The Brazilian Instagram influencer and former model Kat Torres was found guilty of human trafficking and female enslavement and received an eight-year prison sentence.
The FBI reportedly started looking into Torres after two young Brazilian women who resided with her vanished in 2022, according to the BBC.
A number of women who allege to have been forced into slavery and trafficked by the influencer—who was once connected to the well-known actor Leonardo DiCaprio—came forward with their terrifying tales.
The women claimed that Torres’ motivational story of rising from a destitute Brazilian neighborhood to an affluent society encircled by the biggest names in Hollywood drew them in.
“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 added that she was never paid, had trouble sleeping, and had to move in with a new partner in order to get away.
Torres had singled out her most devoted supporters in an attempt to entice them to join her workforce.
After Ana had departed, she was reported to have hired the two Brazilian women, Desirre and Leticia, and to have promptly forced one of them to work at a strip club.
The ladies who were assured of a “fairytale life” said that Torres established earning quotas and threatened Desirre into prostitution using her “witchcraft.”
They added that they were not allowed to talk to each other and that they needed permission to even go to the restroom or leave their quarters.
Torres forced the two women to fly from Texas to Maine after their families started a social media search for them in September.
She also insisted that they stop looking for them and forced them to release tapes in which they denied having been taken captive.
Torres was taken into custody by police in November 2022 after they persuaded her and the women to appear in person for a welfare check at the Franklin County Sheriff’s Office in Maine.
The next month, the two women were sent back to Brazil without incident.
A Brazilian judge sentenced Torres to eight years in prison in July for enslaving and trafficking Desirrê.
Torres has been accused of defrauding or taking advantage of over 20 women; nevertheless, her attorney has challenged the verdict and is adamant about Torres’ innocence.