SPEAKER_01 0:44

Welcome to the Femme Fatal, a true crime podcast with an astrology twist. I'm your host, Stacey Dotson. Each week I'll be joined by a guest host because this femme fatal prefers not to work alone. Hello, and welcome back to the Femme Fatal. Today I'm once again joined by Greg, my husband. Hey, babe.

SPEAKER_00 1:03

Hey, babe. Hello. How are you? Doing good. It's uh really nasty weather outside, but I'm glad I can come up here and hear you tell me a story.

SPEAKER_01 1:12

Yes. Well, today's story is about a woman that's deeply, deeply involved in a federal sex trafficking case. And today we're talking about Allison Mack.

SPEAKER_00 1:23

Oh, wow. So like Smallville, huh?

SPEAKER_01 1:24

So Smallville, Chloe Sullivan, yes. Clark's best friend, the girl next door of the WB Network for 10 years. A show that you and I watched together for 10 years.

SPEAKER_00 1:36

I know.

SPEAKER_01 1:37

Wondering when Clark would realize he could fly. And spoiler alert, it wasn't till the series finale.

SPEAKER_00 1:44

I have a lot of opinions on Smallville, but that's probably not the time or place to go over many of them.

SPEAKER_01 1:48

This is not the Smallville rewatch podcast, yes. So Allison, in addition to being Chloe Sullivan and the girl next door, she was second in command of a sex cult operating out of Albany, New York, convicted felon, federal prisoner, and honestly, one of the most fascinating stories I'm gonna ever cover.

SPEAKER_00 2:08

Oh, you know, if I was going to start a sex cult, you know, Albany, New York would be my first choice.

SPEAKER_01 2:13

Yes. And she's both a perpetrator and as you'll hear the story in a very, very complicated way, eventually a victim. Alison Mack was born on July 29th, 1982, in Priet, West Germany. Her father, Jonathan Mack, was an opera singer performing in Europe. And her mother, Mindy, was a school teacher and bookkeeper. She also had an older brother, Robin, and a younger sister, Shannon. And when Alison was two years old, the family moved back to the United States and settled in Long Beach, California. Allison starts acting at the age of four in commercials, and her first job is a series of print ads for a German chocolate company. I guess somehow maybe that was a connection from her Germany days. And it just snowballs from there. By age seven, she's enrolled at the young actor space in Los Angeles, a serious acting school for kids. And by all accounts, she's a cheerful, energetic kid who genuinely loved performing. She racks up TV movies, guest spots, commercials throughout the late 80s and 90s. She appears in Police Academy Six as a child.

SPEAKER_00 3:23

Well, you know, Police Academy Six, the most memorable of the 27 police academies that came out.

SPEAKER_01 3:29

She's in another film with Sissy Spacek. She's in Camp Nowhere, and she pops up in Honey We Shrunk Ourselves. Remember that franchise?

SPEAKER_00 3:36

Is that the one with Rick Moranis? Rick Moranis. Okay, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 3:40

In 1997 and 98, she gets a recurring arc on Seventh Heaven, the very wholesome WB family drama. And she plays a teenager who's self-harming. Critics notice her role. She's very good in this role, and they see a quality the girl next door, someone you can root for. And so good things started to happen. And in 2000, she co-stars in a short-lived Fox series called Opposite Sex, playing Kate Jacobs. The show is canceled after one season, but in that cast, a very young Milo Ventimiglia from Heroes and a very young Chris Evans. Yes, Chris Evans, Captain America. So in October 2001, everything changes. She lands the role that would define her life, and that is the role of Chloe Sullivan in Smallville. For anyone that needs a refresher, Smallville is WB later CW drama about Clark Kent before he becomes Superman. And it runs from 2001 to 2011. Ten seasons. And Tom Welling plays Clark and Kristen Kruok plays Lana Lang, his high school crush. And she's important. She comes up later in the story. Allison Mack plays Chloe, and a character who did not exist in the original DC comics, as you know, right? So she was invented specifically for this show. Chloe is Clark's best friend. She's the editor of the school newspaper, The Torch. Do you remember that?

SPEAKER_00 5:07

The Torch. I do.

SPEAKER_01 5:11

She's smart, funny, loyal, and endlessly supportive. And she has that iconic blonde Bob, the short blonde Bob. And she was very, very popular with viewers. She became so popular with viewers that the producers greenlit a spin-off web series called Smallville Chloe Chronicles that aired exclusively on AOL.com. I don't remember that. Do you remember that?

