If you unexpectedly come into money or are born into money

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for the wealthy there are a few cult recruitment methods that are especially dangerous. “Wealthy people are easy to guilt, and guilt is one of the main emotional buttons that get pushed by cults or cult recruiters,” says Janja Lalich, a cult expert and author of Take Back Your Life: Recovering from Cults and Abusive Relationships.

“The other thing is, wealthy individuals, like anyone else, go through moments of self-doubt, questioning their behavior, their personality, their choices. In moments of vulnerability, that’s typically when someone responds to the allure of a cult.”

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wealth, social cachet, and celebrity are the best tools to appeal to people from prominent backgrounds. “If you can get some celebrities involved, and some people with serious money, they will draw in other people with serious money,” Ross says.

Lalich, who was a member of a political cult before leaving and becoming an expert on cults, recalls recruitment meetings at which she and other members would discuss strategies for luring affluent people into their organization. “We would assess the best way to get that person to emotionally respond to what we were saying, to determine what their weaknesses were. We would figure out where to push their buttons and figure out who the best people were to be in those recruitment meetings with them. We didn’t pick just anybody—it had to be someone of the same caliber. It was all done very carefully and craftily.”

The subject, Lalich says, never suspects that he or she “has been part of hours of planning this out in detail.”

The night Oxenberg first went to a Nxivm program, one of the speakers was filmmaker Mark Vicente (he has since left the group and has spoken out about its practices). “I was a fan of his work,” Oxenberg says. “He was someone who had a very successful career. That gave it credibility.”

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New recruits to any cult almost never know exactly what they’re getting into. “That is by intention,” Ross says. “It’s very deliberate and manipulative. Someone would just be your friend or business associate, someone you admired or worked with, or knew from other projects.”