Kat Torres, the Brazilian Instagram influencer and former model, has been sentenced to eight years in prison for human trafficking and slavery of women.
According to BBC, the FBI launched an investigation into Torres after two young Brazilian women who lived with her were missing in 2022.
Several women who claim to have been trafficked and enslaved by the influencer, who was formerly linked to celebrity Leonardo DiCaprio, came forward to share their harrowing stories.
The women said they were drawn to Torres’ inspiring narrative of transformation from an impoverished Brazilian area to a wealthy society surrounded by Hollywood’s biggest stars.
“She kind of resembled hope for me,” said Ana, one of her victims, while speaking in an interview with BBC Eye Investigations and BBC News Brazil about how she came across Torres’ Instagram profile in 2017.
“She seemed like she had overcome violence in her childhood, abuse, all these traumatic experiences.”
Torres also recently published her autobiography wherein she claimed she could make predictions due to her spiritual powers.
Ana said she was particularly attracted to Torres’ approach to spirituality.
She said she believed everything because Torres appeared on magazine covers and was spotted with DiCaprio.
In 2019, Ana moved to New York to work as Torres’ live-in assistant, hoping to escape a violent childhood and an abusive relationship.
But when she arrived, the situation in Torres’ house shocked her. The house was filthy and she was forced to sleep on a sofa covered in cat urine.
“I felt like, ‘I’m stuck here, I don’t have a way out,’” she said. “I was probably one of her first victims of human trafficking.”
Ana also mentioned that she was never paid, suffered from sleep deprivation, and had to escape by moving in with a new boyfriend.
Torres had targeted her most dedicated followers, trying to recruit them to come and work for her.
She was said to have hired Desirre and Leticia, the two Brazilian women, after Ana had left and immediately coerced one of them into working at a strip club.
The women who were promised a “fairytale life” said that Torres used her “witchcraft” to threaten Desirre into prostitution and also set earning quotas.
They also said they were forbidden from speaking to each other and had to seek permission to leave their rooms or even use the bathroom.
When the families of the two women launched a social media campaign to find them in September, Torres made the women travel from Texas to Maine.
She also made them release videos denying that they had been held captive and demanded that people stop searching for them.
In November 2022, Torres was apprehended by police authorities after they convinced her and the women to attend a welfare check in person at Franklin county sheriff’s office in Maine.
The two women were safely returned to Brazil the following month.
In July, Torres was sentenced by a Brazilian judge to eight years in prison for subjecting Desirrê to human trafficking and slavery.
More than 20 women have reported being scammed or exploited by Torres — although her lawyer has appealed her conviction and maintains her innocence.
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