SPEAKER_00 5:35

Really?

SPEAKER_01 5:36

I know. I don't remember that. I may have to look that up later. So, other than Tom Welling, Allison is the only character to appear in every season of Smallville. She even got to direct two episodes, by the way, in seasons eight and nine. And so, you know, by every account, she's a talented, hardworking actress, right? Now, here's something important. I want to sit with you. Chloe Sullivan is essentially the friend everyone wants. She's fiercely loyal, always in your corner, and will help you hide a body. And metaphorically, in Clark's case, almost literally. So she's the kind of person who makes you feel like you matter. She has charisma like that. You know, like everybody wants to be her friend.

SPEAKER_00 6:19

So she's basically kind of the same person in real life as she played in the show. That she's just someone that you trust, that you know, you confide in, that's easily, you know, able to work herself into your good graces.

SPEAKER_01 6:33

Or even if she's not really that person, she can act that way.

SPEAKER_00 6:37

Gotcha.

SPEAKER_01 6:38

So while Smallville's shooting, she's living in Vancouver, British Columbia, and she has a long-term relationship with the Canadian actor named Chad Crowchuk. And she travels with him. She's been to Syria, Turkey, Mongolia, Paris, and she's also really, really good friends with Kristen Crook. They actually roomed together at one point in New York's West Village. And despite all of that, the fame, the travel, the fans adoring her, in her own words, on a CBC podcast, she said that despite having the kind of dream life that everybody wants, she had this odd emptiness. And that her and Kristen, they would talk about it a lot, that they both felt like they're at the height of their careers, they're living what would look like a perfect life from the outside, but they were quietly feeling like something was missing and couldn't explain it. And in 2006, Kristen Crook finds something she thinks might help. So let's talk about what Nexium is. It's run by a man named Keith Rainier and a woman named Nancy Salzman in Albany, New York. They first sort of branded it as a success program. They called it the Executive Success Programs or ESP. On the surface, it's a self-help company. They sold what they called rational inquiry courses. What is that? I don't know. Multi-day intensives designed to help you identify and overcome psychological blocks, achieve your goals, become your best self. The courses cost thousands of dollars, and in my opinion, were obviously bullshit, right? Students were encouraged to recruit others who were also encouraged to recruit others. It was a standard MLM structure. They called their courses Tech and their founder Vanguard. And that's what Keith Rainier was known as on the inside of Nexium. He was known as Vanguard.

SPEAKER_00 8:42

Not Vanguard Rainier, just Vanguard.

SPEAKER_01 8:45

Just Vanguard.

SPEAKER_00 8:46

So this Nexium, they form it in Albany. They decide, hey, we're just going to put some health, self-help crap out there. And a bunch of people were like, this sounds great and legit, signed up for it. And they started recruiting other people and it's building at this point.

SPEAKER_01 9:00

It's building. Now, Rainier is a strange man. He was born in 1960 and he spent years making outlandish claims of his own intelligence. He claimed to be one of the top three problem solvers in the world, that he had a near photographic memory, and that he held the world record for highest IQ. None of this was independently verified, but he had previously run a pyramid scheme in the early 90s called Consumer's By Line that collapsed after a multi-state investigation. He also reportedly had sexual relationships with girls as young as 12. But by the late 90s, he had reinvented himself as a self-help guru, and Nexium was his vehicle. Now in 2006, Kristen Crook takes a two-day introductory course through a Nexium women's group called Janus. And she loves it, glowing about it. She tells Allison, it's the science of joy, it's the most amazing thing. It's made everything so much better in my life. And Allison remembers also feeling this emptiness and actively searching for something to fill it. So she decides to go. She attends the same two-day introduction and she's hooked, immediately, completely hooked. She described it later as feeling like she had finally found the thing she had been looking for. The courses gave her language for things she'd felt her whole life. They made her feel seen, understood, like she was being handed tools to become a fundamentally better version of herself. And not to dismiss her experience, but that's textbook cult recruitment right there, you know? Cults are extraordinarily effective at identifying people who are searching for meaning, for community, for identity, offering them exactly what they need to hear. And Allison was a searcher and Nexium founder. Now, didn't know this. Kristen Kruok also joins. So for a few years, they're both members of Nexium.

