of this group
sod and eventually comes up with something that satisfies Lauren.
(07:05):
She watches as her friend takes a picture of the
confession on her phone, then gives a thin smile. Now
Lauren can reveal the secret she's been hiding for so long.
Within the ranks of Nexium, there's a secret sorority called DOSS,
short for Dominus obsequious Sororium. She explains that it's like
(07:27):
the Freemasons, but for women, and if Sarah wants to
be officially inducted, she has to swear a vow of
obedience to Lauren. She has to become her slave. Sarah
sits back in her chair, scandalized by that word, but
Lauren rushes to soothe her concerns. She tells Sarah not
(07:49):
to take the master slave terminology too seriously. She should
think of the relationship as more spiritual, like the bond
between a nun and a mother superior. Sarah is not
quite sure she understands, but she has faith in her friend.
If Laurence says this is a good idea, then Sarah
trusts her. Her induction into doss is set for two
(08:11):
months from now, and Lauren's right, it will change Sarah's
life into a waking nightmare from Airship. I'm Jeremy Schwartz,
and this is American criminal. In twenty seventeen, a little
(08:57):
known consulting firm called Nexium became the center of an
international scandal. One day, no one had heard of the
group at all. The next people were calling it a cult.
But this wasn't your typical religious fringe group. On the surface,
Nexium built itself as a self improvement program, a company
(09:17):
that made good money by offering courses in human potential
and self actualization, whatever that meant. Sure, it might feel sketchy,
but a cult. As growing details of the group emerged, though,
the term started to feel more appropriate. There were accusations
of a secret society, psychological manipulation, imprisonment, and occult sexual abuse.
Speaker 3 (09:44):
Then there was the.
Speaker 2 (09:45):
Group's founder, Keith Ranieri, a self styled genius whose followers
worshiped him and called him Vanguard. It was all textbook cult.
Slowly the truth was uncovered through media and law enforce
Horsman investigations, and a full picture of the group began
to form. But the questions on everyone's lips remain the same.
(10:08):
Who was Keith Ranieri and how had he hoodwink so
many people in this day and age. Well, it turns
out Keith had been building his empire his entire life.
Nexium might have just suddenly appeared to the general public,
but it had been a long time coming. This is
(10:30):
episode one in our four part series on Nexium, Growing
Up with Keith Ranieri. It's nineteen seventy three in the
village of Suffern, New York, about thirty one miles north
of Manhattan. Thirteen year old Keith Ranieri sits next to
a hospital bed, clutching the frail hand of his mother Via.
(10:53):
She's just had open heart surgery and wrapped in the
bright white sheets, she reminds him of an angel. Vera's
eyelids flutter and Keith stifles a sob. Ever, since his
parents divorced three years ago, he and Vera have been
on their own. Lately, He's been dividing his days between
school and caring for his mom. Her health isn't great
(11:17):
to start with, and if he doesn't keep a constant
watch on her, she turns to illegal drugs to soothe
her pain. It would be a lot for a normal
thirteen year old to handle too much, but Keith knows
he's not normal. He's gifted. When he was around eight,
his parents took him to get an intelligence test, and
(11:39):
to his immense pride, he scored higher than average. Since then,
he's believed himself smarter than everyone around him. The thought
of his own specialness keeps him going through the hard times,
like right now, as he sits with his mom in
the hospital, Vera twitches in her sleep and squeezes her
(11:59):
son's hand. Keith squeezes back, determined to never let her go.
His mother's heart surgery changes Keith for near his life forever.
While still only a teenager, he's forced to take over
the caregiving responsibilities in his household. By day, he attends school,
(12:21):
mostly just scraping by. In the evenings, he waits on Verra,
trying his best to keep things together. His father sees
him a couple times a week, but he can feel
Keith slipping away as the years wear on. The kid
mostly keeps to himself too busy taking care of his
mom to maintain friendships with kids his own age. At school,
(12:44):
he embodies the slacker with potential trope, a nonconformist, too smart,
but never really puts in the effort to meet his potential.
As he gets a little older, this sensit a bad
boy image wins him some admirers. Slowly, Keith starts it's
opening up, but only to girls, and always with an
ulterior motive. He craves female attention so much that he
(13:08):
leads girls on regardless of whether he's actually interested in them.
He treats it like a game, telling them what they
want to hear, drawing them in, making them dependent on
him for their happiness. He likes being able to control
their emotions so easily. It's something that makes him feel
powerful when other parts of his life do the opposite.
(13:31):
Around nineteen seventy six, when Keith is sixteen, his mother's
health worsens again. Despite Keith's best efforts to help her
stay clean, Vera's deep in the throes of drug and
alcohol addiction. Her decline makes Keith feel like a failure. Meanwhile,
Vera herself can't help feeling like she's failing her son.
(13:54):
At night, she can overhear him on the phone talking
to his girlfriends in soft, hushed tones. When she can
make out the words, she's shocked at what she hears.
Keith gives them all the same rehearsed lines that they're
is one and only the love of his life. Vera's
unnerved by how easily he lies the lengths he goes
(14:16):
to in order to get what he wants. She tries
to tell him he shouldn't treat people that way, but
it doesn't do any good. Keith loves his mother, but
he doesn't think she has anything to teach him. He's
too smart to listen to anyone that goes for his
school guidance counselors too, he ignores their advice and loads
down his schedule with extra courses. Despite his mediocre grades,
(14:41):
somehow he manages to squeak by and graduates a year early.
There's no grand plan behind his desire to finish high school, though,
he just wanted to prove his genius. When his mom
encourages him to go to college, Keith hesitates at first,
he doesn't want to leave her behind, but this time
she convinces him to listen to her and he enrolls
(15:03):
at a university about two hours away. At the end
of his first year in nineteen seventy eight, he returns
home to celebrate his eighteenth birthday by.
Speaker 3 (15:13):
His mother's side.
Speaker 2 (15:15):
Birthdays have always been his favorite occasion, the one day
of the year that's about him, not Vera, and this
one is truly special. His mom goes all out, concealing
her failing health to throw a party for just the
two of them, the kind of celebrationed Teith will remember
for the rest of his life. The next day, he
(15:38):
bids his mother goodbye and heads back to school.
Speaker 3 (15:42):
Four months later, Vera passes away.
Speaker 2 (15:46):
For years, Keith has been mentally bracing himself to lose
his mother, but he's still not prepared for the grief.
The only way he can make it through his university
classes is to remember her encouragement. He's smart, he's destined
for greatness. That propels him through, and in nineteen eighty one,
(16:06):
he graduates from there, though his life starts to waiver.
Keith has ambition in a salesman's charisma, but he lacks direction.
In his spare time, he reads about Eastern spirituality, but
he's far too materialistic. To commit to any major lifestyle changes.
He wants money and power, which is what attracts him
(16:29):
to the multi level marketing company Amway after hearing a
pitch from an acquaintance.
Speaker 3 (16:35):
He spends a.
Speaker 2 (16:35):
Few years as an Amway salesman hawking health and beauty products.
While this gig doesn't bring Keith much material success, the
business model will inspire him for years to come. A
multi level marketing company or MLM, like Amway, works by
allowing its distributors to earn money in two ways. The
(16:57):
first is by simply moving product and earning commission like
a standard salesperson, but the second, potentially more lucrative option
is to recruit additional distributors.
Speaker 3 (17:10):
To work under them.
Speaker 2 (17:12):
So say Keith recruits five people he knows in the Amway.
These five distributors will pedal products on their own and
then send a cut of their profits back to Keith.
Speaker 3 (17:24):
The same rule applies to him.
Speaker 2 (17:25):
Whenever he sells a product, he gives some of the
proceeds to his recruiter, and so on. The more distributors
he brings into the business, the more passive income he
can potentially make. Visualized, this structure resembles a pyramid, with
the person at the top the head of the company,
making the most money. The difference between a multi level
(17:49):
marketing business and a pyramid scheme is that a legit
MLM allows distributors to make money solely as salespeople as
long as they can make money. He threw sales alone
and aren't forced to recruit additional distributors, it's not illegal.
Sitting at the top of that pyramid quickly becomes Keith's fantasy,
(18:12):
raking in money while plaps toil away beneath him. But
he's not in a rush to get there just yet.
For now, he drifts from place to place while keeping
his part time gig with Amway.
Speaker 3 (18:25):
He lets his.
Speaker 2 (18:25):
Hair get shaggy, grows a dark beard that sets off
his blue eyes, and dawns a large pair of round,
wireframe glasses. Though he's not making much career progress during
these years, this period sets the stage for what's to come.
