Serialously with Annie Elise - 179: Social Media Influencer Turned Cult Leader & Human Trafficker | The Deep Dive of Kat Torres

Episode Date: July 29, 2024

If you could go back in time to early 2022, and look at Influencer Kat’s Torres’ Instagram account, you wouldn’t necessarily think this was someone who was going to be at the center of a massive criminal scandal. She did a pretty good job of looking like this sweet, innocent person. But behind her glamorous facade, was anything but glamorous. It was a tale of lies, manipulation and exploitation beyond belief.  RoBody Go to https://www.ro.co/ae and get your first month for just $99!  Lume Deodorant Use code AE for 15% off your first purchase at https://www.LumeDeodorant.com Seed Go to https://www.Seed.com/ae and use code 25AE to get 25% off your first month. Dipsea Dipsea is offering an extended 30 day free trial when you go to https://www.DipseaStories.com/AE That was a teaser from Lecture Me, a spicy audiobook exclusively on Dipsea. As things heat up between Professor James and his former grad student, will they be able to keep their relationship a secret on campus? Download the Dipsea app to find out! Mint Mobile Cut your wireless bill to $15 a month at https://www.mintmobile.com/ae Shop the Merch: www.annieelise.com Follow the podcast on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@serialouslypodcast   Follow the podcast on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/serialouslypod/       Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/annieelise     All Social Media Links: https://www.flowcode.com/page/annieelise_    Serialously FB Page: https://www.facebook.com/SERIALouslyAnnieElise/    About Me: https://annieelise.com/   For Business Inquiries: [e-mail]  Sources:  Times of India BBC News  Audio Sources:  BBC News Universal Times

Instagram influencer Kat Torres sentenced for human trafficking. She commended dummies. The dummies are the population of the world. Lexissa, you listen to her only, only her. Nobody else but my followers on my Instagram that I speak their names. I want you to f***ing die. I hope you listen to this, you understand this. F***ing die. Leave me and my family alone. Hey, true crime besties.

Welcome back to an all-new episode of Serialistly with me, Annie Elise. Now, this case just recently came across my radar, guys, and I knew I had to jump on here and talk with you about it because it is truly unbelievable. I don't know what is in the water these days, but it feels like there have been all kinds of different allegations out there about abuse, exploitation, all of these things primarily happening and rooting from social media, from the communities, from the creators, and people using their platforms for all sorts of different like nefarious activities, fraud schemes, not only just like what used to be catfishing was our biggest worry, it seems like it's getting more and more out of hand.

For example, just earlier this summer in June, you might remember that I posted my full deep dive episode on the 7M cult, which, well, I should say, I think it is a cult, allegedly a cult. Anyways, this is allegedly a cult that preys on people who are using TikTok, dancers who are primarily using TikTok as their form of medium and how they are, you know, preying on them. They're trying to get them into their religious group. They're using them and acting as a producer and a manager as well of these accounts so that they're getting a cut of the money, all sorts of things like that. So we're seeing a huge uptick, absolutely, not only in personal people using social media as a platform to exploit or abuse or profit,

but also bigger mega people who are using people's personal accounts, almost like, not a pyramid scheme, but you know what I'm saying? I'm trying to explain it like somebody at the top who's using people who are on social media to do that. So you have both layers to it. And today, big surprise, we're talking about another influencer who completely just went off the rails in terms of spiritual manipulation, enslavement, trafficking. I mean, truly, this one is wild. So today we're talking about an Instagram model and a TikToker named Kat Torres. And if you've been paying any attention to the news lately, you know how insane this story truly is. But if not, don't worry because I am digging in and I'm doing the deep dive so that

you don't have to. Covering all the details in this whole bag of crazy because I feel like I can call it that. Now if you could go back in time to early 2022 and look at Kat's Instagram account, you wouldn't necessarily think that this was somebody who was going to be at the center of this massive criminal scandal. She did a pretty good job, actually, of looking like this sweet, innocent person, and she actually had a really interesting story. She grew up very poor in Brazil, but there was something working for Kat at a very young age, something working in her favor. She was beautiful, and she managed to leverage her good looks into a modeling career when she was only 12 years old. Now, at first, Kat started out on the pageant circuit. Then she did more modeling, and before she knew it,

she was kind of just like jetting around Europe. She was living this very glamorous life. And in 2013, when she was only 24 years old, she even went to Cannes or Cannes or Cannes, however you say it, I don't know what the right pronunciation is, but she went there with none other than Leonardo DiCaprio. Now, this might be a little bit more, I don't know, Hollywood gossip, a little bit of the hot goss more than what I usually will do on this show, but I do think that it's important to share the details anyway because it starts to lay the foundation for who Kat was and what was important to her. It just shows a little bit about who she is personally. So as she's jetting around with Leo, all of these reporters and journalists were asking Leo and Kat, hey, are you guys at this festival

together as just friends or are you guys dating? Now when they asked Kat, she said, yeah, we are boyfriend and girlfriend. She even said that they were staying at the same house together while they were in Cannes. But she didn't say much more, because according to her, she and Leo had this deal where they weren't going to say too much to the press. They weren't going to overshare. She also hinted that she might have said too much already. Like, yeah, we are. We're even staying at the same house together.

