It was a small wedding in Los Angeles, reportedly held in her parents’ backyard. Allison Mack, a former member of the NXIVM cult, stood beneath a Jewish chuppah and married Frank Meeink, a self-professed former neo-Nazi.
TMZ had the photos — June 2025. Mack was in a halter-neck gown with wildflowers in her hair and Meeink in a gray suit. They exchanged vows under the chuppah.
Us Weekly reported that Mack met Meeink at a dog park. They connected over shared interests, and the relationship developed quickly. Their shared interests include the quest for redemption.
Meeink made redemption — or at least a redemption story — his life’s work.
Allison Mack’s Fall and Sentence
Allison Mack, Erika Durance and Kristin Kreuk – part of the cast of Smallville.
Mack is best known for her role as Chloe Sullivan on the television series Smallville (2001–2011). Her career took a nosedive when she left it for NXIVM and followed a man she became a slave to — then recruited women to be her slaves and his ‘grand-slaves.’
In 2018, Mack was arrested and later convicted for her role in the master-slave group DOS, comprised of 105 women and one man — Keith Raniere, founder of NXIVM. She pleaded guilty in 2019 to racketeering and racketeering conspiracy and was sentenced to three years in federal prison. She served 21 months and was released in July 2023.
Allison Mack from a promotional video for Jness, an offshoot of NXIVM.
She is on probation.
Prosecutors accused Mack of recruiting and coercing women into DOS, where members were exploited for sex and labor and branded with Raniere’s initials — many of them unaware that the brand’s design formed his initials upside down.
In court, Mack, facing life in prison, took a plea and admitted that she manipulated, extorted, and forced women to perform acts under threat of blackmail and public humiliation.
Allison Mack with her attorney, Sean Buckley, leaves court.
The judge cited her cooperation in granting a reduced sentence. Mack was ordered to perform 1,000 hours of community service and pay a $20,000 fine, along with her three years in prison.
The Redemption Podcast
Mack is now pursuing her own redemption story and is the subject of a new CBC podcast, Allison After NXIVM, launching November 10, 2025. It is a six-part, audio-only podcast. It will be her redemption story.
The Husband’s Redemption Tale
Little has been reported about her husband, as her husband, that is. His is a redemption story. Unlike Mack, whose fall and crimes were documented by prosecutors and the press, Meeink’s tale rests on his own telling. Frank Meeink’s legend—the skinhead leadership, the brutal crimes, the prison awakening, the anti-hate crusade—comes from one source: Frank Meeink.
Born Francis Steven Bertoline on May 7, 1975, and raised in South Philadelphia, Meeink says he dropped out of high school during his teens and was convicted of kidnapping and aggravated assault at age 17 in Illinois. He says he served about three years in prison for that violent crime.
According to Meeink, he lured an unidentified man to an apartment under false pretenses, kidnapped him, and forcibly assaulted him over several hours, an attack he says was videotaped. He claims he held the victim at gunpoint, beat him, and terrorized him. Meeink identifies the victim only by a first name, Josh, and describes him as a rival gang member.
Meeink says he experienced an “epiphany” in prison that led him away from extremist ideology. After his release, he began describing himself as a former neo-Nazi and claims to have spoken at schools and public events.
Meeink’s memoir, Autobiography of a Recovering Skinhead, was published in 2010. Meeink presents himself as a gang leader, television-show host, and top recruiter in the skinhead movement. These claims, though repeated by several outlets—including NPR, The Des Moines Register, and The New York Post—lack independent corroboration.
His story may lack corroboration but you want to believe it. You want to believe a man can walk into a cell and come out new.
The story may very well be 100 percent true, but FrankReport was unable to corroborate any of it, including his arrest and conviction. Meeink says his life inspired the film, American History X, which also may be true, but he does not appear to be credited. It appears the filmmakers do not corroborate it.
From Nazi to “Woke”
In March 2021, Meeink—moving from Nazi to ‘woke’—appeared on the left-leaning, some say radical, CNN program New Day to discuss political radicalization.
Meeinck was saying what CNN’s audience already believed. Still, the irony was striking: a man claiming to have been radicalized by the far right now warned of right-wing radicalization—on a partisan left-leaning network.
He said, “Fox News has completely radicalized so many Americans,” comparing its messaging to Rwandan hate radio.
His remarks aligned with left-leaning critiques of conservative media.
Mail-Order Miracle
Meeink’s claim to Jewish ancestry is based on a 23andMe DNA test reportedly showing he is 2.4% Ashkenazi Jewish. This claim, widely repeated by media outlets, fits his narrative of redemption perfectly: a former neo-Nazi finds out he is part Jewish.
He bought a mail-order miracle. Spit in a tube, sent it off, and came back reborn — two percent Jewish and a hundred percent marketable. A hell of a plot twist for a guy with no paper trail. Even the grifters in Hollywood would’ve called it too on-the-nose.
The Alibi of Ideology
Still, overall, Meeink has turned a criminal act into a political parable. The beatings, the gun, the kidnapping—if they happened at all—are framed as symptoms of ideology, not choice. It’s an alibi: blame the belief, not the man. He found a way to tell his story so people would forgive him.
Mack needs to do the same thing.
The Redemption Business
Mack escaped a cult and a brutal controlling freak named Raniere, and she served her time. She was once beloved and is now hated. Literally hated.
Allison Mack meeting Keith Raniere for the first time; November 2006
She needs to adopt the Meeink model. Replace Nazi with Raniere, and spread peace and love.
While Meeinck’s story may be authentic, it has to be admitted that several former extremists, grifters, and self-styled reformers often rebrand themselves by presenting a backstory of abuse, neglect, or trauma. It converts them from villain to wounded survivor, and that shift makes audiences more forgiving.
Mack needs to become a wounded survivor, like her husband.
Six months after she married him, it’s Mack’s turn: make her crimes the fault of an ideology, not her own pathology.
Two redemption peddlers walked down the aisle, and half a year later Mack is in full redemption mode. Meeink succeeded. He is, at least to the left, one of us.
As for Mack — let’s wait and see. They got married. After meeting in a dog park. Maybe she thought he was proof that people can change. Or that someone else still believes in second chances. She left NXIVM. He left the neo-Nazis. Maybe they both needed to walk away from something to find someone who’d believe them. Maybe that’s what they both wanted: someone to listen and say, I believe you, even when the world is unlikely to agree — in Mack’s case.
Let’s see what Allison offers on CBC. We’ll know today. I think the test of truth is that she does not throw everyone under the bus — not Nancy Salzman who kept her tethered or Lauren, who taught her the mass of garbage that was NXIVM’s curriculum, or Kristin Kruek who brought her in with tales of NXIVM’s splendor, or Sara Bronfman, who used her wealth to get her set up for getting gobbled up by the great volleyball guru, or Sarah Edmondson and Mark Vicente, who in NXIVM were her hierarchal upline, who sold her classes and more classes and profited off of her.
She can blame Raniere, yes, up to a point. But in the end, the test of truth is that, at least equally if not more, she blames not Raniere but herself. That is, I believe, where she will find it. Redemption, that is. The public might forgive her.
Her husband did that. He blamed himself. Called his actions brutal. And the audience forgave him and wanted to foirgive him so badlly they put aside his brutal violence and put the blame on the Nazi ideology.
The road for Allison is to blame herself hard and then the audience will – it’s pyschology – blame NXIVM and Raniere.
They want to believe a woman can walk into a cell and come out new.
