Larry Ray

Early life Ray was born as Lawrence Grecco in 1959, in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, New York, in the United States. He grew up in Brooklyn and in New Jersey. In the 1980s he was a partner in and ran a bar in Scotch Plains, New Jersey, called the Club Malibu and JJ Rockers. Shortly after, Kerik helped Ray obtain a job as security director with a construction company run by Frank DiTommaso and his brother known as Interstate Industrial Corporation, where a portion of Ray's responsibility was to assist the business in obtaining a license from city regulators, as the business faced allegations that it was tied to organized crime.

In 2000, Ray and Kerik had a falling out, around the time that Ray was indicted for racketeering, and Ray began to act as a cooperating witness with prosecutors who were investigating Kerik, and whose investigation ultimately led to Kerik being convicted and imprisoned. In 2019 Kerik said: “Larry Ray is a psychotic con man who has victimized every friend he’s ever had. It’s been close to 20 years since I last heard from him, yet his reign of terror continues.” On April 9, 2003, he was sentenced to nine months of home confinement, and five years of probation. The judge accused Ray of “manipulating” the court. and Ava Ray, and a psychological examiner's notes from the time said that Ray was "able to manipulate and control almost any situation in which he finds himself, including a psychological interview with a forensic examiner, no matter how experienced that examiner may be. Mr. Ray is very good at what he does … [He] can be utterly charming, and one can be disarmed by his childlike simplicity and smile. But Mr. Ray is no child; he is a calculating, manipulative and hostile man." At the time, Talia was a sophomore at the college, and lived in the dorm with seven other sophomore students. The college later told New York magazine that it was not aware that he had been living on campus.

While there, Ray started a sex cult in which he presented himself to students as a former US Marine with training in psychological operations, as well as past work with the Central Intelligence Agency. At first Ray ingratiated himself with his daughter's friends, cooking dinners and ordering in delivery, and presenting himself as a father figure. Ray, Talia, and Isabella shared a bed in the bedroom, and the others slept on inflatable mattresses or couches. Ray forced the female roommates to have sex with him and with others, saying it would assist them in moving past their childhood traumas, videotaped the encounters, and threatened to post the tapes and to send them to the young women's parents.

In 2013, four of Ray's victims graduated from Sarah Lawrence College. In that same year, he brought Yalitza and Felicia Rosario, and later also Claudia Drury and Isabella Pollok, to his stepfather's property in Pinehurst, North Carolina, where he restricted their access to food (locking the refrigerator), was physically violent with them, berated them for imaginary infractions, accused them of poisoning him, and threatened them.

In 2014, he coerced former student Claudia Drury into working at a sex club. From 2014 to 2018, he forced Drury into prostitution, trafficked her, and took from her hundreds of thousands of dollars she made by selling sex to strangers. She worked under a name that was a combination of the names of Ray's daughters.

The story about Larry Ray first broke in New York magazine in April 2019. Defense attorneys argued Ray, who had been diagnosed with narcissistic personality disorder and histrionic personality disorder, was influenced by his psychological problems.

In 2022, he was tried for nearly a month in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York in Manhattan on 15 counts, including sex trafficking, extortion, racketeering conspiracy and violent crime in aid of racketeering, forced labor, and money laundering. During his trial, several survivors including Claudia Drury testified against him. Summing up the case, Judge Liman said: "It was sadism, pure and simple." As of February 2024, he was imprisoned at the United States Penitentiary, Terre Haute, in Indiana.

In 2021, Isabella Pollok, who had been with Ray for a decade, was charged as Ray's co-conspirator in the sex trafficking and extortion case. According to the Bureau of Prisons, she was released from custody on July 21, 2025.

Ray is scheduled to be released on March 29, 2071, when he will be 111 years old. A Hulu docuseries was also made, Stolen Youth: Inside the Cult at Sarah Lawrence (2023). The two-act play Runts, written by Melvin Jules Bukiet and loosely based on the events, opened in May 2023 at the Teatro Latea on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. The cult has also been the subject of Wondery Law&Crime's "Devil in the Dorm" podcast.