But, oh, sorry, I said too much. Something like that. Leonardo DiCaprio's new model girlfriend has confirmed they are dating. Kate Torres, who is 24, insists a great Gatsby star is amazing, but admits she might get in trouble with the 38-year-old hunk for speaking about their romance. She said, I met Leo in Cannes. We were staying in the same house at the festival. Leo is amazing, but I worry about what he will think about me talking to you. We have a pact that

nothing can ever be said about our relationship. In Europe it is different. People see us together in many places, so they do not need to ask us about anything." When the reporters then turned around and asked Leo about Kat, he said, no, we're just friends. Nothing more than that. So then, of course, everybody's like, what? So they went back to Kat and asked about the discrepancy. You both are telling two different versions of what your relationship is. So they point blank kind of just asked her like, hey, why are you saying that you and Leonardo DiCaprio are in a relationship? Yet when we ask him, he says, no, you're just friends. And what was so interesting is that she didn't try to cover it up. She didn't try to make

an excuse. She realized that she was caught in the lie, and she kind of just said, yeah, I made that up. Just so casual. It was almost bizarre. However, during that short window of time before they cleared this whole discrepancy up when they thought that she was Leonardo DiCaprio's girlfriend, she got a lot of attention and a lot of interviews. She booked all sorts of different types of photo shoots, and the news basically gave her career a nice little boost. And all she had to do to get this boost was blatantly tell a lie. Now anyway, like I said, I'm not trying to make this like a celebrity gossip show, but I wanted to lay the footwork for what was going on with Kat, because I do think that there is a pretty clear sign right there that Kat was willing to do anything or say anything that she had to do in order to get attention. Also in order to get money, get more career notoriety,

followers, all the things. I mean, when you think about it, she very well could have pissed off Leo with that lie, because I bet he didn't like some random girl, even if it was a friend of his, pretending to be his girlfriend. But Kat took the risk. She didn't care. For her, life was all about what she could get out of it. And that strategy really was working for her. She was bringing in money, she had all sorts of attention. She was jet-setting around Europe. She had famous friends. She was a top model. I mean, it was a complete turnaround for her from how things were when she was a little girl. So eventually, she moved to the United States, and she settled in New York City with a roommate, a guy named Loser Worski. Now, I do want to just say this, guys, especially because you don't know the spelling, his name isn't loser as in L-O-S-E-R. It is pronounced that way, but it is spelled L-U-Z-E-R. So as I'm saying his name throughout this, I'm not calling him a loser. That literally is just

how you pronounce his name. Unfortunate, I know. So this was around the mid 2010s and I'm not sure the exact year, but I do know that it was around this time roughly, because Kat was absolutely blowing up on Instagram. I mean, think tens of thousands of followers, all loving every post, all commenting on these gorgeous photos of herself that she was putting up, just truly living the dream and making the rest of the world jealous with how good she had it, or how good she was portraying herself to have it. Everything seemed great, except Loser was one of the very first people to notice that this image of herself that Kat was putting out there online didn't

really match up with reality. I mean, sure, she was making good money and she was living this luxurious lifestyle, but Loser didn't think that she was earning all of this cash with her modeling work. In fact, Loser believed that Kat was a sugar baby, as in dating somebody who was very rich, or maybe multiple rich guys, probably somebody older, letting them buy her expensive gifts, or just straight up giving her cash in exchange for her continuing to date them and give them some sort of time and attention, and possibly even sex. And Loser didn't just come up with this theory completely out of nowhere. He had his reasons for his suspicions.

I mean, first of all, there were always a bunch of attractive, rich men just lingering and hanging out at their apartment. Like all the time. It was a constant party. Plus, at least one time when he picked up Kat's mail for her, there was this envelope that from what he could tell, it was just stuffed with cash. The shape of it, the way it felt, it was clear that there was like a big stack of cash inside. Now obviously, Instagram wasn't sending Kat her money in an envelope full of cash.

