A man who moved into his daughter's college dorm and manipulated her friends into paying him for debts they never owed could end up spending the rest of his life behind bars.
Lawrence Ray was convicted Wednesday on 15 charges, including forced labor and sex trafficking, after weeks of testimony documenting his psychologically manipulative relationship with girls he met in 2010 at Sarah Lawrence College in New York.
Ray, then 50 years old, moved into his daughter's dorm after finishing a prison sentence for a securities fraud conviction, and subjected a group of college students and other victims to sexual and psychological manipulation and physical abuse.
"He met a group of friends who had their whole lives ahead of them. For the next decade, he used violence, threats, and psychological abuse to try to control and destroy their lives," U.S. Attorney Damian Williams said in a statement.
Ray's tactics included sleep deprivation, psychological and sexual humiliation, verbal abuse, physical violence, threats of criminal legal action, alienating the victims from their families, and exploiting the victims' mental health vulnerabilities, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office.
Ray extracted false confessions from the victims, making them admit to causing purported damages to himself and his family, and then extorted payment for those fake damages through several means. The victims made payments to Ray by draining their parents' savings, opening credit lines, selling real estate ownership, performing unpaid labor and earning money through prostitution.
"He exploited them. He terrorized them. He tortured them. Let me be very clear: Larry Ray is a predator, an evil man who did evil things," said Williams.
In one instance, Ray forced a young woman into prostitution to pay damages that she did not actually owe, and forced her to keep working by blackmailing her. He also used physical violence. On one occasion, Ray tied the woman to a chair, placed a plastic bag over her head and nearly suffocated her, prosecutors said. She ended up paying Ray millions of dollars in forced prostitution proceeds.
Ray also forced multiple victims to perform extensive physical labor on a family member's property in North Carolina, sometimes in the middle of the night, in order to pay back their so-called debts.
Ray's lawyers maintain he was victimized by former friends who fabricated their stories, the Associated Press reported.
Charges against Ray include racketeering conspiracy, conspiracy to commit extortion, extortion, sex trafficking, obtaining forced labor, forced labor trafficking, conspiracy to obtain forced labor, violating the Travel Act, tax evasion, and money laundering. Sentencing is set for September.
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