Keith finds that he likes selling himself, and he's pretty
(18:45):
good at it. On top of that, he has a
knack for sniffing out vulnerable people, the kind who we're
looking for something to believe in, and a lot of
the time it doesn't matter if that's a product, a company,
or a person. In nineteen eighty four, when Keith is
twenty four, he meets fifteen year old Gina Hutchinson and
(19:08):
decides that he wants to be what she believes him.
He tells Gina she's a genius like him, with a
Buddhist soul that's much older than her body. He claims
her public school is brainwashing her, that society disempowers women,
and that only he can free her from the patriarchal system.
(19:28):
He doesn't just want to be her lover, he tells
the teen he wants to be her teacher and spiritual guide.
One night, he makes a commotion squeezing himself through Gina's
bedroom window, and Gina's older sister, Heidi, barges in to
find this grown man in her sister's bed. Obviously freaked out,
(19:49):
Heidie calls their mother in from the other room. Yet
is Gina's mother rushes down the hall. Keith doesn't pick
up and run. He thinks he's too old for that
and talks it out. Miraculously, he manages to convince Gina's
mom that despite the age gap, he's sincerely interested in
(20:10):
a mature committed relationship with her fifteen year old daughter.
Of course, everything Keith tells her is a lie. Gina
isn't his only quote unquote girlfriend. He tells all of
his lovers that women are monogamous, but men are hardwired
to be polyamorous. Even so, Gina shocked when she eventually
(20:32):
finds out that Keith is seeing other women. She breaks
things off with him, thinking that's the end of it.
But Keith Vanieri doesn't give up so easily. He refuses
to be rejected to lose control of this girl he's
been grooming. The sex is one thing, but that's not
what this is about. It's about control. He tries everything
(20:55):
to get the teenager back. He even thinks that a
woman's touch might get the job done, so he sends
his other girlfriends to apologize on his behalf. They try
to bring Gina back into the fold, inviting her to
join them in a kind of communal relationship, but Gina
won't be swayed. It's a bitter pill for Keith to swallow,
(21:15):
but he has plenty else to keep him occupied. After
Gina rejects him, the remaining young women and Keith's orb
but start to congregate at his townhouse in Clifton Park,
New York. Eventually a couple of them start living with him,
and he regales them with stories about how he's a
(21:37):
super genius and or reincarnated deity. That first part seems
like a natural progression from Keith's already inflated ego about
his own intelligence, but where that second part came from
is a little bit of a mystery. Given that he
dabbled in various Eastern philosophies and mystic ideas, it's probably
(21:57):
an extension of that, and the thought of being a
godd reborn on earth suits him just fine. And he
ain't just saying that to impress the women in his life.
He's decided that he wants to become a mentor to
the rich and famous.
Speaker 3 (22:12):
Gurus have been all the rage.
Speaker 2 (22:14):
Around the country lately, and Keith's sure he can mix
the multi level marketing strategies he learned at Amway with
therapeutic and spiratual techniques he's read about in books to
a mass a devoted following, hopefully made up of people
who are easy to separate from their money. In nineteen
eighty five, he starts putting his plan into action. The
(22:37):
first step is to establish a reputation as someone worth
listening to. That April, the science magazine Omni publishes a
forty eight question IQ quiz called the Mega Test. People
who score a high enough grade are eligible to join
the Mega Society, a high IQ club similar to MENSA.
(22:58):
For context, The average which person is purported to have
an IQ of one hundred, and generally speaking, a genius
level score is one fifty or higher. Keith scores one
of the highest grades ever recorded, putting his IQ somewhere
above one seventy six.
Speaker 3 (23:17):
With this proof of his intelligence.
Speaker 2 (23:19):
Keith boasts to his girlfriends that he's smarter than Einstein.
He even lands an article in a local paper that
labels him one of the biggest geniuses to ever live.
Speaker 3 (23:30):
The thing is, it's just a marketing campaign.
Speaker 2 (23:35):
A traditional IQ test gives its participants a time limit
and its supervised to prevent cheating, but the Mega Test
doesn't follow any of those rules, so there was nothing
to stop Keith from getting the women and girls in
his orbit to help him look up the answers to
anything that stumped him. Still, even though it's all smoke
(23:55):
and mirrors, Keith's media blitz takes him far. His newspaper
profile prince his own ridiculous claims, like how he understood
quantum mechanics at age four and only sleeps two hours
a night. There's no fact checking done to prove any
of this. Keith's just taken at his word, and on
(24:16):
this basis, he manages to enter the nineteen eighty nine
edition of the Guinness Book of World Records as the
man with the highest IQ, along with two others who
took the Mega test. It's everything Keith could have hoped for.
At the age of twenty nine, he decides he's ready
to make his next move.
Speaker 3 (24:36):
Now all he needs is money.
Speaker 2 (24:53):
It's nineteen ninety one at the Holiday Inn in Rochester,
New York. Thirty one year old Keith Ranieri enters the
land Beige ballroom to a smattering of applause. A bluish
haze of cigarette smoke fills the air. Taking in the
assembled crowd, Keith gives them a practiced warm smile. His
(25:13):
audience are mostly straight laced, typical middle class drivers, eager
to climb to the next rung on the financial ladder.
By contrast, Keith looks a bit like a late stage
hipie stuffed in a suit, so some of them probably
have trouble taking him seriously. But his flyers advertised him
as one of the smartest men in the world, and
(25:35):
they want to see if he lives up to that
very specific hype. Keith knows they're expecting a lot, but
that doesn't shake his confidence. He approaches a podium on
the stage, smiles and polishes his glasses on his shirt.
He savors the moment, takes his time setting the hook,
(25:56):
then he launches into a spiel.
Speaker 3 (25:58):
It's a fairly straight forward marketing pitch.
Speaker 2 (26:01):
Keith announces that he wants to let his audience in
on the ground floor of his new business, Consumers Byline. Conceptually,
it's similar to Costco or Sam's Club. Members pay a
yearly fee to join the organization, and in return, they
get to buy merchandise at wholesale prices. The more members
they recruit, the lower those prices can be because cumulative
(26:25):
buying power allows them to purchase goods in bulk. Unlike Costco,
Consumers Byline won't have any brick and mortar stores. Instead,
customers will receive their purchases via mail. As Keith explains,
this will save people even more money. It's a sound
business proposition, but what really sells the idea is Keith himself.
(26:49):
He talks up his own credentials, repeating the claim that
he's the smartest man in the world. He says he's
a judo champion who plays seven musical instruments, which I
guess makes him exactly the kind of person who'd be
great at running a business.
Speaker 3 (27:05):
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (27:06):
Sitting in the audience taking in all of this bluster
is thirty two year old Tony Natali. Her husband had
to talk her into coming today, but now she's intrigued.
Keith's business model makes sense to her. Still, she can't
help but wonder what the smartest man in the world
is doing here in a holiday inn. When Keith opens
(27:30):
the floor up to questions, she raises her hand and
asks him why this why a discount retail business. Shouldn't
he be out crying cancer or something. Keith smirks, Oh,
he anticipated a question like this. Without missing a beat,
he launches into a prepared response. Don't worry, he tells Tony,
(27:53):
he'll definitely be changing the world soon enough. Consumer's byline
is just the first step on that journey. When the
presentation is over. A number of attendees sign up for
monthly memberships, but some of them get more than that.
As Keith shakes Tony's hand on her way out, she's
struck by his deep blue eyes. He looks at her
(28:15):
like she's the only person in the world.
Speaker 3 (28:18):
She knows. At that moment, she believes in Keith Ranieri.
Speaker 2 (28:27):
Four months later, Tony and her husband are spreading the
good word about consumers byline like wildfire. They tap into
the pocketbooks of all their friends, swearing up and down
that being members will save them all money in the
long run. They do so well that they win a
prize for being the top sellers in their area. It
(28:47):
comes with a sixteen thousand dollars bonus. Tony and her
husband decide to travel to Clifton Park to accept the
award in person and see the company's headquarters for themselves.
When they arrive, the tiny office is frenetic, with a
few dozen employees buzzing back and forth between computer terminals.
(29:07):
This is at the Internet's inception, before most companies are
taking advantage of the world wide wet so all the
Hubbub goes a long way toward impressing Tony, but it's
Keith who really wowser. He rushes up to them like
a whirlwind, dressed in a button up shirt and gray sweatpants.