Her sponsors wouldn't be paying her that way. So this was from somebody who didn't want to send a check, who didn't want to send it electronically, wire it, Venmo, untraceable. They didn't want this to be able to be tracked back to them. So in a word, it was a little bit shady. Now to be clear, there is nothing wrong with doing what works for you. I mean, there are a lot of people who have these types of relationships these days, whether they are actual sex workers and escorts or if they're sugar babies, and it's very transactional. It's very business-like. That's totally fine, totally everybody's personal preference. So as long as Kat was happy with whatever type of business arrangement she had, that's all that really mattered. As long as she wasn't portraying something else to these men,

and it was clear, you know, this is just what it is, great. It's her business. That's not an issue at all. The issue, to my mind, is more that she was sort of lying about herself online. She was selling sex, yes, but she was also making these videos and these photos with captions that made it all sound like she just worked really hard, that she believed in herself. All of these general, warm, fuzzy things that influencers say that really don't mean anything, kind of like a word salad, acting as though she's this hustler, this grinder, she does all this hard work, and that's how she earns her money, when in reality, it's something that is completely different. Now, why I say that is because during all of this, Kat was also booking these coaching sessions with people. For $150, she'd hop on a

Zoom call or FaceTime, and she would talk to people about their life, what they were struggling with, and she would just give them advice. Now, I don't know what that advice actually involved. Who knows? Maybe she had a real knack for figuring out what people had to change in their lives in order to be happy or in order to be successful. However, what I will say is this. She was putting herself out there as one kind of person, while in reality, she was doing something else entirely. Yet she was claiming that she was making all of this money because she truly was an expert at business, when really, she wasn't.

Just sort of manipulating people to think that she knew some kind of secret to success, when really the success was, you know, I've got at least one rich boyfriend, who knows, maybe more. So anyway, around 2017, Kat moved to LA to try and get some more acting jobs. And let me just say, there are a lot of different stereotypes about LA people. Stereotypes, which I can tell you from living in Southern California, are true a lot of the time. There's a lot of drug use, there's a lot of experimenting, a lot of how can I use this person for what I want to get and where I want to go in life. And Kat's experience really was no different. She would party, she would meet people, she would network, and she ended up partying with some people who encouraged her to

try ayahuasca, which she did. And according to the people who knew her, like her old roommate Loser, it was like her personality just changed pretty much overnight after that. She became a lot more self-centered, a lot more unwilling to hear any criticisms from other people, a lot more convinced of her own greatness and her own amazingness, and she just expected people to sort of fall over themselves after being so impressed by her. Now, if you're wondering what ayahuasca is that would create such a drastic shift in somebody, I don't want to sound like a narc or a D.A.R.E. officer, certainly not, but I do have to say it is very strong. It can be very beneficial, but it also can screw you up pretty badly as well.

There's some evidence that people, when you are doing it medically with somebody who is, you know, not, I don't know if you can be licensed or credentialed, but somebody who is experienced in this, there is a lot of information out there showing that it can help people treat symptoms of depression and things like that. Some people even use it for religious purposes, which great, that's all fine and good. However, the issue is ayahuasca can also permanently change your brain chemistry. It's science. It's something that people know is possible. So doing it at a random party with a bunch of friends when you don't really know what is going on

is very, very different from taking something that has been prescribed to you or maybe even working with a professional who can help you prepare for the trip that you're about to go on a safer and more clinical way. And I'm also not a psychologist or anything like that. I'm not going to pretend to know what's going on in Kat's head. But I will say, I'm not sure if I buy Loser's claim that her personality changed entirely. Because we know from the Leonardo DiCaprio story that she was already this kind of selfish person, and she was willing to lie and throw other people under the bus if it would benefit her somehow. So the only real change from what I can tell is that now, besides just giving people advice about how to have more confidence or a positive attitude or

whatever she was doing, she was also letting people pay her to hypnotize them. Sort of like as a way to achieve enlightenment or better mental health. And keep in mind, she was not a trained therapist. She did not have any sort of background in this. And I've said it in a few episodes in the past when we've covered culty behavior or actual cults. Anytime somebody talks about a spiritual enlightenment, that particular word, it gives red flags, to me at least, because this is kind of the foundation

and footwork we see in so many of these self-proclaimed prophets. They promise spiritual enlightenment, getting you to the next level. All you have to do is change the way you think about things. And this is where Kat's journey in that world really started to begin. So she didn't have any background in any of this. She wasn't a trained therapist. She didn't have any professional experience with hypnotizing people. It was just something that she was doing. But since her Instagram was so popular, she had so many followers, she never had a shortage of people who were willing to pay for these services. Same thing once TikTok hit the scene. She got on there too, blew up, and that was really an open public forum for her to start building her

