2/12
Drew Angerer/Getty Images
The actress, who played reporter Chloe Sullivan on Smallville for 10 seasons, pleaded guilty in April 2019 to racketeering conspiracy and racketeering acts of state law extortion and forced labor. She was originally also charged, as Raniere was, with sex trafficking, sex trafficking conspiracy and forced labor conspiracy.
She first attended a NXIVM seminar in Vancouver with her Smallville co-star Kristin Kreuk in 2006, a program billed as a "women's movement" called Jness. Their high-profile presences had been planned for, because some of the organization's top people (those closest to Raniere) flew in for the occasion. The group put on a charm offensive for the newcomer and invited her to meet Raniere, who, they said, could help her acting career. Mack accepted, was flown to their Albany, N.Y., location via private jet, and stayed for weeks.
"A collective inspiring a community of strong, authentically empowered women to own themselves in a way that has never been seen or understood before?" Mack wrote in a since-deleted blog post. "It sounded like the perfect blend of what I was looking for! So I took the leap and enrolled in a weekend workshop and within the first few hours I knew I had found my people."
When she entered her guilty plea on April 18, 2019, Mack told the court, "I was lost. Through it all, I believed Keith Raniere's intentions were to help people. I was wrong." She admitted to selling DOS to potential recruits by describing it as a female-empowerment group, to making members hand over photos and information for blackmail purposes, and to obtaining "labor and services" from two women; she did not say that any women were coerced into having sex with Raniere.
A former roommate who lived with Mack after she got involved with NXIVM told The Hollywood Reporter in 2018, "I don't think she was thinking she was actually trafficking girls. It doesn't mean she doesn't deserve punishment, but I think she had drunk enough Kool-Aid to really believe that these girls were going to save the world with his super-sperm."
Mack married Battlestar Galactica actress Nicki Clyne in 2017 and remains free on a $5 million bond while she awaits sentencing. She's facing up to 20 years in prison.