It's a ridiculous outfit, but in Tony's eyes it just
(29:29):
amplifies as rebellious, genius, mistique and Tony, to put it lightly,
she is into it the whole thing. She likes that
Keith has more women employees than men. She likes that
he seems to work around the clock rather than sleeping,
and she likes it when he catches her arm before
(29:50):
he ducks out to take a smoke break. He holds
her gaze like he did the first time they shook hands,
and asks if she's interested in quitting smoking. She tells
him she is, and he smiles. He can help with
that if they can talk somewhere in private. Tony shrugs,
glances at her disinterested husband, and accepts the invitation. The
(30:14):
next thing she knows, she's sitting in Keith's office. It's
a small room cluttered by stacks of paper and a
big computer with a fan that roars like an airplane.
Keith takes her hand, tracing the lines of her palm
a propos of nothing. He tells Tony she has beautiful eyes,
and she gets a bit flustered. Then he asks her
(30:37):
to lay back, so why not. She reclines in her seat.
Speaker 3 (30:42):
And closes her eyes.
Speaker 2 (30:44):
From there, Keith starts asking her questions, delicately, pressing down
on her hand as they talk. He says he's stimulating
pressure points, connecting physical touch with her desire to quit smoking.
Tony skeptical that this will help, but she does what
he says all the same. He asks her what makes
(31:05):
her nervous, how she relaxes, and what kind of music
she likes. Slowly, his soft voice lulls her into a
kind of trance for about ten minutes. She lays back
while Keith whispers to her. Then finally he calls her
name and breaks the spell. Tony shakes her head, rubs
(31:27):
her eyes.
Speaker 3 (31:28):
And sits up.
Speaker 2 (31:29):
When Keith leads her outside, Tony's surprised to see the
sun so low in the sky. It turns out she
was in Keith's office for almost three hours, yet she
barely remembers anything he said. When her husband asks if
she wants a cigarette, she presses down on her palm
as if it's a reflex relief floods through her. No thanks,
(31:54):
she tells him, thanks to Keith Ranieri, she smoked her
last cigarette. That evening, Keith watches Tony na Tali leave
with a smile. One of his inner circle, a woman
named Pamela Kayfritz, ask Keith if Tony is the one
(32:14):
is she family?
Speaker 3 (32:16):
Keith nods he has her now every day.
Speaker 2 (32:20):
After that, Keith takes time out of a schedule to
call Tony on the phone. He tells her that despite
all the smart and capable people working for him, only
she really gets him. During their conversations, he peppers her
with questions about her childhood and previous marriages. He's a
great listener, and Tony finds it both liberating and scary
(32:44):
to open up to him. She eventually tells him that
as a child she was sexually abused by one of
her uncles. Keith doesn't shy away from talking about those
traumatic memories. Instead, he probes deeper, asking for more and
more details. He claims he wants to heal her. Of course,
(33:06):
even Tony picks up on the fact that Keith's got
other motives. That becomes clear when he starts asking about
her sex life, and when he says he thinks her
husband is cheating with their nanny. Tony doesn't really believe it,
but she wants to because then there wouldn't be anything
so wrong with her spending hours every night talking to
(33:27):
Keith Vanieri. Around six months after their first meeting, in
January of nineteen ninety two, Keith invites Tony back up
to Clifton. She and her husband are having some financial
problems relating to their own business, and Keith says he
can help find a solution. But before they talk shop,
(33:47):
he takes her to see his place. Tony's excited for
the chance to see how the smartest man in the
world lives. She's been imagining a tech lover's paradise, a
house full of computerized gadgets and stacks of books. That
is not what she finds. It turns out Keith lives
(34:08):
in a bland townhouse with a couple of his female employees.
To make matters worse, the house is a dump. It's
full of dirty, cat litter and crusty dishes. Tony's disappointed,
but chalks it up to Keith's enterprising attitude. She tells
herself that he's too busy to worry about keeping his
home clean, and that he lives with these women to
(34:30):
save money for the business.
Speaker 3 (34:32):
They're all just friends, right.
Speaker 2 (34:35):
That naivete also leads her to entertain Keith's plan for
her finances. He offers her a salaried position selling a
new line of cosmetics. It'll be a separate company from
consumers byline, but she'll be able to tap into their
existing customer base.
Speaker 3 (34:52):
Tony's interested.
Speaker 2 (34:53):
It sounds like a good opportunity, bod She might have
to make some sacrifices to make it work. For st
She'd probably have to move to Clifton, leaving her husband
and son behind. That's a big ask, so she doesn't
say yes right away.
Speaker 3 (35:10):
She wants to think about it.
Speaker 2 (35:13):
Keith is determined to have Tony, though, so late that
night he comes to her hotel room. He wants to
talk some more about her childhood sexual abuse. He interrogates
her endlessly, making her tell him the story three, four,
five times. By that point, Tony's begging Keith to let
her rest, but he says no. Sleep is a construct,
(35:38):
he tells her. Then he makes her go into more
detail about her family secrets. Finally, as the morning sun
starts seeping through the hotel room blinds he makes his move.
Tony is sleep deprived and emotionally wrung out. She's at
her lowest. That's when Keith tells her he has the answers.
(35:59):
He can figure her problems, all of them, but she
has to be near him. She has to move to Clifton.
No matter what her husband says, Tony nods quietly whatever
he wants. Keith's manipulation of Tony is far from an
(36:19):
isolated event. He wins over the rest of his inner
circle at that time, around half a dozen other women.
Using similar tactics. He gets them to open up about
their insecurities, then uses those to pressure them into unequal relationships.
On top of that, he seems to be practicing some
(36:39):
kind of hypnosis on his subjects, which might involve depriving
them of sleep under the guise of psychological healing. He
feeds them his pseudo intellectual ideas, promising that together they
can change the world. Oh and he also uses them
for sex. These women from Keith Lanier's base of operations.
(37:03):
They coordinate consumers byline and manage the company's many freelance salespeople. Meanwhile,
Keith takes care of the profit. His business becomes the
fastest growing MLM in the country, so he's making money
hand over fist. Over time, he refines his sales techniques
to draw in new devotees, leaning on the same strategies
(37:26):
he deployed on Tony in the hotel room after his
marketing spiel. In meeting rooms and conference halls, he launches
directly into a Q and A session. He goes on
for hours to wean out anyone who isn't one hundred
percent committed. Eventually, almost everyone slips out, leaving only the
most desperate marks behind. Keith seizes on these loan remaining attendees,
(37:51):
inviting them to continue their conversation in private. It doesn't
work every time, but when it does, he gets a
very committed recruit out of it, and if they happen
to be a vulnerable woman, all the better. Even so,
not everyone who buys into Keith's company is willing to
take a leap of faith for it, and soon enough,
(38:14):
some of them realize that consumer's byline isn't following through
on Keith's grand promises, and that puts his budding empire
in jeopardy. It's May twenty first, nineteen ninety two at
(38:40):
the Consumer's Byline offices in Clifton, New York. The employees
pass around a newspaper and whisper and hush tones. The
Albany Times Union has just published an article about Consumer's Byline,
calling it a potential pyramid scheme. It turns out that
Keith Vnieri's c Company is being sued by the Attorney
(39:02):
General in Arkansas for using deceptive trade practices, and New
York and Maine are in the midst of their own
investigations into the business. That's just the tip of the iceberg.
Though almost none of Keith's employees know about it. He's
already settled multiple lawsuits bringing similar charges against his business,
(39:24):
not to mention he's being sued for sexual harassment by
a woman in Massachusetts. So the atmosphere is tense. When
Keith struts out of his office that morning and gathers
his employees for a chat, he can see in their
eyes that they're looking for assurances. His mind reels as
he searches for an explanation. In the end, he settles
(39:47):
on a tried and true tactic, deflect. According to Keith,
his critics are too stupid to understand what he's trying
to do, and the government is out to get him.
Why Because Consumers Byline is too good of a deal.
Big retailers are hitting back through corrupt politicians because Keith's
(40:10):
company's discounts threaten their bottom lines. As he hits his stride,
he goes further. The government is spying on him. They're
reading his mail. It's a nightmare that no one could
possibly understand. No one but him. His employees. By the story,
they all still believe Keith is a genius. If they didn't,
(40:35):
he never would have hired them in the first place.
He paces around the cramped office and repeats a favorite
quote from author Jonathan Swift. When a true genius appears
in the world, you may know him by this sign
that the dunces are all in confederacy against him. In
other words, haters are just proof you're doing something right,
(40:56):
and Keith Rniery is going to amass.
Speaker 3 (40:59):
A lot of hate.
Speaker 2 (41:04):
The exact legal argument against Consumers Byline is a little complicated.
Like other multi level marketing companies, the success of the
business depends.
Speaker 3 (41:14):
On recruiting more and more members.
