Katiuscia “Kat” Torres escaped a poverty-ravaged childhood in Brazil by forging a career as a teen model. By her early 20s, the blonde beauty was posing for international magazine covers and partying with Hollywood A-listers. With one celebrity in particular, “we have a pact that nothing can ever be said about our relationship,” Kat told the Brazilian newspaper Extra after she was photographed with the star in 2013. In the wake of being connected to Hollywood heavy hitters, Kat moved to America where she cultivated an image as a wellness influencer and spiritual life coach, racking up more than a million Instagram followers and a growing list of clients eager for her guidance.

But it was all a façade. According to authorities, after promising customers she’d help them attain the “love, money and self-esteem you always dreamed of,” Kat began isolating and threatening women who’d turned to her for help. In June 2024, a Rio de Janeiro judge sentenced her to eight years in prison on charges of human trafficking and slavery. “I was sexually exploited, enslaved and imprisoned,” Desirrê Freitas, one of the victims at the center of the case, wrote in her 2023 book, @Searching Desirrê. “I hope my story serves as a warning.”

How Kat Torres Gained Control Over Her Victims

Claims made by Desirrê, Leticia Maia Alvarenga and another woman known as Sol are chronicled in the 2024 BBC World Service documentary Like, Follow, Trafficked: Insta’s Fake Guru. Kat allegedly recruited the women to work and live with her in Austin, Texas, in 2022. According to Desirrê, Kat soon pressured her into working as a stripper, then a prostitute, and demanded she return with $3,000 a day or face repaying everything Kat had spent on her. Sol said she felt trapped in a similar “terrifying” situation because Kat held her money, passport and driver’s license.

Sol eventually got away with help from a former boyfriend. Desirrê and Leticia, meanwhile, became the focus of a social media campaign launched by friends and family desperate to find them after months of no contact. Brazilian journalist Chico Felitti, host of the new Wondery true crime podcast “Don’t Cross Kat,” exclusively tells In Touch “a network of young Brazilian women who acted as armchair detectives saved the day” as they helped locate Desirrê and Leticia.

Kat was taken into custody and deported. She’s denied any wrongdoing and told the BBC in a prison interview in 2024 that she has no regrets about her behavior. “When I was seeing the people testifying, they were saying so many lies. So many lies that at one point, I couldn’t stop laughing,” she said. But confronted with some of the evidence against her, she grew hostile, telling documentary reporters, “You choose to believe whatever you choose to believe. I can tell you I’m Jesus. And you can see Jesus, or you can see the devil. It’s your choice.”