clientele. And then Kat started talking about how she was guided by literal voices, like God was talking to her directly. She even wrote a memoir, and the title was Avas, which is Portuguese for the voice. On Instagram, Kat was always saying things about how she was so spiritual, how this voice was guiding her, all of this stuff. Now again, in my mind, that sounds like red flag city. Not that there's anything wrong with talking about faith or beliefs on social media, certainly not. But I think that a line does begin to get crossed when somebody says that they are in direct contact with God or any other higher power out there. There's definitely a difference between saying, I believe in this, this is my faith, rather than saying, God told me this himself. I know this to be true. This is what he told me about you. And that is the path the cat was going

down. And whether it's Chad Dumbbell thinking that he's a prophet or cat saying that she has her little voice, anytime somebody says that they speak for God or the universe or what have you, you need to run. You need to run like hell in the other direction. However, as we know, so many times people believe this. People both fall for a hook, line, and sinker. And unfortunately, one of these people who we are going to be talking about who felt that way is Anna. Anna was a lot like Kat. She was also from Brazil, she also grew up in less than ideal conditions, and she also moved to the United States in the hopes that it might help her get on a new track and build a better life for

herself. Instead, sadly, Anna experienced something that's unfortunately very common for women who are vulnerable and don't have much support. She dated the wrong person who ended up abusing her. And when she broke things off, she was basically in this very dark, terrible place. She had nobody to watch out for her, and she had nowhere to go. And at that exact time, when her life was at this crossroads and she was in this dark place, that's when she found Kat's memoir, and it just spoke to her. Anna saw Kat as the person that she wanted to be, someone who rose above her circumstances and had it all. And she wasn't just basing this on Kat's book,

but also on her social media accounts, which showed her in these super fancy expensive places, these fancy clothes, dining at high-end restaurants. Like, if Kat could get all of that for herself, why couldn't Anna also have it all? So they connected online, and by 2019, Kat offered her the job of a lifetime. By this time, Kat had her own place. She wasn't living with Loser anymore, even though she was still in New York. But she did need a live-in assistant. Somebody to help her manage all of her appointments and her busy schedule,

take care of a little housework as well, I mean, that sort of thing. So when Kat offered Anna this job, it was kind of like a dream come true. I mean, here was a chance for this fresh start, a new place to live, a new job, and Anna also got to work with this online celebrity who she really liked, who she really admired. For her, it was kind of like a no-brainer. So Anna agreed to handle Kat's cooking, cleaning, laundry, everything. She also would make sure that her pets were always fed, always walked, always had water, and in exchange for this, she would make $2,000 a month. Which I do have to say, for the record, that isn't a whole lot of money if you're living in New York City. Definitely not at all. However, she didn't have to pay for rent because she was living with Kat, which would be a bonus in all of this. So for

her, even though it wasn't going to be enough money for her to get out on her own in New York City or start building her life, it was a great setup for her. She was going to be with this person who she looked up to. She was going to be earning extra money that she could stack. She didn't have to pay rent. And if Kat had actually held up her side of the bargain, this could have been a really good setup for Anna. The problem is Kat was not honest at all about what Anna was in for. First, her apartment was just absolutely filthy. I'm sure when Anna first agreed to do the cleaning for Kat,

she figured that it just meant, you know, tidying up here and there, maybe vacuuming, maybe dusting. Because remember, the Instagram pictures that she would post in her apartment, it made it look as though she lived in this pristine, airy dream life. But in reality, it was disgusting. Truly, I don't just mean that a little bit of grime was built up here or there or that there were a couple visible dust bunnies or anything. This was like when she got there for the first time and opened the door before she even set foot inside, the odor hit her. The apartment physically stank. The level of filth that we're talking about, guys, I mean, it was bad enough that Anna didn't even feel comfortable sleeping on the couch. Which I say that because, yes, the couch. She wasn't even provided a room of her own. She had to go to bed every single night on the couch, which, by the way, was soaked with cat urine. Now, the good news is, Cat's building had a gym.

So if Anna ever needed to grab a quick nap or whatever she needed, she would say that she was just heading out to exercise. Then she would grab one of those yoga mats in the gym, roll it out, and she would actually be able to sleep in in the gym, roll it out, and she would actually be able to sleep in a somewhat acceptable setup, somewhere that didn't reek and smell like feces. And you might wonder, well, why didn't she just speak up? Why didn't she tell Kat, like, uh, these conditions are disgusting, like, I'm not sleeping on that couch, figure it out. Well, it was a problem because Kat was not the kind of person who could handle being told no. Not to mention that Kat micromanaged every single aspect of her life.

