A year ahead of schedule, former Smallville actress Allison Mack walked out of the Dublin Federal Correctional Institute — also known as FCI Dublin — on Monday, after serving two years of a three-year sentence.
SFist noted when Mack arrived in the Bay Area to start her prison sentence in September 2021, after facing trial in Brooklyn. Mack, 40, was able to get a more lenient sentence than the 14 years she was facing by pleading guilty and agreeing to cooperate in the federal cases against NXIVM cult founders Keith Raniere and Nancy Salzman, as well as NXIVM operations director and financial backer, Seagrams heiress Clare Bronfman.
The Albany Times Union first reported on Mack's release.
The cult began as a series of self-improvement workshops in 1998 in the Albany, New York area, and over time grew to include a psycho-sexual subgroup for women known as DOS — Dominus Obsequious Sororium — that was largely organized by Mack. As was exposed at trial and in a pair of documentary series about NXIVM, including one that aired on HBO before Mack's trial called The Vow, Mack worked to recruit women to become "slaves" to Raniere, and members of DOS were subjected to a branding ritual with a brand that looked a lot like a combination of Raniere's and Mack's initials.
Women in the group described being blindfolded and sexually assaulted, and the subgroup was largely kept secret from the larger NXIVM group, which may have included Salzman — though she would ultimately plead guilty to racketeering conspiracy and receive a three-and-a-half-year sentence that she is scheduled to finish next summer.
In a statement prior to her sentencing, Mack said, "I threw myself into the teachings of Keith Raniere with everything I had... I believed, whole-heartedly, that his mentorship was leading me to a better, more enlightened version of myself."
She added, "I devoted my loyalty, my resources, and, ultimately, my life to him. This was the biggest mistake and greatest regret of my life."
Raniere, 62, meanwhile, is serving a 120-year sentence in federal prison in Arizona. He was convicted in 2019 on charges of sex trafficking, forced labor conspiracy, wire fraud conspiracy, and racketeering charges, along with extortion, identity theft and possession of child pornography.
Top image: Actress Allison Mack exits the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York following a status conference, June 12, 2018 in the Brooklyn borough of New York City. (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
