A man who recruited students from Sarah Lawrence College, where his daughter attended, has been convicted of fifteen counts relating to a sex trafficking and racketeering charges for what authorities described as a cult he headed, the New York Times reports.

Lawrence V. Ray started to recruit students at the college when he moved into his daughter’s dorm on campus, making meals and holding discussion sessions on morality and honesty with the residents, after he had been released from prison on charges from a child custody case.  He regaled them in stories of his military glory, and informed them that a former friend–Rudy Giuliani associate Bernard Kerik–was responsible for his unjust prison sentence.

Ray then took control of the students’ lives, isolating them from family and dictating every aspect of their lives:  whom they dated, what they ate, even when they slept.  He would solicit false confessions for accused “sins” and use them to blackmail the students for money.  In one case, he forced a female student to become a prostitute and collected more than two million dollars from her over four years.

Ray would threaten, menace and abuse his followers, threatening to cut off the male members’ members or release recorded “confessions” to embarrass them.  Repeatedly, he’d use these tactics to extort money from them.  One student was so scared he stole $10,000 in cash from his mother’s business to pay Ray.

Ray’s conviction was secured with the testimony of four members of the cult who found the courage to leave and work with prosecutors.  “I felt so guilty, because of the things that he was saying that I had done or had participated in that I hadn’t,” one of the witnesses, Felicia Rosario, said. “I was completely overwhelmed and terrified.”