Sarah Lawrence 'Sex Cult' Federal Trial Starts

YONKERS, NY — Jury selection started in a Manhattan federal courtroom on Tuesday in the strange case of a New Jersey father accused of launching a sex cult, along with a sex trafficking and extortion racket, from the couch of his daughter's Sarah Lawrence dorm room.

Lawrence Grecco, aka Larry Ray, is accused by federal prosecutors of sex trafficking, forced labor and extortion that occurred in New York and North Carolina over a ten-year period, beginning in 2010. Federal authorities said the man targeted his daughter's friends and subjected them to physical abuse and sexual and psychological manipulation.

Ray lived with some of the victims in a dormitory and afterwards in an Upper East Side apartment and in North Carolina, according to court documents.

He used physical and psychological threats and coercion to indoctrinate and exploit the college students, according to federal investigators.

Prosecutors said he extorted nearly $1 million from five of the victims, forced them to perform unpaid labor through force, fraud and coercion. He is also accused of coercing at least one victim to engage in prostitution. U.S. Attorney Geoffrey Berman said Ray laundered the proceeds of his crimes through an internet domain business.

"College is supposed to be a time of self-discovery and new-found independence," Berman said in a statement shortly after Ray was arrested in February 2020. "But as alleged, Lawrence Ray exploited that vulnerable time in his victims’ lives through a course of conduct that shocks the conscience. Through his manipulative interrogation sessions, Ray made his victims confess to alleged wrongdoing and then compelled them to repay Ray alleged damages owed to him, through payments of hundreds of thousands of dollars, or worse, forced labor and sex trafficking. We hope that today’s charges bring some measure of comfort to the victims and their families."

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In 2010, prosecutors said Ray moved into on-campus housing with his daughter and her male and female roommates at Sarah Lawrence College. He presented himself as a "father figure" and subjected them and other victims to sexual and psychological manipulation and physical abuse.

His tactics included sleep deprivation, psychological and sexual humiliation, verbal abuse, threats of physical violence, actual physical violence, threats of criminal legal actions, alienating the victims from their families and exploiting the victims' mental health vulnerabilities.

The manipulation allowed Ray to get false confessions from seven of the victims that they caused damage to him and his family and associates. He then extorted payment for those false damages.
Authorities said the victims made payments to Ray by draining their parents' savings, opening lines of credit, selling real estate ownership and, at Ray's direction, performing unpaid labor and earning money through prostitution.

Prosecutors said Ray forced one student to engage in commercial sex acts to pay damages to him that she did not actually owe.

Beginning when she was just a college student, she was groomed by Ray and he collected sexually explicit photos and other personal information which he then used to coerce her into prostitution, investigators said. He is also accused of using physical violence, tying her to a chair, placing a plastic bag over her head and nearly suffocating her, prosecutors said.

“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," FBI Assistant Director William F. Sweeney Jr. said. "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."

In total, Ray collected more than $500,000 in forced prostitution proceeds from this victim, according to the indictment.

Ray also forced three of the women students to work for free on a family member's property in North Carolina. He reportedly used psychological and physical abuse to force the three women to do extensive physical labor, sometimes in the middle of the night, for no pay.

Ray is charged with conspiracy to commit extortion, extortion, sex trafficking, obtaining forced labor, forced labor trafficking, conspiracy to obtain forced labor, two counts of violating the "Travel Act" and money laundering.