Everything. Anna wasn't even allowed any time to herself. Even when Kat was in the shower, she would make Anna come into the bathroom with her. So she had no choice but to lie and say she was going for this fake exercise just in order to catch a little tiny nap, just in order to rest for a moment. Now obviously this is insane, and apparently it wasn't just that Kat was so controlling. She couldn't even let Anna out of her sight for 20 minutes. It was also an attention thing, like Kat just couldn't handle being alone, not having somebody look at her, talk to her, even while she was taking a shower.

So on top of everything going on, Anna really wasn't getting any sort of good night's sleep. She'd catch a few hours here and there, between the gym, between wherever she was, but anytime that Anna would actually get an hour or two of shut-eye, three or four hours I guess at most, Kat would come along and just wake her up and give her more stuff to do. Which I don't know how Kat was able to function at all, given that she was apparently up at all the same hours that Anna was. But Anna felt like she was on the verge of collapsing. She did not get a break. Never. On top of that, Kat wasn't paying Anna. And I'm not saying that she wasn't paying her the $2,000 that she had promised her. She was not paying her anything. So essentially, Anna was enslaved to her. She wasn't allowed to leave. She wasn't allowed to quit. She wasn't getting paid. She had nowhere to go. If she did

manage to get away from Kat, she was essentially trapped. But even with all of those barriers that were supposed to stop her from leaving, Anna did make it out. She only stuck it out for three months. And during that time, somehow, which I can't imagine how she managed to find the time with Kat looking over her shoulder 24-7, but Anna started dating somebody new. And at the three-month mark, she told Kat basically like, see you later, I'm going and I'm going to live with this guy. So she quit her job and she moved in with her new boyfriend. Anna just wanted to put this whole terrible situation behind herself and move on, which is exactly what she did, or tried to do at least, for about four years, until the fall of 2022 hit, because then her dark history came rushing back. And we are going to get into all of that as soon as we take

a quick break to hear from the first sponsors of today's episode. So one day in 2022, Anna heard about two different women who had been reported missing. It was September, and they both disappeared around the same time. Their names were Desiree Freyas and Letitia Maya. Both Desiree and Letitia were young and beautiful. They were both originally from Brazil as well, but they had come to the United States before they went missing. And here's the key to all of it. They were both big, big fangirls of Katz. They had spent a ton of time on her social media accounts before they disappeared. And this was also a little bit different from your typical missing persons case, because everybody knew that they were both alive and well. They were posting on social media all

the time, but the issue was both women had stopped answering phone calls altogether. They also would not reply to any text messages. Their families knew where they were, but they weren't sure if they were, but they weren't sure if they were okay. The last thing that either Letitia or Desiree had told their loved ones were that they were living with some online influencer. They didn't say who, but again, we know that they were big fans of cats. So now the question was whether they were out of contact willingly, or if they were being held hostage. Well, Anna recognized all of the red flags. She saw the similarities between Desiree and Letitia and herself, and

you'll remember she was also a Brazilian-American who, once upon a time, had worshipped Kat, worshipped the ground that she walked on. Kat had lured her to New York with the promise of a job, a place to live, and it would have really been easy for her to also trick Desiree and Letitia the same way, using similar offers, similar glamour, trying to hook them. So Anna called the police. And you know how we say all the time, if you feel like something's wrong, do something about it. Act on it. She did. She did exactly that. So when Anna got on the phone with the officers, she told them everything she knew and everything that she suspected. The problem was, they didn't believe her. Which is absolutely infuriating, but unfortunately, also not that surprising.

So all to say, Anna didn't think that she was going to get much help from the authorities. She submitted a tip to the FBI online, just in case, but I also have to imagine that she wasn't feeling entirely optimistic about that either. But in her mind, she figured if she wanted to help Desiree and Letitia, and if she was going to expose Kat for who she really was, she had to do it on her own. And one of the biggest tools that Anna had at her disposal was social media. I mean, that was apparently what Kat used to find her victims, right? So Anna did everything she could to hop on Instagram, hop on TikTok, and just start warning people, shine a light on the person that Kat really was. It began with Anna warning people to stay away from Kat. And Kat responded by threatening to hurt or kill Anna. Around April of 2022, she made an Instagram post threatening me. In the post, she says that she's going to hang my school,

that I was a traitor, that she had welcomed me in her house and I betrayed her trust and I was going to pay with my life for what I had done to her. And I just got really scared. Like I had panic attack and she was demanding all her followers to tag me. She called me a slave in her post. She says that she made my life hell. Then Kat, who at this time was now living in Texas, just up and moved to Maine.