SPEAKER_00 10:57

And they're out there recruiting people and spreading the word and all that good stuff, right?

SPEAKER_01 11:01

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 11:01

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 11:02

But Kristen eventually leaves. She will later say that she left in 2013 and had minimal contact with remaining members after that. She exits, but Allison doesn't. And then obviously their paths go in completely different directions.

SPEAKER_00 11:16

So they're not living together anymore at this point. They've no still friends or so Smallville's on, this is around 2013.

SPEAKER_01 11:24

Smallville's over, but they were still friends. They remain friends, but now Kristen's going to be out of the picture because this is where Allison goes all in. So by 2010, actually, Allison is not just a casual Nexium member. She's moved to Albany to be closer to the community. Smallville ends in 2011. And then rather than pursuing more acting, she throws herself into Nexium. And she becomes one of the most visible and active recruiters in the organization. She co-creates a program called The Source, a Nexium track specifically designed to recruit actors. She's using her Hollywood connections, her fame, and her genuine warmth to bring people in. She approaches her Smallville co-stars. She tries to recruit Callum Blue and Alania Huffman. The pitch is always the same. The community will make you a better artist, a better person, a more fulfilled human being. Come see.

SPEAKER_00 12:21

Did anybody from Smallville take her up on the offer?

SPEAKER_01 12:23

No, I think the only one that was in there with her was Kristen. So she also started an XEM a cappella group, which we don't need to talk about that, but I thought that was funny. She's falling deeper and deeper in with Keith Rainier and his influence.

SPEAKER_00 12:38

And whenever you join the cult and you start the a cappella group within the cult, that probably means you're all in.

SPEAKER_01 12:43

Yeah, you're all in. She starts a sexual relationship with Keith.

SPEAKER_00 12:50

The leader? Yeah, the cult leader. What about the Canadian?

SPEAKER_01 12:53

You know what? I don't know. I just I guess he disappeared. Well, she moved to Albany, so I guess she left him. So she starts a sexual relationship with Keith. And according to her own account on a CBC podcast, he frames it as energy work, a form of spiritual healing for her insecurities around her sexuality. He tells her, I cannot stress enough how chilling this is. And that no other man will be able to do what he does for her, that she's special and their connection is singular. Gag.

SPEAKER_00 13:28

That's so cringe.

SPEAKER_01 13:30

That's so cringe. So she had sex with him daily. She had threesomes. Daily. She had threesomes with other Nexium members who were also in sexual relationships with Rainier. And she tells women on the inside that they will reach enlightenment if they follow her path and develop a relationship with Keith. And she is at this point a true believer, a disciple. She genuinely thinks that this man is changing her life for the better and that everything he does, including the things that look from the outside like manipulation and coercion, are for her benefit.

SPEAKER_00 14:04

I have no comment. I mean it's just unbelievable.

SPEAKER_01 14:09

At least they are not cappella.

SPEAKER_00 14:11

Yeah, they're better singers for it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 14:14

And then in 2015, Keith Rainier creates something new, something called DOS. And DOS stands for Dominus Obsequis Sororium. It's Latin and it translates to master over slave women, or in some readings, lord of the obedient female companions. Rainier later denies the translation. So here is how Rainier presented the DOS to the women he recruited into it. He said it was a top-secret women's empowerment society, a sorority, a sisterhood. It's going to help women develop strength, discipline, and self-reliance and to hold themselves accountable, to push past their limitations. It was for serious women only who were ready to commit to something. And it was exclusive and it was special, and you were chosen. So here's how DOS actually worked. It was a pyramid scheme. He was very good at that, apparently. Keith Rainier was at the top. He was the sole grandmaster and the only man in the entire organization. He initially recruited eight women directly. These were his first line masters. One of the first line masters was Allison. So each first line master was then expected to recruit slaves, as he called them, of their own. Those slaves would recruit further slaves, and so on and so on. And at its height, roughly 150 women were in DOS. And the key thing here is that the women lower in the pyramid, the ones being recruited by people like Allison, were not told that Keith Rainier was even involved. They were told it was a woman-only group sorority. And so his involvement was hidden.

SPEAKER_00 16:02

Until he showed up for sex and it was like, surprise.

