NEW YORK (NY)
The Associated Press

March 13, 2019

Nancy Salzman, a registered nurse who was known as “Prefect” within the embattled upstate New York self-help organization, was involved in stealing identities of the group’s critics and hacking into their email accounts from 2003 to 2008, prosecutors said.

A co-founder of an embattled upstate New York self-help organization pleaded guilty on Wednesday in a case featuring sensational claims that some followers became branded sex slaves.

An emotional Nancy Salzman told a judge in federal court in Brooklyn that she teamed up with Keith Raniere, the NXIVM group’s self-styled spiritual leader, because she wanted to help people improve their lives. But Salzman admitted that she later lost her way when she joined efforts to spy on perceived enemies seeking to expose the Albany-based group as a cross between a pyramid scheme and a cult.

“It has taken…