Father of Sarah Lawrence student coerced his daughter's college friends for sex and money, prosecutor says: "He took over their lives"

A prosecutor cast an ex-convict Thursday as a mobster-like figure who coerced his daughter's college friends to join his "family" as he accumulated power, sex and money, forcing one woman into a sex work enterprise so lucrative that she gave him $1 million in a single year.

A defense lawyer, though told the Manhattan federal court jury during the trial's opening statements that Lawrence Ray committed no federal crimes as he encircled himself with college-age "storytellers" who claimed to have poisoned him and arranged to have him physically attacked.

"You'll see that Larry Ray is not guilty," attorney Allegra Glashausser said.