SPEAKER_01 16:06

So before a woman could even find out what DOS really was, she had to provide what they called collateral. Now, this is the mechanism that made the whole thing work and is as dark as it sounds. Collateral could be nude photographs, sexually explicit videos, a written confession to a crime you may or may not have committed, a letter falsely accusing a family member of abuse, your parent, your sibling, your financial assets, anything damaging enough that if it were released, your life would be destroyed. So collateral is what the women had to hand over, and that's what they're gonna hold over their heads, right? Wow. Yeah. So they were told it's a show of commitment. And then once you're in and understand the full nature of DOS, everything is gonna be okay. But then if you're not happy, if you leave, they would try to release everything. So Allison was in charge of collecting collateral from these girls. According to court documents, she was meticulous about it. She would follow up, she would push for more damaging material if what was offered wasn't enough. One woman identified in court later only as Nicole testified that Allison required her to hand over a sex tape and a letter falsely claiming that her father had sexually abused her before she had any idea what she was getting into. So once inside the DOS, the requirements escalated. Members were kept on near-starvation diets, some as low as 500 to 800 calories a day. They were required to be available to respond to their masters at any hour via text message, and they were given acts of care, assignments to complete, to prove devotion. Some of these involved seducing Keith, as framed as a spiritual honor. And one woman.

SPEAKER_00 17:57

And this is all happening in Albany. Like all these people were Albany. They weren't like living in Buffalo and then would come now. This is all happening. They all moved there.

SPEAKER_01 18:06

A-L-L-A-L-B-A-N-Y.

SPEAKER_00 18:08

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 18:09

All Albany. So one woman testified that Allison told her she needed to have sex with Rainier as a way of healing her trauma from a previous sexual abuse situation. Allison orchestrated the encounter and she supposedly watched. Then there's the branding. This part of the story that broke the DOS open publicly and is the single most viscerally disturbing element of everything. Okay. Right. As part of the induction into the DOS, the women were branded physically with the cauterizing pen, a medical device used in surgery that cuts through flesh. The brand was applied to the skin of the lower abdomen near the pubic region. It took between 20 and 30 minutes. There was no anesthesia. Other DOS members held the woman down on the table during the procedure. Holy shit. Yeah. Women were told the brand was a symbol of four elements: air, earth, fire, and water. Some were told it was an ancient feminine symbol. And what they weren't told is that the brand was a carefully designed monogram of Keith Rainier's initials, K-A-R. And Allison Mack's initials, A M, were burned into their skin permanently without their knowledge of what it actually represented.

SPEAKER_00 19:29

Wow. Just I know.

SPEAKER_01 19:32

This really happened.

SPEAKER_00 19:33

Crazy.

SPEAKER_01 19:34

The branding was performed by a woman named Danielle Roberts, an osteopathic physician and a Nexium member herself, who was also branded. Roberts would later have her medical license revoked following an investigation into her role in the ceremonies. And obviously, needless to say, the New York State Department of Health did not consider this to be an appropriate medical practice. You think? So now there's an audio recording, and this becomes one of the most important pieces of evidence in the entire criminal case. It's a conversation between Keith and Allison discussing the branding ceremony in advance. And Rainier talks through exactly how he wants it conducted. He says the person should probably ask to be branded. They should probably say that before they're held down, so it doesn't seem like they're being coerced. He also says he'd like it videotaped from multiple angles because the footage would make additional collateral. Allison happened to record that conversation, and later, after her arrest, as part of her cooperation agreement with prosecutors, Allison would hand over that recording. So anyway, so it was played at his trial. It is one of the primary reasons he's currently serving 120 years in federal prison.

SPEAKER_00 20:51

Wow. That still seems kind of lenient.

SPEAKER_01 20:53

So the branding was first exposed publicly in 2017 by a journalist named Frank Carlotto, who ran a blog called The Frank Report. He'd gotten information from a former member. Then in October 2017, the New York Times published a bombshell story. A woman named Sarah Edmondson, a Canadian actress who'd been a senior Nexium member since 2005, went on record. She described being recruited into DOS, providing collateral, and attending a branding ceremony at Allison Mack's home in Albany, where she was blindfolded, held down, naked, and branded. Edmondson said the brand was presented to her as a symbol of the elements. She didn't find out it was Rainier's initials until after the story broke publicly. She needed plastic surgery to attempt to address the scarring. And she is currently the lead plaintiff in a major civil lawsuit against Nexium and its leadership. So after the Times piece drops, something interesting happens. Rainier sends a statement to his inner circle claiming that DOS is an autonomous organization. Separate and distinct from Nexium, and that he has little knowledge or authority in the matter. And then he, Allison, and several other senior members flee to Mexico.