Speaker 2 (41:16):
Salespeople are incentivized to bring people in and collect commission
on their memberships, but that's not inherently illegal or technically
considered a pyramid scheme as long as members get their
promised discounts. Remember that's the whole point of consumers Byline.
Members get wholesale prices on merchandise like they would at Costco.
(41:40):
The problem is that customers aren't getting the price cuts
they were promised, and it turns out the salespeople aren't
receiving the commission checks on time either. Complaints about these
issues eventually prompt investigations into the company in twenty two states.
This doesn't need to be a death blow to Keith's company,
(42:02):
though he could cooperate, pay some fines and change his
business practices to comply with the law. Consumer's Byline is
likely grossing millions at this stage, so it could take
the hit and remain profitable. The problem is that confronting
all those lawsuits would mean admitting to a mistake. Keith
(42:23):
would have to go on record that he's engaged in
shady business practices, and that's something he'll never do. He's
incapable of admitting fault, so he digs in for a fight. Unfortunately,
for Tony Natali, this is around the time she chooses
to leave her husband. She moves into a townhouse across
(42:45):
the street from Keith, and he starts barging in at
all hours of the night. Their relationship becomes romantic, yet
Keith insists.
Speaker 3 (42:53):
On keeping it a secret.
Speaker 2 (42:55):
Otherwise, he claims people will assume she slept her way
to the top. Doesn't matter that she does a good
job running the cosmetics line, her achievements will be undermined
by their romance. It breaks Tony's heart, but she agrees
to stay quiet for the time being. Then things start
going downhill. Not only does keiths insatiable sexual appetite get
(43:20):
old real fast, he starts getting more controlling. He demands
that Tony only wear loose fitting clothing around the office.
He becomes unpredictable, scheduling meetings and then showing up two
hours late.
Speaker 3 (43:34):
He enters her house to sleep while she's not.
Speaker 2 (43:37):
There, so he can maintain the facade of only needing
two hours of rest a night.
Speaker 3 (43:42):
When he's awake, all he wants to.
Speaker 2 (43:44):
Talk to her about her as paranoid delusions and to
rave about the lawsuits. It's a nightmare that has Tony
questioning why she ever left her family behind. In nineteen
ninety three, she tells Keith she needs a chance. He
turns on her immediately and calls her uneducated. She's got
(44:05):
no prospects without this, He says, she'll have nothing if
she tries to leave. She tries to negotiate with him
to at least get their relationship out in the open,
but he won't hear of it. The confrontation leaves Keith rattle,
though he can tell he's losing control of Tony, and
in the aftermath he starts lashing out. For months, Tony's
(44:28):
been planning to go to Dallas and lead a training
course there for her employees at the cosmetics company, but
at the last second, Keith calls to tell her that
if she attends the conference, things are over between them.
There's no explanation, just a line in the sand. Either
Tony obeys him or else. In response, she yanks the
(44:51):
phone cord out of the wall. She's done with Keith Ranieri.
Keith can't believe it. He's furious, maybe more angry than
he's been in his entire life. He hates people slipping
out from under his thumb. It happened once before, with
fifteen year old Gina Hutchinson. But it's even worse this time.
(45:12):
He thinks of Tony as his primary girlfriend, the woman
he hopes will eventually help him rule his empire, if
only she weren't so stubbornly independent. If this is gonna work,
he needs her totally under his control. He refuses to
give up, so he waits for a few days for
(45:34):
Tony to fly back from Dallas and deploys a member
of his inner circle, Pam kay Friends, to do his bidding.
Over the last couple of months, Pam and Tony have
become close friends, so it doesn't seem suspicious to Tony
that she wants to spend time with her. But Keith
has given Pam a mission, telling her exactly what to
(45:54):
say to win Tony back. Over the next few weeks,
Pam plays on tony the weak points. Whenever the time
feels right, she catches her off guard and steers the
conversation towards Keith. She even breaks into Tony's house in
the middle of the night to plead with her to
take him back. None of it works, Tony's adamant about
(46:16):
leaving Keith. In the end, she takes time off work
and visits a yoga retreat to pull herself together. There,
miles away from Keith and Consumer's byline, she sits under
a tree and wonders what her next step should be,
where her life should go from here. All of a sudden,
(46:37):
as if by magic, a short, bald man in red
robes approaches her with a wide smile. He hands Tony
a rose and a note, then walks away without a word.
She looks at the note. It's from Keith. This right
here is stalking. But that's not what it feels like
(46:57):
to Tony. To her, it feels like a sign from
the universe. So she calls Keith. This time, he says
all the right things to her. He promises to make
their relationship public, to give her whatever she wants, even
as his business is collapsing around his ears. He says
he'll buy her a house and raise a family with her.
(47:20):
It's everything Tony's been wanting. She decides she still believes
in Keith Ranieri after all, and agrees to take him back.
It's one of the biggest mistakes of her life.
Speaker 3 (47:36):
Form Airship.
Speaker 2 (47:37):
This is episode one in our series on Keith Ranieri
and Nexium. On the next episode, Nexium picks up where
consumers Byline left off and Keith's cult of personality solidifies.
(48:02):
We use many different sources while preparing this episode. One
we particularly recommend is the program Inside the Mind of
Keith Erniery and The Rise and Fall of Nexian by
Tony Natali and Ched Harden. This episode contains re enactments
and dramatized details, and while in most cases we can't
know exactly what was said, all our dramatizations are based
(48:25):
on historical research. American Criminal is hosted, edited, and executive
produced by me Jeremy Schwartz. Audio editing by Christian Farraga,
Sound designed by Matthew Filler.
Speaker 3 (48:38):
Music by Throng.
Speaker 2 (48:39):
This episode is written in research by Terrell Wells.
Speaker 3 (48:43):
Managing producer Emily Burke.
Speaker 2 (48:45):
Executive producers are Joel Callen, William Simpson, and Lindsey Graham.
The world tomorrow.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
The Worldwide Church of God presents Herbert's w Armstrong.
Speaker 3 (00:08):
And I'm here to bring you the truth.
Speaker 4 (00:11):
No one else is telling you the things that God
is telling you through me.
Speaker 3 (00:16):
He's speaking through me the Lord. Let me experience what
it is to be a new bride. You know, I'm
not worried about what I'm about to say, though it
may be graphic. We're coming to the Lord and if
you can take it, beyond the veil is the chamber.
That's the wedding chamber. The Lord told me that.
Speaker 4 (00:37):
But from then on, visions begin to come. When this
comes up on me, it produces the vision. I'm able
to tell people what's wrong with them, what they must
do in life, and the sins that they are holding back.
Speaker 3 (00:50):
In their life.
Speaker 4 (00:51):
God is going to be moving vitally in fot like
he has before. Both judgments.
Speaker 5 (00:59):
Of the Hello Everyone and Welcome back to the Cult
Next Store podcast have a little bit of a different
episode dropped today. This is not one of our Cult
Next Doore episode drops. This is an episode from American Criminal.
So American Criminal is from Airship, which is the studio
behind American Scandal, Business Movers and History Daily those are
(01:21):
podcasts you might have heard of. American Criminal in particular,
delves deep into the lives and misdeeds of some of
history's most notorious criminals, as well as some of the
wildest crimes that you maybe have never heard of. So
things like fraud, theft, murder, and worse. Whatever the case,
whoever the criminal, you don't know the whole story until now.
(01:41):
So previous seasons of this podcast have included the jaw
dropping story of a series of bombings that rocked Salt
Lake City to its core, with rare Mormon documents holding
the key to this puzzle. The woman who laid the
foundation for the modern adoption industry by stealing babies and
selling them to desperate parents. The serial killer team, who,
(02:03):
if you believe their stories, were responsible for some six
hundred murders across the country and the assassination of civil
rights leaders Medgar Evers and Harvey Milk.
Speaker 1 (02:13):
This season, they're diving into Nexium, the so called self
help group that turned out to be one of the
most infamous modern cults. Back in twenty seventeen, Nexium suddenly
hit headlines across the country one day. Almost no one
had heard of it. The next it was being called
a cult. Reports came flooding in about a secret society,
(02:35):
psychological manipulation, imprisonment, even sexual abuse. At the center of
it all was Keith Runiery, a self proclaimed genius that
his followers called Vanguard. For decades, he'd been quietly building
his empire, using charm, manipulation and slick salesmanship to pull
people in, but behind the curtain, his real goal was control,
(02:59):
as especially over the women closest to him. When some
of them began to push back, Ranieri doubled down, using
blackmail and coercion to keep them trapped as his victims. Eventually, though,
he went too far and people started speaking out. This
is the story of Nexium. Find American Criminal on Spotify,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen.
