“Smallville” star Allison Mack entered a guilty plea in New York court regarding her involvement in NXIVM sex trafficking case on Monday.
According to the Department of Justice, Mack pleaded guilty to two counts, racketeering conspiracy and racketeering. Mack had been accused of recruiting young women into the group and manipulated them into branding their bodies and becoming sex slaves for the group’s leader, Keith Raniere.
“I believed Keith Raniere’s intentions were to help people, and I was wrong,” Mack said through tears at the hearing, according to the Associated Press. “I know I can and will be a better person.”
Mack’s sentencing will be decided on Sept. 11 by Judge Nicholas Garaufis. She faces a maximum of 40 years in prison.
Mack was arrested in April 2018 and released on $5 million bail that same month after being accused of recruiting women into NXIVM and “directly or implicitly” requiring these women to have sex with the organization’s founder Keith Raniere. She originally entered a not guilty plea on the count of sex trafficking.
In March 2018, Raniere was arrested in Mexico, where he fled after the publication last fall of a New York Times report about alleged NXIVM practices like branding women. Federal authorities say Raniere and Mack created a secret society within NXIVM in 2015 called “DOS,” which “operated with levels of women ‘slaves’ headed by ‘masters.’”
Pamela Chelin contributed to this report.