SPEAKER_00 22:09

Wow. I don't know anything about it. Bails.

SPEAKER_01 22:12

Trying to separate it. I guess Nexium is what had all the money. Maybe the civil lawsuit.

SPEAKER_00 22:17

Like, okay, so what's going on like now, like 2026? It's happening. There's still a civil lawsuit. She's an off the hook, right?

SPEAKER_01 22:24

Technically, I don't know if she was owner in it, though, but I'll get to where she is in a sec. So, okay. In March 2018, Keith Rainier is arrested in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. Federal agents and Mexican police raid a gated compound where he has been hiding with several of his inner circle, including Lauren Saltzman, the first line DOS master and daughter of Nexium co-founder Nancy Saltzman. So Nancy got her daughter involved. Wow. So Lauren Saltzman later testified that when the raid happened, Rainier hid in a closet. They found him. He was taken into custody with four machine guns pointed at Lauren while he was arrested. A few weeks later, on April 20th, 2018, Allison Mack is arrested by the FBI in Brooklyn. The charges are sex trafficking, sex trafficking conspiracy, and forced labor conspiracy. She is 35 years old at this time. She's released on a $5 million bond and placed under house arrest at her parents' home in Orange County, California. She had one of those uh electronic bracelets and she wasn't allowed to use internet or cell phone. So this is fascinating because it's just like how deep the programming of these people went, right? So for several months after her arrest, Allison does not cooperate with prosecutors. She remains loyal to Rainier. She believes, or at least behaves as she believes, that none of this is what it looks like. The cult spent years telling its members that outside persecution is proof of virtue. The people attacking Nexium are the ones who can't handle the truth. And Allison, even sitting at her parents' house under house arrest, is still inside that framework at that time.

SPEAKER_00 24:04

That's some programming right there.

SPEAKER_01 24:06

It is. Her attorneys later describe it as being confined to her parents' house, being physically removed from the Nexium environment and surrounded by her family as what likely has saved her life. Slowly, the framework begins to collapse without Renier's daily involvement and without the community consistently reinforcing the belief system. So without that sleep deprivation and restricted diet and all that demand for devotion, she starts to Can you imagine how that moment of clarity must have been for her when she realizes involved in A, B, C, D, and E?

SPEAKER_00 24:40

I can't imagine what that's terrible.

SPEAKER_01 24:44

So in April 2019, about a year after her arrest, she pleads guilty to racketeering and racketeering conspiracy. She admits to extortion, forced labor, and manipulating women into becoming slaves for Keith Rainier. In her plea, she acknowledges that she knew what she was doing was wrong. She begins cooperating with prosecutors and she provides the audio recording I mentioned earlier. Meanwhile, Keith's trial proceeds in May 2019. And outside of all the stuff I told you about, additional evidence emerges. Photographs found on his computer of child pornography. And on June 19th, 2019, the jury convicts Keith guilty of seven counts: racketeering, racketeering conspiracy, wire fraud conspiracy, forced labor conspiracy, sex trafficking conspiracy, sex trafficking count one, sex trafficking count two attempted. He sentenced in October 2020 to 120 years in federal prison. He's 60 years old at this time, so he will die there. And now it's Allison's turn. Sentencing day for her was June 30th, 2021. Allison walked into the Brooklyn federal court. Her mother and her brother are there to support her. Under the advisory sentencing guidelines, she's facing 14 to 17 and a half years. Federal prosecutors credit her for her substantial cooperation, advocate for leniency, and her attorney asks for no jail time at all, citing cooperation, rehabilitation, and remorse. Before the sentence is handed down, there are victim impact statements that are read. An actress named Jessica Joan appeared in person and delivers a statement calling Allison, quote, a predator, an evil human being, a danger to society. She says that Allison and Rainier are the two most evil monsters I ever met. And she says she looked into Allison's eyes that day in the courtroom and saw a sociopath with no remorse. So Allison submits a letter to the court in advance in it. She writes, I threw myself into the teachings of Keith Rainier with everything I had. I believed wholeheartedly that his mentorship was leading me to a better, more enlightened version of myself. I devoted my loyalty, my resources, and ultimately my life to him. She says her involvement with Nexium was the biggest mistake and greatest regret of her life. So the judge ends up sentencing her to three years in federal prison and a $20,000 fine. I mean, you know, that's nothing, right?