Speaker 2 (03:23):
This episode contains descriptions and details that some listeners might
find disturbing. Listener discretion is advised. It's January twenty seventeen
(03:45):
in Vancouver, Canada. Thirty nine year old Sarah Edmondson sits
at a kitchen table and SIPs from a mug of tea.
Behind her, her best friend, Lauren Salzman, wipes down the
counter top while chatting away. That's something Sarah really admires
about her friend. She's always multitasking. It's like she can't
(04:05):
be still. So when Lauren puts down the rag and
finally sits at the table, Sarah knows that she must
want to talk about something important. Lauren clears her throat
and starts slow. It's about Nexian, the self help business
they both work for. There's something big going on within
(04:26):
the company, and Lauren wants to bring her in on it.
Speaker 3 (04:29):
Something transformative.
Speaker 2 (04:32):
Sarah sits up a little straighter when she hears that
Lauren is one of the most successful people she knows,
the type of woman who wakes up before dawn to
get in a workout, then stays up late.
Speaker 3 (04:45):
Working into the night.
Speaker 2 (04:47):
Sarah would kill to know what keeps her going, But
despite the fact that she brought it up, Lauren seems
hesitant to go on. She tells Sarah that she can't
just give away her secret. She has to be absolutely
sure that Sarah will never spread this around no matter what.
Sarah chuckles uneasily. Lauren's acting like she's about to share
(05:11):
the nuclear launch codes.
Speaker 3 (05:13):
I mean, surely it can't be that serious, but it is.
Speaker 2 (05:18):
Lauren tells Sarah that she has Nexium's formula for prosperity,
the secrets they've never shared with any of their customers.
When Sarah pushes for more specifics Lauren gets cagy and
won't go into detail. All she'll say is that this
is life changing, but there's a cost. Lauren slides a
(05:40):
pen and pad a paper across the table. If Sarah
wants in, she has to provide some kind of collateral.
Sarah just stares at it for a moment. Then Lauren
explains that Nexium needs something embarrassing on her, some piece
of information they could use against her, just in case.
(06:02):
She doesn't use the word blackmail, but that's exactly what
she's asking for. Before her own initiation into this group,
she handed over a nude photograph, but the collateral could
be anything, a written confession, a piece of evidence tying
her to a crime.
Speaker 3 (06:19):
Whatever.
Speaker 2 (06:21):
The request seriously unnerves Sarah, but she trusts her friend,
and more than that, she believes Innexion, So after thinking
for a minute, she writes out the worst thing she
can think of, something she did back in her twenties,
then slides the pad back across the table. Lauren looks
(06:42):
it over and shakes her head not good enough. It
has to be something that would ruin Sarah's life if
it became public. Sarah goes pale, but she wants this.
She needs to be on the inside of this group
sod and eventually comes up with something that satisfies Lauren.
(07:05):
She watches as her friend takes a picture of the
confession on her phone, then gives a thin smile. Now
Lauren can reveal the secret she's been hiding for so long.
Within the ranks of Nexium, there's a secret sorority called DOSS,
short for Dominus obsequious Sororium. She explains that it's like
(07:27):
the Freemasons, but for women, and if Sarah wants to
be officially inducted, she has to swear a vow of
obedience to Lauren. She has to become her slave. Sarah
sits back in her chair, scandalized by that word, but
Lauren rushes to soothe her concerns. She tells Sarah not
(07:49):
to take the master slave terminology too seriously. She should
think of the relationship as more spiritual, like the bond
between a nun and a mother superior. Sarah is not
quite sure she understands, but she has faith in her friend.
If Laurence says this is a good idea, then Sarah
trusts her. Her induction into doss is set for two
(08:11):
months from now, and Lauren's right, it will change Sarah's
life into a waking nightmare from Airship. I'm Jeremy Schwartz,
and this is American criminal. In twenty seventeen, a little
(08:57):
known consulting firm called Nexium became the center of an
international scandal. One day, no one had heard of the
group at all. The next people were calling it a cult.
But this wasn't your typical religious fringe group. On the surface,
Nexium built itself as a self improvement program, a company
(09:17):
that made good money by offering courses in human potential
and self actualization, whatever that meant. Sure, it might feel sketchy,
but a cult. As growing details of the group emerged, though,
the term started to feel more appropriate. There were accusations
of a secret society, psychological manipulation, imprisonment, and occult sexual abuse.
Speaker 3 (09:44):
Then there was the.
Speaker 2 (09:45):
Group's founder, Keith Ranieri, a self styled genius whose followers
worshiped him and called him Vanguard. It was all textbook cult.
Slowly the truth was uncovered through media and law enforce
Horsman investigations, and a full picture of the group began
to form. But the questions on everyone's lips remain the same.
(10:08):
Who was Keith Ranieri and how had he hoodwink so
many people in this day and age. Well, it turns
out Keith had been building his empire his entire life.
Nexium might have just suddenly appeared to the general public,
but it had been a long time coming. This is
(10:30):
episode one in our four part series on Nexium, Growing
Up with Keith Ranieri. It's nineteen seventy three in the
village of Suffern, New York, about thirty one miles north
of Manhattan. Thirteen year old Keith Ranieri sits next to
a hospital bed, clutching the frail hand of his mother Via.
(10:53):
She's just had open heart surgery and wrapped in the
bright white sheets, she reminds him of an angel. Vera's
eyelids flutter and Keith stifles a sob. Ever, since his
parents divorced three years ago, he and Vera have been
on their own. Lately, He's been dividing his days between
school and caring for his mom. Her health isn't great
(11:17):
to start with, and if he doesn't keep a constant
watch on her, she turns to illegal drugs to soothe
her pain. It would be a lot for a normal
thirteen year old to handle too much, but Keith knows
he's not normal. He's gifted. When he was around eight,
his parents took him to get an intelligence test, and
(11:39):
to his immense pride, he scored higher than average. Since then,
he's believed himself smarter than everyone around him. The thought
of his own specialness keeps him going through the hard times,
like right now, as he sits with his mom in
the hospital, Vera twitches in her sleep and squeezes her
(11:59):
son's hand. Keith squeezes back, determined to never let her go.
His mother's heart surgery changes Keith for near his life forever.
While still only a teenager, he's forced to take over
the caregiving responsibilities in his household. By day, he attends school,
(12:21):
mostly just scraping by. In the evenings, he waits on Verra,
trying his best to keep things together. His father sees
him a couple times a week, but he can feel
Keith slipping away as the years wear on. The kid
mostly keeps to himself too busy taking care of his
mom to maintain friendships with kids his own age. At school,
(12:44):
he embodies the slacker with potential trope, a nonconformist, too smart,
but never really puts in the effort to meet his potential.
As he gets a little older, this sensit a bad
boy image wins him some admirers. Slowly, Keith starts it's
opening up, but only to girls, and always with an
ulterior motive. He craves female attention so much that he
(13:08):
leads girls on regardless of whether he's actually interested in them.
He treats it like a game, telling them what they
want to hear, drawing them in, making them dependent on
him for their happiness. He likes being able to control
their emotions so easily. It's something that makes him feel
powerful when other parts of his life do the opposite.
(13:31):
Around nineteen seventy six, when Keith is sixteen, his mother's
health worsens again. Despite Keith's best efforts to help her
stay clean, Vera's deep in the throes of drug and
alcohol addiction. Her decline makes Keith feel like a failure. Meanwhile,
Vera herself can't help feeling like she's failing her son.
(13:54):
At night, she can overhear him on the phone talking
to his girlfriends in soft, hushed tones. When she can
make out the words, she's shocked at what she hears.
Keith gives them all the same rehearsed lines that they're
is one and only the love of his life. Vera's
unnerved by how easily he lies the lengths he goes
(14:16):
to in order to get what he wants. She tries
to tell him he shouldn't treat people that way, but
it doesn't do any good. Keith loves his mother, but
he doesn't think she has anything to teach him. He's
too smart to listen to anyone that goes for his
school guidance counselors too, he ignores their advice and loads
down his schedule with extra courses. Despite his mediocre grades,
(14:41):
somehow he manages to squeak by and graduates a year early.
There's no grand plan behind his desire to finish high school, though,
he just wanted to prove his genius. When his mom
encourages him to go to college, Keith hesitates at first,
he doesn't want to leave her behind, but this time
she convinces him to listen to her and he enrolls
(15:03):
at a university about two hours away. At the end
of his first year in nineteen seventy eight, he returns
home to celebrate his eighteenth birthday by.
Speaker 3 (15:13):
His mother's side.
