Federal prosecutors charged a popular sexual wellness company with forced labor conspiracy on Tuesday. The founder and former CEO of One Taste, claiming to educate patrons in "orgasmic meditation,” Nicole Daedone, 56, was charged along with the former head of sales, Rachel Cherwitz, 43.

Prosecutors in Brooklyn Federal Court allege the two women swayed numerous volunteers, employees and contractors to go into debt so they could “heal” from sexual trauma and other issues.

Other accusations brought against Daedone and Cherwitz include alleging telling members of One Taste to conduct sex acts to achieve "freedom and enlightenment,” and not paying promised wages to the members.

The allegations against Daedone and Cherwitz do not apply to the operation of the company itself, but rather, only the two executives charged with crimes.

Cherwitz was arrested in Brooklyn on Tuesday and is being transferred to a federal court in San Francisco. Daedone, 56, was not found and is currently at large.

The company launched in 2004 in California. In 2022, Netflix released a documenter titled “Orgasm, Inc.” The Netflix film shared the alleged true story of the successful founding of the company, including numerous interviews filmed with former One Taste members.

The owners of the company are strongly protesting the suit, saying that the charges against the two executives of One Taste are not only erroneous but downright misogynistic.

CEO of One Taste Anjuli Ayer said the company is shocked by the charges, and that they are cooperating fully with authorities.

Anjuli Ayer, in a statement, said they believe the numerous charges are unjustified, especially due to ”OneTaste's culture of individual empowerment, choice and consent.”

"We are appalled by this long-term, misogynistic, media-driven campaign to tear down a feminine empowerment project and the women who devoted their lives to it," Ayer said.

In court papers, Daedone and Cherwitz are alleged to have purposefully enticed people who had suffered sexual trauma, and of then influencing them to leave current romantic relationships and instead become involved with One Taste members.

On their website, the three owners of One Taste, including Ayer, Amanda Dunham and Austin Ayer, refer to the charges as “unfounded allegations of forced labor. Given OneTaste’s culture of empowerment, choice, and consent, this is both inconsistent with our core values and utterly unjustified.”

The website letter to the public addressing the charges says that the FBI investigated their company five years ago “wholly based on an error-riddled Bloomberg Business Week article that contained false, and since-debunked, accusations of harm and wrongdoing.”

As is often the case in news today, the owners said, copycat news outlets republished the story, “culminating in the indictments that were just unsealed.”

Some of the news stories One Taste claims are false or misleading include the June 2018 Bloomberg Business Week article, an October 2018 Playboy article and a November 2020 BBC podcast.

The website offers a clear mission of One Taste, saying, "OneTaste is a women-led organization that has devoted itself to wellness, healing, inclusion, personal growth, and has always had female empowerment at its core. The practice of Orgasmic Meditation (“OM”) has been misunderstood and maligned despite ever-expanding scientific evidence demonstrating its beneficial impact.”

The owners state that they are always listening to members, so they can continuously improve their services.

“One Taste, under its current ownership, has strived to improve, listen to criticism, adjust, and evolve in ways that bring those myriad benefits to many more people,” noted a statement on the company website. “They practice OM on their own time and on their own terms. This is our continuing mission. We remain undeterred even as we commit to fully defend ourselves and the practice that has transformed our lives, in the face of a multi-year, media-instigated campaign.”

The website also offers twenty points that they claim “debunk” the investigation and charges.

Over the past few years, with the viral rise of Netflix, Hulu, and other streaming series and documentaries, lawsuits have become common due to alleged errors in storylines.

Some recent lawsuits include that of respiratory therapist Taylor Hazlewood. The therapist posted a funny cleaver photo of himself on Instagram in 2019 with a hatchet in his hand as a joking reference to his childhood favorite novel “Hatchet.”

Little did he know that the wilderness adventure he admired in the outdoors survival novel by Gary Paulson would haunt him across millions of Instagram views. Hazlewood was shocked to find that Netflix, in its true-crime documentary “The Hatchet Wielding Hitchhiker,” used his innocent photo of him holding that hatchet, posted on Instagram. He charged Netflix with defamation and the misappropriation of his likeness and is seeking $1 million in damages.

In the current indictment against Cherwitz and Daedone, prosecutors allege that they watched their students in communal living spaces and unearthed “deeply sensitive” private information about them, leaving them “emotionally, socially and psychologically dependent on OneTaste.”

The company is expected to challenge all allegations against the two female executives in a San Francisco federal court.