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Larry Ray, 62 — who was arrested at his home in Piscataway — was found guilty of 15 counts that include racketeering, sex trafficking, conspiracy, forced labor, extortion, tax evasion, and other crimes in relation to his scheme following multiple delays in his trial and prosecution.
The jury deliberated for less than four hours before returning the guilty verdict.
“Twelve years ago, Larry Ray moved into his daughter’s dorm room at Sarah Lawrence College and when he got there, he met a group of friends who had their whole lives ahead of them,” US Attorney Damian Williams said following the announcement of the verdict.
“But the next decade he used violence, threats, and psychological abuse to try and control and destroy their lives. He exploited them. He terrorized them. He tortured them.
“Let me be clear. Larry Ray is a predator," he continued. "An evil man who did evil things. Today’s verdict finally brings him to justice.”
Ray was released from prison in 2010 and moved into the co-ed dorm of his daughter at Sarah Lawrence College near the border of Yonkers and Bronxville.
Prosecutors said that Ray "subjected his victims to sexual and psychological manipulation and physical abuse,” and laundered about $1 million from one victim under the guise of self-help.
Ray would cook fancy meals, and share stories about working for the CIA and being a Marine, they said. What was to be a short arrangement led to “Ray taking charge of the kids’ lives and then whisking them away to a private apartment in New York for a summer,”
According to prosecutors, while manipulating the students and conducting “therapy sessions,” he learned “intimate details about their private lives, vulnerabilities, and mental health struggles under the pretense of helping them.
In 2020, when Ray was first charged, FBI Assistant Director William F. Sweeney Jr. said that, “Mr. Ray allegedly used his proximity to his victims to lay the groundwork for psychological conditioning, eventually leading several young adults to become unwitting victims of sexual exploitation, verbal and physical abuse, extortion, forced labor, and an egregious case of prostitution.
“For the better part of the last decade, we allege there was no limit to the abuse Ray’s victims received, and there is no way of knowing the amount of damage he may have caused them in the years to come.”
Ray also alienated several of the victims from their parents and convinced several of the victims that they were ‘broken’ and in need of fixing by Ray,” prosecutors said, including one student who also allegedly engaged in prostitution for his benefit.
Officials noted that Ray used sleep deprivation, psychological and sexual humiliation, verbal abuse, physical violence, and threats of legal action to extract information from his victims.
Ray ultimately extracted false confessions from at least seven victims that they had intentionally damaged Ray’s and his family members’ and other associates’ property,” prosecutors said when they announced his arrest, noting that erroneous confessions included that members of his cult had “poisoned Ray and his family members.”
“Larry was of average height and overweight, yet he could be intimidating. He had a clean-shaven head and favored polo shirts cut to make his 50-year-old frame look hulking. His machismo was out of place on the liberal-arts campus,” the New York Magazine article that led to his prosecution stated. “He could also be charming. He was a good listener and engaged the group on heady concepts like truth and justice.”
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