Kat Torres, a Brazillian model and social media influencer, was convicted of human trafficking. Photo: Instagram
Katiuscia "Kat" Torres's first steps to stardom and then infamy were ho-hum - just another Brazilian model moving to America in search of a brighter spotlight. She aimed to act in Hollywood, but quickly found notoriety as a social media influencer in New York.
Her impeccably staged images of a wealthy, successful life beamed through Instagram to more than a million followers. But far from appearing as a shallow persona fixed on the physical world, Torres positioned herself as a spiritual guide, hypnotist, self-help author and life coach who regularly consumed ayahuasca, a psychedelic with a reputation for triggering inner healing but also violence and abuse.
Torres "started going off the deep end," when she began doing the hallucinogenic drug, her former New York flatmate Luzer Twersky told the BBC in Like, Follow, Trafficked: Insta's Fake Guru, an investigative documentary released this month.
The rock bottom of that deep end was an eight-year prison sentence when Torres was convicted by a Brazilian court in June of trafficking and slavery. The charges were related to the disappearance of two Brazilian women who lived with Torres in Texas.
They were not the only women inspired to join Torres in real life. Ana, another Brazilian woman, moved to New York in 2019 as a live-in assistant. She was hooked by Torres's rags-to-riches story that included partying with actor Leonardo Di Caprio.
However, Ana found herself living in the influencer's grimy apartment with sofas covered in cat urine. Ana told the BBC that she worked around the clock without pay.
"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."
Kate Torres (left) with Desirrê Freitas and Letícia Alvarenga (right). Photo: Kat Torres
In 2021, Torres recruited Maia Alvarenga, 21, and Desirrê Freitas, 25, whose disappearance sparked an FBI search. By then, Torres was living in a Texas mansion with a 21-year-old husband, according to VICE and the BBC.
The women were lured by Torres, a confessed witch who promised to help them recreate her life. However, they ended up on escort websites, confined to their rooms when they weren't working, handing over their earnings and participating in odd rituals, VICE and the BBC reported.
When the missing women's families started a campaign to find them, the saga became fodder for Brazilian talk shows. With the publicity and pressure from former victims like Ana, the FBI launched a search for the two missing women. Torres was eventually detained in the US state of Maine due to her lax immigration status. She was deported to Brazil in November 2022 where she was arrested on trafficking and slavery charges, according to VICE.
Kat Torres was interviewed in jail by a BBC documentary team. Photo: BBC / Jack Garland
Freitas and Alvarenga returned safely to Brazil the following month. Freitas told the Brazilian publication O Globo that Torres used "my faith, spirituality, empathy and the feeling of friendship I had for her to make me move to another country and do things that go against my essence."
In an exclusive jail cell interview for the BBC's documentary, Torres claimed she was innocent as she awaited sentencing following her conviction in Brazil. She threatened her victims and claimed her imprisonment would show whether her powers were real or not.
The BBC found more than 20 alleged victims of Torres. Further investigations into additional allegations against her are ongoing in Brazil.