Lawrence Grecco (born November 16, 1959), known as Larry Ray, is an American criminal who was convicted of sex trafficking, extortion, forced labor, conspiracy, money laundering, and other offenses.US Department of Justice (March 2, 2000). "19 Defendants Indicted in Stock Fraud Scheme that was protected and promoted by Organized Crime," In 2023, he was sentenced to 60 years in prison. He had founded what was described as a "sex cult" at Sarah Lawrence College, after moving in to his daughter's dormitory there when he was 50 years of age.

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. He later lived in Yonkers, New York, on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, in Pinehurst, North Carolina, and as of 2020 in Piscataway, New Jersey.

After graduating high school he served in the United States Air Force for 19 days, was dishonorably discharged, and then switched to other employment.Ezra Marcus and James D. Walsh. "A Story That Won’t Be Told in Court at the Larry Ray Trial," New York Magazine. In the 1980s he was a partner in and ran a bar in Scotch Plains, New Jersey, called the Club Malibu and JJ Rockers.

In the early 1990s, he founded a commercial insurance brokerage firm, that helped insure customers for construction projects and the like. Through this role, he met Joseph Polito, a reputed mobster and member of the Gambino crime family who owned and was president of a company named U.S. Bridge of New York (USBNY) which was based in Queens, New York, and agreed to help the company obtain insurance for a project. At some point in the mid-1990s, Ray said that someone from the mob attached to the company was trying to kill him, and Bernard Kerik helped him contact the FBI.

He asserted that he worked for a United States intelligence agency in Kosovo in 1999, but there is no record of him ever being an intelligence agent for the U.S. A NATO official downplayed his role, saying: "I remember him being around. He was connected and may have made some calls for us, as many other people did at the time."

In the late 1990s, Ray was an informant for the FBI. His job was to inform the Bureau about a scheme involving Gambino crime family capo Eddie Garafola, but his efforts failed as he focused instead on using his role as an informant to conceal his own involvement in the scheme.

Connections with Bernard Kerik and Frank DiTommaso

In 1995, Ray met and then became close friends with Bernard Kerik, a New York Police Department detective. The two men worked out together and rode motorcycles. Kerik was at one point Rudolph Giuliani's bodyguard and driver. In 1995, Kerik was promoted to becoming the director of the New York City Department of Correction's investigations Division. In 1997, at Kerik's request Ray arranged a New York City Hall meeting between Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, after befriending Gorbachev's interpreter, Pavel Palazhchenko. One month later, Giuliani named Kerik the Commissioner of the New York City Department of Correction, a position that Kerik held from 1998 to 2000. Ray donated $7,000 to help pay for Kerik's November 1998 wedding and reception, and was the best man at Kerik's wedding.Eric Lipton and William K. Rashbaum (December 14, 2004). "INQUIRY OF KERIK IN '00 PUTS FOCUS ON VETTING ISSUE," The New York Times. 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. Ray worked for Interstate from December 1998 until March 2000."COMPLAINT FOR REVOCATION OF LICENSURE AND QUALIFICATION," New Jersey v. Interstate, November 15, 2005.

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. Kerik was the Police Commissioner of New York City from 2000 to 2001. He pleaded guilty in 2009 in the Southern District of New York to federal felony charges for tax fraud, making false statements, and his efforts on behalf of Interstate. In 2010 he was sentenced to four years in federal prison, of which he served three years, and in 2020 he obtained a presidential pardon from President Donald Trump.

Ray also testified against DiTommaso in a 2012 perjury trial; in September 2015, DiTommaso happened upon Ray in the lobby of the Hudson Hotel, and pummeled him."Contractor tied to former NYPD top cop gets one day of anger management for beating up ex-FBI informant," The Daily News. 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.”