Now my assumption is she didn't like all of the attention that she was getting all of a sudden. She didn't want to make it too easy for people to figure out where she was, what she was up to, things like that. But you wouldn't know it from her social media, because every post was still about how great everything was going, how her life was so wonderful, how she had nothing to worry about. And Desiree and Letitia were also online, announcing that they were fine. Nobody had to worry about them. Nobody should keep looking for them. Which really wasn't all that comforting for their family members, who still could not reach them on the phone or get any type of answer about why they had just cut everybody

that they knew out of their lives. Going by their TikTok posts, you would think that both of them were just happy, free, making their own decisions. Yes, out of contact with their old friends and family members, but still showing some sort of sign of free will. Now, of course, we know that people can be pressured or coerced to put things on social media that they don't mean. Personally, I think some of the recent 7M TikToks that have come out from those members also have been coerced, just my opinion. But we know that there's a difference between a pre-recorded video where you might just be reading a script versus an actual in-person conversation where you can speak freely and where you can just tell the people you love that you're okay, or even warn

them that something's not right. So basically nobody could tell what was going on. There was this whole war kind of going on over social media with both sides making just these insane accusations and if you weren't caught up in it and you weren't part of it you might have a very difficult time knowing which side to believe in all of this. This person is very dangerous and she has already threatened to kill me and I'm trying to save my life. I want you to die. I hope you listen to this. You understand this? Die. Leave me and my family alone. So another woman ended up getting caught up in all of this. Someone who had been completely disconnected from everything until she decided to insert herself into the drama. This was a Brazilian model named Yasmin Brunei. Apparently, Yasmin saw a lot of this back and forth between Anna and Kat and everybody else, and she made some videos of her own just commenting on what was going on. Kat and the others then

started attacking Yasmeen online. They said basically that she was projecting, that she was the one doing all of the terrible, exploitative things that Kat had been accused of. And Yasmeen was important in this story not just because she was very popular, she had a following. And when she waded into all of this online ugliness, she brought even more attention to everything that was going on. Basically, she created a situation where the police couldn't ignore these accusations anymore. So finally, in November, Kat was arrested. Now, the way it happened was like this.

The police went to Kat's house one day where she lived with Desiree and Letitia, and some other people lived there. And the investigator said that they needed to ask all three of them some questions. They needed to talk to each woman alone. No comparing stories, no double checking with one another to see what was okay to say, what wasn't. Just a detective and Kat, Desiree, or Letitia. All one-on-one. And when they talked to Letitia, she said that she was in the United States completely willingly. She said that the reason that she left Brazil and the reason that she wasn't talking to her parents anymore was because her father was abusive. She had cut him off for her own safety, and Kat basically had saved her. Now, that little piece of information aside,

Desiree and Letitia were not especially eager to actually be honest and say what they had been through. If anything, they almost seemed afraid of the police. But the good news is that these police weren't like the ones that Anna had talked to at first. I mean, they were actually competent. They were taking this seriously. They knew how to recognize the signs of human trafficking, and they specifically realized that it's super common for victims in those situations to not feel comfortable or safe speaking up, sharing what they had been through. A lot of times, traffickers can brainwash

their targets too, almost to be cooperative and to be too scared to ask for help from the people who can actually help them. So the fact that Desiree and Letitia weren't really talking, it spoke volumes in and of itself. And once the officials put Kat in handcuffs and threw her behind bars, finally the two of them did get to a place where they were willing to open up. And what they shared blew everybody's mind. For one thing, Letitia retracted all of those allegations that she had made against her father about the abuse. She said that she only accused him because Kat had told her to lie, to say that she was escaping this bad situation, that he was the monster in all of this. And once they opened up what they had to say about life and about Kat, if you haven't been following this story, just think about what I've covered so far

and everything that Anna went through, and now think of the worst version of that scenario that you can come up with and times it by a million. So I'm going to start with Letitia's story. She was very young when she first discovered Kat's Instagram feed and all of her social feeds, and she started getting to be a fan, barely even in high school, if that. She was also still living in Brazil at the time. I'm not sure how somebody that age gets their hands on hundreds of dollars, but in any event, Letitia was able to hire Kat for those one-on-one coaching video calls that I mentioned before. In these calls, Kat was giving Letitia advice on how to make the most of her life. And instead of saying something like, stay in school, or something

like that, which is what you would tell somebody who's barely even a teenager, Kat told Letitia to move to the United States and to get a job, which is exactly what Letitia did. Now by this time, she was just 14 years old, and she thought that she was going to become an au pair. Now, an au pair is basically like a nanny, but it's traditionally and usually somebody who is much, much younger, who is coming over internationally, somebody who is going to be living in there with you and learning and taking care of the kids and helping out with household chores. However, remember, she was just 14 years old, so I can't imagine any family wanting to hire a child to essentially take care of your own children. But regardless of how realistic Letitia's plans were, they didn't last long.