SPEAKER_00 27:19

Well, she posted what, a $5 million bail.

SPEAKER_01 27:21

She had $5 million bail, right? Bail.

SPEAKER_00 27:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 27:24

Yeah. So three years of supervised probation after release, 1,000 hours of community service. She doesn't cry during the statement, but she has said since that she was thinking about her mother and brother sitting behind her listening, and she says, I don't see myself as innocent. On September 13th, 2021, she reports to the federal correctional institution in Dublin, California. While Alison was under house arrest at her parents' house, waiting for sentencing, she was also dealing with the fallout from her marriage. In February 2017, one year before her arrest, Allison Mack married a Canadian actress named Nikki Klein. Klein was also an Asium member. She played Callie on Battlestar Galactica. The marriage was later confirmed by multiple witnesses, including India Oxenberg, to have been a sham. It was orchestrated by Keith to help Klein get around U.S. immigration laws and remain in the country.

SPEAKER_00 28:20

Oh wow.

SPEAKER_01 28:21

Yeah. So Allison filed for divorce in December 2020. Nikki Klein, for the record, has not followed Allison's path of cooperation. Klein remains one of Rainier's most vocal supporters. She actively campaigns for his exoneration. She believes he's innocent. And so Allison Mack was briefly married to a woman who is still to this day advocating for the man who ran the sex cult they were both in. Wow.

SPEAKER_00 28:46

This story has so many layers.

SPEAKER_01 28:47

It does. It really does. Allison served 21 months at Dublin. She's released on July 3rd, 2023. And while in prison, she had already been working towards her education. She got her associate's degree from a community college in California before surrendering. She enrolls at UC Berkeley and she is pursuing a bachelor's degree in rhetoric and psychology. She's also been working as a caterer at this time.

SPEAKER_00 29:13

So no acting. Although you wouldn't probably touch her at this point, right?

SPEAKER_01 29:17

I mean, yeah, I don't think so. She's canceled.

SPEAKER_00 29:21

A psychologist and a catering business on the side now?

SPEAKER_01 29:24

Yeah. I guess that's her, you know, while you're going to college job. So after her release in 2023, she basically disappears from public view and she remarries. In 2025, she marries a man named Frank Mink. She pursues a master's degree in social work. And then in November 2025, just a few months ago, she sits down with journalist Natalie Robemed for a seven-episode podcast produced by CBC's Uncover called Allison after anxiom. And it's the first time she spoke publicly since her incarceration.

SPEAKER_00 30:00

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 30:00

She doesn't hold back. She says, I don't see myself as innocent. I was not kind and I was aggressive and I was abusive. And she acknowledges using her celebrity as a power tool to recruit women into DOS. She says she was very effective in moving Keith's vision forward. She's not here to claim that she was purely a victim. She also describes the coercive control, the psychological manipulation, the way her entire sense of self had been dismantled and rebuilt around Rainier's approval for more than a decade. And in the podcast, she says, I definitely recognize and admit that I was abusing my power and that I was mean and I was forceful. But I also can't negate the fact that there was a part of me that was altruistic and was desperate to help people. And I wanted to be better. And I was willing to do anything to be better in myself and to help other people be better. To this day, there's a framed autograph headshot of her as a kid in the Taco Bell across the street from Warner Brothers Studios in Burbank, left over for when she was a kid actor.

SPEAKER_00 31:05

Well.

SPEAKER_01 31:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 31:06

That is a random fact.

SPEAKER_01 31:08

It is a random fact.

SPEAKER_00 31:10

So she's just doing social work in California now.

SPEAKER_01 31:13

Yeah, and she got married. I don't know anything really about the guy. I didn't look into it. The story was long already.

SPEAKER_00 31:19

She was born in 82, you said?

SPEAKER_01 31:20

Uh she was born in 82, yes.

SPEAKER_00 31:22

So then make her 44. 44.

SPEAKER_01 31:25

Because this is such a long story I told. I'm gonna try to be quick on the astrology part.