Crimes Securities fraud

In March 2000, as Ray was living in Warren, New Jersey, he was indicted with others in Brooklyn, New York, for his role in a federal racketeering and stock fraud scheme. The scheme involved the pumping and dumping of stocks by mobsters and stockbrokers, cheating investors out of $40 million between 1993 and 1996. As part of the fraud scheme he was charged with attempting to pay a $100,000 bribe to a bond brokerage firm executive on Garafola's behalf to ensure that USBNY would be granted a bond so that it could act as a general contractor on large construction projects.

In 2003 he pled guilty to conspiracy to commit securities fraud."Giuliani’s Kerik woes resurface through informant ," The Denver Post. On April 9, 2003, he was sentenced to nine months of home confinement, and five years of probation."Petition to Vacate Conviction and Sentence," U.S. v. Lawrence Ray. The judge accused Ray of “manipulating” the court.

In 2006, Ray's then-girlfriend accused him of pinning her down, and putting his hand over her nose and mouth; as a result, he was arrested. She later withdrew her complaint, and the case was dismissed. His arrest was one reason federal prosecutors argued in 2007 that Ray had violated his probation. U.S. Marshals tracked him to his friend's apartment on East 93rd Street where he was with his daughter Talia, pinned him to the ground during which they broke his arm, and handcuffed him. One marshal recalled hearing Talia scream: “Police corruption! This is because of Mayor Rudy Giuliani and Bernard Kerik!”

Abduction In 2004, his then-wife, Teresa Ray, whom he had married in 1988, filed for divorce, and alleged that he had hit her. The parents had a long-term child custody dispute over their daughters Talia Ray 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."

Ray was subsequently charged with interference with child custody, bail jumping, and contempt of court after he in 2005 refused to turn his daughter Talia over to a maternal relative for a visit. He pleaded guilty in 2010, a violation of his parole, and served six months in Northern State Prison in New Jersey on the charges, until late 2010.

Sex trafficking and extortion

Following his release from the New Jersey prison, in September 2010 when he was 50 years of age Ray moved into and resided in the on-campus student housing dormitory apartment of his daughter, Talia Ray, at the elite liberal arts Sarah Lawrence College in Yonkers, New York, a suburb just north of New York City."Accused Leader in Sarah Lawrence Cult Case Is Set to Stand Trial; For about 10 years, Lawrence V. Ray abused and extorted a group of his daughter’s classmates at the college, prosecutors say," The New York Times. At the time, Talia was a sophomore at the college, and lived in the dorm with seven other sophomore students."Her testimony sank Sarah Lawrence sex-cult boss Larry Ray. Read Claudia Drury’s story," Lohud. The college later told New York magazine that it was not aware that he had been living on campus."How Lawrence V. Ray Was Able to Form a Sex Cult at Sarah Lawrence College" Francisco Alvarado, A&E Television Networks, September 27, 2022. Retrieved November 30, 2022.

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. He told the students fabricated stories about his decorated history as an international CIA agent, how he recovered Stinger missiles from the black market and engineered a cease-fire in Kosovo, and lauded the values of the Marine Corps. He then began doing “therapy sessions” and "sex education" with his daughter's roommates, initially college sophomores, counseling them, and convincing them he could help with their psychological problems."United States v. Ray" UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF NEW YORK, May 26, 2021. He learned intimate details of the students' private lives and their mental health struggles, saying it was so that he could help them, and alienated several of them from their parents.

Ray, after gaining the trust of the students, then subjected his daughter's friends to interrogations that lasted hours at a time and led to verbal and physical abuse. Over time, using threats, coercion, and eventually threatening some of them with knives and a hammer, he persuaded them to confess to crimes that they had not committed, including damaging his apartment and property and him and his family, using tactics such as sleep deprivation, psychological and sexual humiliation, verbal abuse, physical violence, and threats of legal action, and then extorted $1 million from five of his victims, with some victims withdrawing hundreds of thousands of dollars from their parents’ savings accounts at his direction. He controlled where they went, to whom they spoke, what they ate, and when they slept.