Because more or less, right after Letitia got into the States, Kat told her that actually, she shouldn't be finding a job. She shouldn't be an au pair. She should come live with Kat in her house. So Letitia did what she was told. And it's so infuriating the way that Kat played this young girl who had no real life experience. But Letitia looked up to her. She trusted her. She wanted to be her. She idolized her. Now what Kat did to Desiree is almost even more manipulative and vile. See, Kat really,

genuinely had Desiree believing that they were friends, and that they could trust one another. So while Desiree was living in Germany, all of a sudden, Kat reached out to her and said that she was very depressed, and she was actually thinking of committing suicide. She didn't want to live anymore. Now to be clear, this was not a real cry for help. She was nowhere close to harming herself. But Desiree didn't know that. Kat was manipulating her. And it worked, because now Desiree didn't know that. Kat was manipulating her. And it worked, because now Desiree was feeling like she had to rush over to LA and save Kat's life, essentially by being just this good friend to her. And when Desiree couldn't even afford a

plane ticket, Kat offered to pay for it, because what she really wanted was for Desiree to be in her house and under her control. So it was a very short period of time, but in that time, several women moved in with Kat. There was Letitia, thinking that she was getting this exciting new career opportunity, Desiree, who thought that she was being all-in and a good friend saving Kat's life, and at least one other woman whose identity has not been released to the public. There was a big BBC documentary that came out recently, and it brought a lot of these things to light. It gave her the pseudonym Soul, and that's also what a lot of the news coverage has called her. So I'm going to call her Soul too. They all thought that they were taking this big,

exciting step in their lives, but in reality, it was like they were joining a cult. And this cult was unlike any cult that the investigators had ever seen. Desiree, Letitia, and Sol all lived in Kat's house. Apparently, there were four other women that Kat also tried to get to move in, but all of them declined for one reason or another. They were the lucky ones. The women who were unfortunate enough to show up and stay with Kat, even if they thought that they were only going to be there temporarily, like Desiree, who wanted to be a good friend, they all ended up getting stuck there. As soon as they arrived, Kat would say something like, oh, there's a lot of break-ins in this neighborhood. You don't want to leave something important out like your passport in your room. Let me take it. Let me hold

on to it for safekeeping. And of course, afterwards, the women would then never get their passports back. She had them, and she wasn't giving them up. And without those, they would have no way of proving their identity if they did try to get out, if they did try to escape. None of the women who fell into Kat's trap were ever allowed to leave their bedrooms. Not without Kat's permission. Literally, even if somebody woke up in the middle of the night and they had to use the bathroom, too bad. If Kat wasn't okay with them walking down the hallway and taking care of things, then they just had to hold it and sit alone in their room. The women also were not allowed to talk to one another. No conversations, no getting to know your roommates, nothing. Which is one way that this setup was a little bit different than an actual cult. You

always hear about stories about places where people are allowed to talk to one another, but there's no outsiders. You close yourself off from the outside world. Right now, I'm thinking specifically of Jodi Hildebrandt and her connections workshops, where everyone was only allowed to talk about how great connections was, and not about how everything that she said was absolutely, you know, batshit crazy. Same thing with Scientology. If there's somebody on the outside who is not a believer of the Scientology way, they're a, what they call it, a suppressed person. It's usually very much interconnected. But here, Kat was segregating all of them. She wouldn't allow them to even have each other. They couldn't

have the outside world, and they couldn't even have their inside world. So while they all lived with Kat, and essentially were under Kat's control, Kat started pushing all of her freaky beliefs on these women in her house. I mentioned before how after that ayahuasca trip, she was talking about hearing God's voice and everything that went with it. But behind closed doors, it was even more bizarre. Even more just insane. I'm talking about her putting up altars that looked like something that you would use to cast a spell or even perform some sort of witchcraft. She also was making voodoo dolls. Kat took me to see the witchcraft room. She had set up a large altar with candles and religious images. She prayed to the angels asking for

protection, health, and prosperity for all of us. Some reports say that Kat and the others were doing very weird rituals, where everyone except Kat seemed very out of it, more like they were drugged than like they were connecting with some type of higher power. Kat would tell the other women that she actually had the power to curse them or make terrible magical things happen to them if they ever disobeyed her or ever did something that she didn't like. And it sounds like all the women in this house believed her, because they were all just absolutely terrified of getting cursed. Even though from the sounds of it,

none of the other women believed that they had similar powers. Kat publicly posted about them, saying they were also witches and part of her, quote, witch clan. The women in the witch clan even had to dye their hair blonde to match Kat's hair color. They literally looked like little clones of her, which served two different purposes. First, I'm sure that it was very flattering to Kat's ego.