SPEAKER_00 31:30

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 31:31

So I think her chart explains a little bit about it, why she was felt so empty and why she was a perfect person to help recruit these people. So she's born July 29th, 1982. Her sun sign basic personality is in Leo, and people want to follow her. Leo's are magnetic, generous, born to lead, but a Leo without a worthy mission is a Leo in quiet existential crisis. And Allison had fame without purpose. Her moon is in Scorpio, and your moon signs, your emotion, and death and transformation are kind of Scorpio's two key words. She had an insatiable hunger for that transformation and depth, and that's what then made the Nexium pitch hard to resist. Now her Mercury was also in Leo. And I always say if your Mercury and your sun are in the same sign, it's usually good. You're a good communicator. So she was able to communicate and convince people to follow her, communicate her beliefs with conviction. And recruiting probably was like, you know, sharing a gift, not running a con, right? Her Venus in Cancer, how you love, meant she loved by nurturing and built her entire sense of home and safety around one person. So when Rainier told her their bond was singular, no one else would have ever understood why. That wasn't flattery. That was the deep longing of her emotional life being answered. And her Mars was in Libra, and your Mars is your action planet. It meant she could only truly act in service of someone else, constantly reframing her own actions as righteous and helpful, which is exactly why even now she struggles to fully separate the harm she caused with the altruism she believed she was performing. I went ahead and did a little bit of research on Keith, too. So just a couple of things. Keith Rainier was born August 26, 1960, in Brooklyn. He's a Virgo son. And on a good day, that's an analytical, methodical, detail-oriented, and devoted to self-improvement type of sign. So on a bad day, critical, controlling, obsessed with finding the flaw in everyone else. The sun alone is not the story. The story is what the sun is doing. Rainier's sun is conjunct to Pluto, and conjunct means fused together, amplified. And Pluto is the planet of power, control, death, and transformation. The sun conjunct to Pluto, people have almost pathological need to dominate, to have total psychology authority over others. They are drawn to power the way the rest of us are drawn to warmth. His son and Pluto, on top of that, are also trying to Saturn and they flow effortlessly together, which is the planet of discipline, structure, long game, Saturnist. So if you have the drive for total control fused with the patience and the system building to actually achieve it over decades, this is not a cult leader who stumbles onto power. It's a cult leader who architects it. I know that I'm going a little deep into him and he's a he, but he's very important to her story too. So what are your thoughts on this story?

SPEAKER_00 34:47

Is there still anything left of Nexium at this point? I mean, it got dismantled and shut down, but did like a disciple move on to like form Nexium 2.0 or something like that? I mean, it's just it's a shame that she got sucked up in all this, but she's definitely to blame for her crimes. Yes. Honestly, I think she got let off pretty easily. So she must have had some really good evidence that allowed them to get the bigger fish.

SPEAKER_01 35:10

Well, that recording that she provided, apparently the prosecution played it multiple times for the jury. Yeah. I mean, it's that was pretty damning evidence.

SPEAKER_00 35:20

The fallout from this and how big it got. And I remember seeing it in the news and all that, but not realizing it was this. It's pretty mind-boggling. And this guy hopefully will never see the light of day again. Hopefully.

SPEAKER_01 35:35

They said 120 years. I didn't see if there's no chance of parole, but I don't think he's gonna get out. He's already 60.

SPEAKER_00 35:42

Well, good riddance to him, I guess. He was not a very nice person.

SPEAKER_01 35:46

Yeah. What a narcissist is just not even a strong enough word for his behavior. Branding his own initials on these women. You heard me say it 150 at one point at the height.

SPEAKER_00 35:59

They're all branded.

SPEAKER_01 35:59

They're all branded. On that note, thanks for coming on.

SPEAKER_00 36:03

And you promised me an interesting story. You did uh did not fail. So thanks, babe, for letting me be part of this again. Always have a good time.

SPEAKER_01 36:10

Yes. Love you.

SPEAKER_00 36:11

Love you too.

SPEAKER_01 36:12

Bye, everybody. Thanks for listening to Femme Fatal. And I will put some links on some of the sources that I cited in our story today. Bye. Bye. The Femme Fatal. Created and hosted by Stacy Dotson. Produced by Mark Williams. Music by Marcia Yingling, Chad Chane, and Greg Loycano.