“I don’t want her to throw us under the bus to uphold Keith [Raniere],” Mack’s mother said.

Allison Mack’s mom was nervous to bail her out after NXIVM arrest: ‘I’m not sure her allegiance is to us’

"I don't want her to throw us under the bus to uphold Keith [Raniere]," Mack's mother said.

By Sydney Bucksbaum

Sydney Bucksbaum

Sydney Bucksbaum is a staff writer at **. She has been working at EW since 2019 and is a published author. Her work has previously appeared in *TV Guide Magazine*, E! News/E! Online, *The Hollywood Reporter*, Mashable, Bustle, IGN, DCComics.com, Inverse, *The Daily Northwestern*, and more.

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November 11, 2025 11:30 a.m. ET

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Allison Mack outside courthouse after her bail hearing. Credit:

Jemal Countess/Getty

Former *Smallville* star Allison Mack's mother was nervous to bail her out after her arrest due to her involvement with Keith Raniere's NXIVM sex cult.

On Monday's episode of Uncover's *Allison After NXIVM* podcast, Allison's mother Mindy Mack revealed that she was worried that her daughter was still loyal to Raniere even after her arrest, and would ultimately risk the millions in bail money put up by her parents.

"First, what I did is, I want to write a letter to Allison because I'm nervous about putting every asset that we have on the line, when I'm not sure that her allegiance is to us and not Keith," Mindy said. "Because I don't want her to throw us under the bus to uphold Keith. And so I wrote a letter to her to that effect, about how much we love her and how much we support her, but we need to be sure. This is all we have, so we need you to promise us that you'll be loyal to us and uphold us."

Allison's bail was set at $5 million, which her parents ultimately agreed to pay.

Allison Mack on 'Smallville'.

Sergei Backlakov/Warner Bros./Everett

"We put up the bail, everything we have, plus $2 million," Mindy said. "The judge said, 'You realize that you owe the state of New York $2 million if your daughter runs?' And I went, 'Gulp.'"

Later in the podcast, Allison chronicled how "delusional" she was throughout the trial about the truth behind Raniere's cult (which was the subject of HBO's docuseries *The Vow*).

"I would just fly into these, like, fits of rage where I'd be like, 'Why is this happening to me? I didn't do anything wrong. I'm innocent,'" Allison said. "And then I would always end it with, 'I'm not crazy.' And my mom would be like, 'I know you're not crazy.' It's so strange. It must have felt like an exorcism for my mom, like, 'What is happening with my daughter?' I was so delusional."

Mindy was upset about how Raniere had brainwashed Allison.

"I thought, 'My poor girl, my poor, beautiful girl, she doesn't know what's going on,'" Mindy said. "I mean, he messed with her brain. He messed with her mind in a way that hurts me."

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"My poor attorneys," Allison said. "I was like, 'We weren't doing anything wrong. Let me tell you all the amazing things that were happening.' 'But you were sending women to have sex with Keith.' 'No, I was having women therapeutically overcome their ... ' you know what I mean? I had a justification for every single thing. And my attorneys were like, 'How do we get through to her? How do we defend her?'"

It wasn't until Allison saw "really inappropriate, gross text messages" sent from Raniere to another female member of the cult that she began to understand the truth. But she still kept trying to justify his actions to herself.

"If I recognized that Keith was manipulating all of us and that this was a strategy for his own perversion, I had to acknowledge what I had chosen and that I had hurt people in a way that was not righteous and was not good, but was actually the opposite of all those things," she said. "I purposely kept myself from hearing things that would have been uncomfortable for me."

In June 2021, a judge ruled that Allison must serve three years in federal prison and pay a fine of $20,000 after she pleaded guilty to racketeering, manipulating women into becoming sex slaves for Raniere, led women to be branded with Raniere's initials, and was a "master" overseeing women who were her slaves. She was released from prison one year early, roughly two years into her three-year sentence, in July 2023. Now, she's speaking out for the first time since her incarceration about her involvement with the cult to tell her side of the story.

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"People assume that I'm, like, this pervert, and I'm like, 'Okay,'" Allison said through tears. "At a certain point, you just stop defending yourself ... that's not what it was for me, but I can see how you think that. Part of the reason why I wanted to do the podcast is because I feel like I owe it to myself to at least have the opportunity to say on my own behalf what it actually was. And people can believe me or people could think I'm full of s--- or whatever. People can not listen, like, whatever. But I feel like I at least have to say it out loud for myself once."

In October 2020, Raniere, 65, was sentenced to 120 years in prison in Brooklyn federal court, in addition to being ordered to pay a $1.75 million fee. He was previously convicted in June 2019 of racketeering, racketeering conspiracy, sex trafficking, attempted sex trafficking, sex trafficking conspiracy, forced labor conspiracy, and wire fraud conspiracy.

Ahead of her 2021 sentencing, Allison released a statement regarding her involvement with the cult. "I threw myself into the teachings of Keith Raniere with everything I had," she wrote at the time. "I believed, whole-heartedly, that his mentorship was leading me to a better, more enlightened version of myself. I devoted my loyalty, my resources, and, ultimately, my life to him. This was the biggest mistake and regret of my life."

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