Some experts say Keith Raniere, the guru behind an unusual training business, is really a cult leader

In a Saratoga County townhouse complex, a man who wears a Jesus beard and seeks to patent his philosophies keeps a cluster of adoring women at his side. He has drawn more than 10,000 people to his mission of ethical living. But some disciples say he has delivered a much darker reality.

Keith Raniere, a multilevel-marketing businessman turned self-improvement guru, has peddled himself as a spiritual being to followers, most of them women. A close-knit group of these women has tended to him, paid his bills and shuttled him around. Several have satisfied his sexual needs. And a few have left their families behind to wrap him in their affections.

Claiming one of the world’s highest IQs and holding three degrees from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Raniere has evolved over the past two decades from the fresh-faced founder of Consumers’ Buyline Inc., a buying club business investigated for being a pyramid scheme, into the 51-year-old intellectual commander of NXIVM, a Colonie-based company promising followers from Canada to Mexico it can “help transform and, ultimately, be an expression of the noble civilization of humans.”

Raniere has convinced some followers he doesn’t drive because his intellectual energy sets off radar detectors. He says his energy is drained if those around him disappoint or defect, former girlfriends have said. “He’s the Vanguard,” one of his key supporters testified in court, with the insistence and reverence of a child describing Santa Claus. Dozens of followers assemble annually near Lake George for Vanguard Week, a celebration of Raniere’s birthday also considered a corporate retreat.

But Raniere’s time here also has unfolded in a way that suggests more than a harmless God complex.

At least one cult expert said Raniere directs one of the most extreme cults he has ever studied and has likened Raniere to David Koresh, who most Americans link with images of a burning cult compound packed with women and children. Raniere has denied that NXIVM is a cult.

Other experts believe there is sufficient evidence for the New York Attorney General to investigate whether NXIVM —thought to have multimillion-dollar revenues — is an illegal multilevel-marketing business.

And some former followers have said it’s expected you buy into Raniere’s mission with money, mind and body.

Raniere “is a compulsive gambler, a sex addict with bizarre desires and needs, and a con man that specializes in Ponzi schemes,” one of his former girlfriends, Toni Natalie, recently declared in federal court.

Since the 1990s, Raniere has attracted the attention of attorneys general in several states and the Securities and Exchange Commission. In 1996, he admitted no guilt but signed an agreement with the New York State Attorney General’s Office promising he would not operate an illegal “chain distributor scheme” and pay a $40,000 settlement. Since then, he has never been prosecuted by any state or federal agency, and he had only been sued once as of last month — a countersuit by a noted cult expert who claims NXIVM invaded his privacy.

Through the years, Raniere has remained a somewhat mysterious figure, but based on a yearlong investigation, including scores of interviews and a review of business records, police reports and court documents, the Times Union has uncovered troubling details about a man once considered a boy genius.

His several decades spent in the Capital Region have included what the Times Union has been told was the sexual manipulation of women and underage girls, murky financial dealings and relentless intimidation of people who have tried to break away or question the practices of NXIVM. But this assessment comes without a response from Raniere, who did not respond to repeated attempts to contact him, including certified and overnight letters sent to him and his last known attorney. He and the women who remain in Raniere’s inner circle also did not respond to repeated requests for interviews, and NXIVM’s lawyers, including those at the prominent Albany firm of O’Connell and Aronowitz, which represents Raniere’s financial backers, declined to speak to reporters.

Some former followers have become frightened by Raniere’s growing power, fueled in large part by resources at the disposal of Clare and Sara Bronfman, NXIVM followers and heirs to the Seagram’s fortune.

Many have emerged broken, and a few are speaking out and spilling all into the court record, claiming the man who sells enlightenment is really pitching something else. They’re mostly women who have broken away from Raniere and NXIVM years ago, but their stories are believed to be telling of the way things still operate today.

Those who have known Raniere describe him as charismatic, a good listener and an engaging speaker.