Speaker 2 (15:15):
Birthdays have always been his favorite occasion, the one day
of the year that's about him, not Vera, and this
one is truly special. His mom goes all out, concealing
her failing health to throw a party for just the
two of them, the kind of celebrationed Teith will remember
for the rest of his life. The next day, he
(15:38):
bids his mother goodbye and heads back to school.
Speaker 3 (15:42):
Four months later, Vera passes away.
Speaker 2 (15:46):
For years, Keith has been mentally bracing himself to lose
his mother, but he's still not prepared for the grief.
The only way he can make it through his university
classes is to remember her encouragement. He's smart, he's destined
for greatness. That propels him through, and in nineteen eighty one,
(16:06):
he graduates from there, though his life starts to waiver.
Keith has ambition in a salesman's charisma, but he lacks direction.
In his spare time, he reads about Eastern spirituality, but
he's far too materialistic. To commit to any major lifestyle changes.
He wants money and power, which is what attracts him
(16:29):
to the multi level marketing company Amway after hearing a
pitch from an acquaintance.
Speaker 3 (16:35):
He spends a.
Speaker 2 (16:35):
Few years as an Amway salesman hawking health and beauty products.
While this gig doesn't bring Keith much material success, the
business model will inspire him for years to come. A
multi level marketing company or MLM, like Amway, works by
allowing its distributors to earn money in two ways. The
(16:57):
first is by simply moving product and earning commission like
a standard salesperson, but the second, potentially more lucrative option
is to recruit additional distributors.
Speaker 3 (17:10):
To work under them.
Speaker 2 (17:12):
So say Keith recruits five people he knows in the Amway.
These five distributors will pedal products on their own and
then send a cut of their profits back to Keith.
Speaker 3 (17:24):
The same rule applies to him.
Speaker 2 (17:25):
Whenever he sells a product, he gives some of the
proceeds to his recruiter, and so on. The more distributors
he brings into the business, the more passive income he
can potentially make. Visualized, this structure resembles a pyramid, with
the person at the top the head of the company,
making the most money. The difference between a multi level
(17:49):
marketing business and a pyramid scheme is that a legit
MLM allows distributors to make money solely as salespeople as
long as they can make money. He threw sales alone
and aren't forced to recruit additional distributors, it's not illegal.
Sitting at the top of that pyramid quickly becomes Keith's fantasy,
(18:12):
raking in money while plaps toil away beneath him. But
he's not in a rush to get there just yet.
For now, he drifts from place to place while keeping
his part time gig with Amway.
Speaker 3 (18:25):
He lets his.
Speaker 2 (18:25):
Hair get shaggy, grows a dark beard that sets off
his blue eyes, and dawns a large pair of round,
wireframe glasses. Though he's not making much career progress during
these years, this period sets the stage for what's to come.
Keith finds that he likes selling himself, and he's pretty
(18:45):
good at it. On top of that, he has a
knack for sniffing out vulnerable people, the kind who we're
looking for something to believe in, and a lot of
the time it doesn't matter if that's a product, a company,
or a person. In nineteen eighty four, when Keith is
twenty four, he meets fifteen year old Gina Hutchinson and
(19:08):
decides that he wants to be what she believes him.
He tells Gina she's a genius like him, with a
Buddhist soul that's much older than her body. He claims
her public school is brainwashing her, that society disempowers women,
and that only he can free her from the patriarchal system.
(19:28):
He doesn't just want to be her lover, he tells
the teen he wants to be her teacher and spiritual guide.
One night, he makes a commotion squeezing himself through Gina's
bedroom window, and Gina's older sister, Heidi, barges in to
find this grown man in her sister's bed. Obviously freaked out,
(19:49):
Heidie calls their mother in from the other room. Yet
is Gina's mother rushes down the hall. Keith doesn't pick
up and run. He thinks he's too old for that
and talks it out. Miraculously, he manages to convince Gina's
mom that despite the age gap, he's sincerely interested in
(20:10):
a mature committed relationship with her fifteen year old daughter.
Of course, everything Keith tells her is a lie. Gina
isn't his only quote unquote girlfriend. He tells all of
his lovers that women are monogamous, but men are hardwired
to be polyamorous. Even so, Gina shocked when she eventually
(20:32):
finds out that Keith is seeing other women. She breaks
things off with him, thinking that's the end of it.
But Keith Vanieri doesn't give up so easily. He refuses
to be rejected to lose control of this girl he's
been grooming. The sex is one thing, but that's not
what this is about. It's about control. He tries everything
(20:55):
to get the teenager back. He even thinks that a
woman's touch might get the job done, so he sends
his other girlfriends to apologize on his behalf. They try
to bring Gina back into the fold, inviting her to
join them in a kind of communal relationship, but Gina
won't be swayed. It's a bitter pill for Keith to swallow,
(21:15):
but he has plenty else to keep him occupied. After
Gina rejects him, the remaining young women and Keith's orb
but start to congregate at his townhouse in Clifton Park,
New York. Eventually a couple of them start living with him,
and he regales them with stories about how he's a
(21:37):
super genius and or reincarnated deity. That first part seems
like a natural progression from Keith's already inflated ego about
his own intelligence, but where that second part came from
is a little bit of a mystery. Given that he
dabbled in various Eastern philosophies and mystic ideas, it's probably
(21:57):
an extension of that, and the thought of being a
godd reborn on earth suits him just fine. And he
ain't just saying that to impress the women in his life.
He's decided that he wants to become a mentor to
the rich and famous.
Speaker 3 (22:12):
Gurus have been all the rage.
Speaker 2 (22:14):
Around the country lately, and Keith's sure he can mix
the multi level marketing strategies he learned at Amway with
therapeutic and spiratual techniques he's read about in books to
a mass a devoted following, hopefully made up of people
who are easy to separate from their money. In nineteen
eighty five, he starts putting his plan into action. The
(22:37):
first step is to establish a reputation as someone worth
listening to. That April, the science magazine Omni publishes a
forty eight question IQ quiz called the Mega Test. People
who score a high enough grade are eligible to join
the Mega Society, a high IQ club similar to MENSA.
(22:58):
For context, The average which person is purported to have
an IQ of one hundred, and generally speaking, a genius
level score is one fifty or higher. Keith scores one
of the highest grades ever recorded, putting his IQ somewhere
above one seventy six.
Speaker 3 (23:17):
With this proof of his intelligence.
Speaker 2 (23:19):
Keith boasts to his girlfriends that he's smarter than Einstein.
He even lands an article in a local paper that
labels him one of the biggest geniuses to ever live.
Speaker 3 (23:30):
The thing is, it's just a marketing campaign.
Speaker 2 (23:35):
A traditional IQ test gives its participants a time limit
and its supervised to prevent cheating, but the Mega Test
doesn't follow any of those rules, so there was nothing
to stop Keith from getting the women and girls in
his orbit to help him look up the answers to
anything that stumped him. Still, even though it's all smoke
(23:55):
and mirrors, Keith's media blitz takes him far. His newspaper
profile prince his own ridiculous claims, like how he understood
quantum mechanics at age four and only sleeps two hours
a night. There's no fact checking done to prove any
of this. Keith's just taken at his word, and on
(24:16):
this basis, he manages to enter the nineteen eighty nine
edition of the Guinness Book of World Records as the
man with the highest IQ, along with two others who
took the Mega test. It's everything Keith could have hoped for.
At the age of twenty nine, he decides he's ready
to make his next move.
Speaker 3 (24:36):
Now all he needs is money.
Speaker 2 (24:53):
It's nineteen ninety one at the Holiday Inn in Rochester,
New York. Thirty one year old Keith Ranieri enters the
land Beige ballroom to a smattering of applause. A bluish
haze of cigarette smoke fills the air. Taking in the
assembled crowd, Keith gives them a practiced warm smile. His
(25:13):
audience are mostly straight laced, typical middle class drivers, eager
to climb to the next rung on the financial ladder.
By contrast, Keith looks a bit like a late stage
hipie stuffed in a suit, so some of them probably
have trouble taking him seriously. But his flyers advertised him
as one of the smartest men in the world, and
(25:35):
they want to see if he lives up to that
very specific hype. Keith knows they're expecting a lot, but
that doesn't shake his confidence. He approaches a podium on
the stage, smiles and polishes his glasses on his shirt.
He savors the moment, takes his time setting the hook,
(25:56):
then he launches into a spiel.
Speaker 3 (25:58):
It's a fairly straight forward marketing pitch.