I think she loved being the little witch cult leader, whatever she called herself. I'm thinking back to that show. You might be familiar with it, Scream Queens. It was like back in what, the 2000s, maybe the 2010s with Emma Roberts. And she was like Chanel number one, Chanel number two, and I never watched the whole series, but it reminds me very much of that, like these carbon copies of her just to feed her ego, all while they were treating her like she was their spiritual enlightened leader. I mean, just total narcissist shit, in my opinion. But the other thing about

this bleach job on their hair was that Desiree and Letitia, in particular, now looked like completely different people. It was a situation where even if their friends or family members were to see them, by chance, on the street, they never would recognize them. It was helpful for Kat because Desiree and Letitia were now officially missing, remember? There was a missing persons report. I don't think the third woman's soul had been reported missing to the police, but Desiree and Letitia were. Now, besides not being allowed to leave their rooms without permission or talk to one another, they also weren't allowed to talk to anyone from their lives before they met Kat. Kat actually forced them to go through all of the contacts on their

phone one by one and block every single one of them, so there would then be nobody who could call them and see if they were okay. So all to say, Desiree and Letitia were completely isolated. They had nothing and no one other than Kat, which meant she could make these absurd, unreasonable demands, and these poor women would feel like they couldn't say no. Desiree had barely been in the United States for just a few weeks, not even a month, before Kat went to her and basically said, hey, thanks for taking my fake suicide threats seriously. Thanks for flying over to try and be my friend. Turns out what I really need from you is money, and lots of it. Which is especially manipulative when you remember that Kat was the one who actually paid for Desiree's flight to the States. She had way more money than Desiree did.

And rather than see the obvious lie there and push back, Desiree was down to do whatever Kat asked her to do in order to make money and give it to her. So Kat set her up as a stripper at a club. But Kat told Desiree she wasn't just doing this for money. It was actually for a reason much bigger than that. Had nothing to do with Kat's greed, her need for money, her need for control. No, no, no. Instead, Kat told Desiree that this was a way to make herself worthy of God's blessing. Basically, like, if she was willing to do this, if she was willing to make this sacrifice and do something that she was so uncomfortable with, she would be rewarded with what she wanted. More of this fake spiritual stuff,

the witchcraft, the life coaching, and all of it was really just like tools that she had used to manipulate people. But it worked. Desiree began dancing at the club. And I'm not just talking about an occasional shift here or there. She was on stage seven nights a week, and she was typically there for full-length shifts. Now that just sounds exhausting. Not to mention involving strange men who are just staring at you and making sexual comments about you day in, day out. That would be taxing on, I think, most people. Which, to be clear, if somebody wants to strip willingly, they enjoy that job. If they find it empowering, or if they like the money, whatever it is, that's totally fine. That's great. It's the same thing I said as being a sugar baby. Like, to each your own, you do you. But the thing was, Desiree didn't want to strip. It wasn't a

job that she would have chosen for herself if she had any say in the matter. But the issue was, she didn't have any say. It was all about what Kat wanted, all the time. And not only was she forcing Desiree to do this work that she had found degrading and demeaning pretty much every single night of the week, but she kept all of the money that she made. First, she had this rule that Desiree had to pay her $1,000 a day just to be able to stay at her house. Which, I mean, think about that for a second.

Not thousands of dollars a month, which would be maybe, yes, decent in terms of renting a bedroom in a house with four people. Not a thousand dollars a week, which is also absurd. One thousand dollars per day. Thirty thousand dollars a month just to stay with this freaking crazy lunatic? It is unbelievable. And the wild thing is Desiree was making that at her stripper job. She was making more than that. So then Kat changed the rates on her. She said Desiree had to pay her more and more until finally she was asking for $3,000 a day. Every single day. And when Desiree wasn't able to hit that target, hit that new threshold, even though she was still, you know, making bank, Kat gave her new orders. She said that Desiree now had to become a sex worker, actually sleeping with her clients in exchange for

money. Now, the first time that Kat brought that up to Desiree, