But they allege Mr Raniere oversaw a "slave and master" system in his group called Nxivm, where female members were expected to have sex with him and were branded with his initials. "Allison Mack recruited women to join what was purported to be a female mentorship group that was, in fact, created and led by Keith Raniere," Richard Donoghue, US attorney for the Eastern District in New York, said in a statement. The group encouraged women to recruit new slaves "who in turn owed service not only to their own masters, but also to masters above them" in the pyramid scheme, prosecutors say. "Under the guise of female empowerment, [Ms Mack] starved women until they fit her co-defendant's sexual ideal, and she targeted vulnerable women," prosecutor Moira Kim Penza said at Friday's hearing.