Speaker 2 (26:01):
Keith announces that he wants to let his audience in
on the ground floor of his new business, Consumers Byline. Conceptually,
it's similar to Costco or Sam's Club. Members pay a
yearly fee to join the organization, and in return, they
get to buy merchandise at wholesale prices. The more members
they recruit, the lower those prices can be because cumulative
(26:25):
buying power allows them to purchase goods in bulk. Unlike Costco,
Consumers Byline won't have any brick and mortar stores. Instead,
customers will receive their purchases via mail. As Keith explains,
this will save people even more money. It's a sound
business proposition, but what really sells the idea is Keith himself.
(26:49):
He talks up his own credentials, repeating the claim that
he's the smartest man in the world. He says he's
a judo champion who plays seven musical instruments, which I
guess makes him exactly the kind of person who'd be
great at running a business.
Speaker 3 (27:05):
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (27:06):
Sitting in the audience taking in all of this bluster
is thirty two year old Tony Natali. Her husband had
to talk her into coming today, but now she's intrigued.
Keith's business model makes sense to her. Still, she can't
help but wonder what the smartest man in the world
is doing here in a holiday inn. When Keith opens
(27:30):
the floor up to questions, she raises her hand and
asks him why this why a discount retail business. Shouldn't
he be out crying cancer or something. Keith smirks, Oh,
he anticipated a question like this. Without missing a beat,
he launches into a prepared response. Don't worry, he tells Tony,
(27:53):
he'll definitely be changing the world soon enough. Consumer's byline
is just the first step on that journey. When the
presentation is over. A number of attendees sign up for
monthly memberships, but some of them get more than that.
As Keith shakes Tony's hand on her way out, she's
struck by his deep blue eyes. He looks at her
(28:15):
like she's the only person in the world.
Speaker 3 (28:18):
She knows. At that moment, she believes in Keith Ranieri.
Speaker 2 (28:27):
Four months later, Tony and her husband are spreading the
good word about consumers byline like wildfire. They tap into
the pocketbooks of all their friends, swearing up and down
that being members will save them all money in the
long run. They do so well that they win a
prize for being the top sellers in their area. It
(28:47):
comes with a sixteen thousand dollars bonus. Tony and her
husband decide to travel to Clifton Park to accept the
award in person and see the company's headquarters for themselves.
When they arrive, the tiny office is frenetic, with a
few dozen employees buzzing back and forth between computer terminals.
(29:07):
This is at the Internet's inception, before most companies are
taking advantage of the world wide wet so all the
Hubbub goes a long way toward impressing Tony, but it's
Keith who really wowser. He rushes up to them like
a whirlwind, dressed in a button up shirt and gray sweatpants.
It's a ridiculous outfit, but in Tony's eyes it just
(29:29):
amplifies as rebellious, genius, mistique and Tony, to put it lightly,
she is into it the whole thing. She likes that
Keith has more women employees than men. She likes that
he seems to work around the clock rather than sleeping,
and she likes it when he catches her arm before
(29:50):
he ducks out to take a smoke break. He holds
her gaze like he did the first time they shook hands,
and asks if she's interested in quitting smoking. She tells
him she is, and he smiles. He can help with
that if they can talk somewhere in private. Tony shrugs,
glances at her disinterested husband, and accepts the invitation. The
(30:14):
next thing she knows, she's sitting in Keith's office. It's
a small room cluttered by stacks of paper and a
big computer with a fan that roars like an airplane.
Keith takes her hand, tracing the lines of her palm
a propos of nothing. He tells Tony she has beautiful eyes,
and she gets a bit flustered. Then he asks her
(30:37):
to lay back, so why not. She reclines in her seat.
Speaker 3 (30:42):
And closes her eyes.
Speaker 2 (30:44):
From there, Keith starts asking her questions, delicately, pressing down
on her hand as they talk. He says he's stimulating
pressure points, connecting physical touch with her desire to quit smoking.
Tony skeptical that this will help, but she does what
he says all the same. He asks her what makes
(31:05):
her nervous, how she relaxes, and what kind of music
she likes. Slowly, his soft voice lulls her into a
kind of trance for about ten minutes. She lays back
while Keith whispers to her. Then finally he calls her
name and breaks the spell. Tony shakes her head, rubs
(31:27):
her eyes.
Speaker 3 (31:28):
And sits up.
Speaker 2 (31:29):
When Keith leads her outside, Tony's surprised to see the
sun so low in the sky. It turns out she
was in Keith's office for almost three hours, yet she
barely remembers anything he said. When her husband asks if
she wants a cigarette, she presses down on her palm
as if it's a reflex relief floods through her. No thanks,
(31:54):
she tells him, thanks to Keith Ranieri, she smoked her
last cigarette. That evening, Keith watches Tony na Tali leave
with a smile. One of his inner circle, a woman
named Pamela Kayfritz, ask Keith if Tony is the one
(32:14):
is she family?
Speaker 3 (32:16):
Keith nods he has her now every day.
Speaker 2 (32:20):
After that, Keith takes time out of a schedule to
call Tony on the phone. He tells her that despite
all the smart and capable people working for him, only
she really gets him. During their conversations, he peppers her
with questions about her childhood and previous marriages. He's a
great listener, and Tony finds it both liberating and scary
(32:44):
to open up to him. She eventually tells him that
as a child she was sexually abused by one of
her uncles. Keith doesn't shy away from talking about those
traumatic memories. Instead, he probes deeper, asking for more and
more details. He claims he wants to heal her. Of course,
(33:06):
even Tony picks up on the fact that Keith's got
other motives. That becomes clear when he starts asking about
her sex life, and when he says he thinks her
husband is cheating with their nanny. Tony doesn't really believe it,
but she wants to because then there wouldn't be anything
so wrong with her spending hours every night talking to
(33:27):
Keith Vanieri. Around six months after their first meeting, in
January of nineteen ninety two, Keith invites Tony back up
to Clifton. She and her husband are having some financial
problems relating to their own business, and Keith says he
can help find a solution. But before they talk shop,
(33:47):
he takes her to see his place. Tony's excited for
the chance to see how the smartest man in the
world lives. She's been imagining a tech lover's paradise, a
house full of computerized gadgets and stacks of books. That
is not what she finds. It turns out Keith lives
(34:08):
in a bland townhouse with a couple of his female employees.
To make matters worse, the house is a dump. It's
full of dirty, cat litter and crusty dishes. Tony's disappointed,
but chalks it up to Keith's enterprising attitude. She tells
herself that he's too busy to worry about keeping his
home clean, and that he lives with these women to
(34:30):
save money for the business.
Speaker 3 (34:32):
They're all just friends, right.
Speaker 2 (34:35):
That naivete also leads her to entertain Keith's plan for
her finances. He offers her a salaried position selling a
new line of cosmetics. It'll be a separate company from
consumers byline, but she'll be able to tap into their
existing customer base.
Speaker 3 (34:52):
Tony's interested.
Speaker 2 (34:53):
It sounds like a good opportunity, bod She might have
to make some sacrifices to make it work. For st
She'd probably have to move to Clifton, leaving her husband
and son behind. That's a big ask, so she doesn't
say yes right away.
Speaker 3 (35:10):
She wants to think about it.
Speaker 2 (35:13):
Keith is determined to have Tony, though, so late that
night he comes to her hotel room. He wants to
talk some more about her childhood sexual abuse. He interrogates
her endlessly, making her tell him the story three, four,
five times. By that point, Tony's begging Keith to let
her rest, but he says no. Sleep is a construct,
(35:38):
he tells her. Then he makes her go into more
detail about her family secrets. Finally, as the morning sun
starts seeping through the hotel room blinds he makes his move.
Tony is sleep deprived and emotionally wrung out. She's at
her lowest. That's when Keith tells her he has the answers.
(35:59):
He can figure her problems, all of them, but she
has to be near him. She has to move to Clifton.
No matter what her husband says, Tony nods quietly whatever
he wants. Keith's manipulation of Tony is far from an
(36:19):
isolated event. He wins over the rest of his inner
circle at that time, around half a dozen other women.
Using similar tactics. He gets them to open up about
their insecurities, then uses those to pressure them into unequal relationships.
On top of that, he seems to be practicing some
(36:39):
kind of hypnosis on his subjects, which might involve depriving
them of sleep under the guise of psychological healing. He
feeds them his pseudo intellectual ideas, promising that together they
can change the world. Oh and he also uses them
for sex. These women from Keith Lanier's base of operations.
(37:03):
They coordinate consumers byline and manage the company's many freelance salespeople. Meanwhile,
Keith takes care of the profit. His business becomes the
fastest growing MLM in the country, so he's making money
hand over fist. Over time, he refines his sales techniques
to draw in new devotees, leaning on the same strategies
(37:26):
he deployed on Tony in the hotel room after his
marketing spiel. In meeting rooms and conference halls, he launches
directly into a Q and A session. He goes on
for hours to wean out anyone who isn't one hundred
percent committed. Eventually, almost everyone slips out, leaving only the
most desperate marks behind. Keith seizes on these loan remaining attendees,
(37:51):
inviting them to continue their conversation in private. It doesn't
work every time, but when it does, he gets a
very committed recruit out of it, and if they happen
to be a vulnerable woman, all the better. Even so,
not everyone who buys into Keith's company is willing to
take a leap of faith for it, and soon enough,
(38:14):
some of them realize that consumer's byline isn't following through
on Keith's grand promises, and that puts his budding empire
in jeopardy. It's May twenty first, nineteen ninety two at
(38:40):
the Consumer's Byline offices in Clifton, New York. The employees
pass around a newspaper and whisper and hush tones. The
Albany Times Union has just published an article about Consumer's Byline,
calling it a potential pyramid scheme. It turns out that
Keith Vnieri's c Company is being sued by the Attorney
(39:02):
General in Arkansas for using deceptive trade practices, and New
York and Maine are in the midst of their own
investigations into the business. That's just the tip of the iceberg.
Though almost none of Keith's employees know about it. He's
already settled multiple lawsuits bringing similar charges against his business,
(39:24):
not to mention he's being sued for sexual harassment by
a woman in Massachusetts. So the atmosphere is tense. When
Keith struts out of his office that morning and gathers
his employees for a chat, he can see in their
eyes that they're looking for assurances. His mind reels as
he searches for an explanation. In the end, he settles
(39:47):
on a tried and true tactic, deflect. According to Keith,
his critics are too stupid to understand what he's trying
to do, and the government is out to get him.
Why Because Consumers Byline is too good of a deal.
Big retailers are hitting back through corrupt politicians because Keith's
(40:10):
company's discounts threaten their bottom lines. As he hits his stride,
he goes further. The government is spying on him. They're
reading his mail. It's a nightmare that no one could
possibly understand. No one but him. His employees. By the story,
they all still believe Keith is a genius. If they didn't,
(40:35):
he never would have hired them in the first place.
He paces around the cramped office and repeats a favorite
quote from author Jonathan Swift. When a true genius appears
in the world, you may know him by this sign
that the dunces are all in confederacy against him. In
other words, haters are just proof you're doing something right,
(40:56):
and Keith Rniery is going to amass.
Speaker 3 (40:59):
A lot of hate.
Speaker 2 (41:04):
The exact legal argument against Consumers Byline is a little complicated.
Like other multi level marketing companies, the success of the
business depends.
Speaker 3 (41:14):
On recruiting more and more members.
Speaker 2 (41:16):
Salespeople are incentivized to bring people in and collect commission
on their memberships, but that's not inherently illegal or technically
considered a pyramid scheme as long as members get their
promised discounts. Remember that's the whole point of consumers Byline.
Members get wholesale prices on merchandise like they would at Costco.
(41:40):
The problem is that customers aren't getting the price cuts
they were promised, and it turns out the salespeople aren't
receiving the commission checks on time either. Complaints about these
issues eventually prompt investigations into the company in twenty two states.
This doesn't need to be a death blow to Keith's company,
(42:02):
though he could cooperate, pay some fines and change his
business practices to comply with the law. Consumer's Byline is
likely grossing millions at this stage, so it could take
the hit and remain profitable. The problem is that confronting
all those lawsuits would mean admitting to a mistake. Keith
(42:23):
would have to go on record that he's engaged in
shady business practices, and that's something he'll never do. He's
incapable of admitting fault, so he digs in for a fight. Unfortunately,
for Tony Natali, this is around the time she chooses
to leave her husband. She moves into a townhouse across
(42:45):
the street from Keith, and he starts barging in at
all hours of the night. Their relationship becomes romantic, yet
Keith insists.
Speaker 3 (42:53):
On keeping it a secret.
Speaker 2 (42:55):
Otherwise, he claims people will assume she slept her way
to the top. Doesn't matter that she does a good
job running the cosmetics line, her achievements will be undermined
by their romance. It breaks Tony's heart, but she agrees
to stay quiet for the time being. Then things start
going downhill. Not only does keiths insatiable sexual appetite get
(43:20):
old real fast, he starts getting more controlling. He demands
that Tony only wear loose fitting clothing around the office.
He becomes unpredictable, scheduling meetings and then showing up two
hours late.
Speaker 3 (43:34):
He enters her house to sleep while she's not.
Speaker 2 (43:37):
There, so he can maintain the facade of only needing
two hours of rest a night.
Speaker 3 (43:42):
When he's awake, all he wants to.
Speaker 2 (43:44):
Talk to her about her as paranoid delusions and to
rave about the lawsuits. It's a nightmare that has Tony
questioning why she ever left her family behind. In nineteen
ninety three, she tells Keith she needs a chance. He
turns on her immediately and calls her uneducated. She's got
(44:05):
no prospects without this, He says, she'll have nothing if
she tries to leave. She tries to negotiate with him
to at least get their relationship out in the open,
but he won't hear of it. The confrontation leaves Keith rattle,
though he can tell he's losing control of Tony, and
in the aftermath he starts lashing out. For months, Tony's
(44:28):
been planning to go to Dallas and lead a training
course there for her employees at the cosmetics company, but
at the last second, Keith calls to tell her that
if she attends the conference, things are over between them.
There's no explanation, just a line in the sand. Either
Tony obeys him or else. In response, she yanks the
(44:51):
phone cord out of the wall. She's done with Keith Ranieri.
Keith can't believe it. He's furious, maybe more angry than
he's been in his entire life. He hates people slipping
out from under his thumb. It happened once before, with
fifteen year old Gina Hutchinson. But it's even worse this time.
(45:12):
He thinks of Tony as his primary girlfriend, the woman
he hopes will eventually help him rule his empire, if
only she weren't so stubbornly independent. If this is gonna work,
he needs her totally under his control. He refuses to
give up, so he waits for a few days for
(45:34):
Tony to fly back from Dallas and deploys a member
of his inner circle, Pam kay Friends, to do his bidding.
Over the last couple of months, Pam and Tony have
become close friends, so it doesn't seem suspicious to Tony
that she wants to spend time with her. But Keith
has given Pam a mission, telling her exactly what to
(45:54):
say to win Tony back. Over the next few weeks,
Pam plays on tony the weak points. Whenever the time
feels right, she catches her off guard and steers the
conversation towards Keith. She even breaks into Tony's house in
the middle of the night to plead with her to
take him back. None of it works, Tony's adamant about
(46:16):
leaving Keith. In the end, she takes time off work
and visits a yoga retreat to pull herself together. There,
miles away from Keith and Consumer's byline, she sits under
a tree and wonders what her next step should be,
where her life should go from here. All of a sudden,
(46:37):
as if by magic, a short, bald man in red
robes approaches her with a wide smile. He hands Tony
a rose and a note, then walks away without a word.
She looks at the note. It's from Keith. This right
here is stalking. But that's not what it feels like
(46:57):
to Tony. To her, it feels like a sign from
the universe. So she calls Keith. This time, he says
all the right things to her. He promises to make
their relationship public, to give her whatever she wants, even
as his business is collapsing around his ears. He says
he'll buy her a house and raise a family with her.
(47:20):
It's everything Tony's been wanting. She decides she still believes
in Keith Ranieri after all, and agrees to take him back.
It's one of the biggest mistakes of her life.
Speaker 3 (47:36):
Form Airship.
Speaker 2 (47:37):
This is episode one in our series on Keith Ranieri
and Nexium. On the next episode, Nexium picks up where
consumers Byline left off and Keith's cult of personality solidifies.
(48:02):
We use many different sources while preparing this episode. One
we particularly recommend is the program Inside the Mind of
Keith Erniery and The Rise and Fall of Nexian by
Tony Natali and Ched Harden. This episode contains re enactments
and dramatized details, and while in most cases we can't
know exactly what was said, all our dramatizations are based
(48:25):
on historical research. American Criminal is hosted, edited, and executive
produced by me Jeremy Schwartz. Audio editing by Christian Farraga,
Sound designed by Matthew Filler.
Speaker 3 (48:38):
Music by Throng.
Speaker 2 (48:39):
This episode is written in research by Terrell Wells.
Speaker 3 (48:43):
Managing producer Emily Burke.
Speaker 2 (48:45):
Executive producers are Joel Callen, William Simpson, and Lindsey Graham.
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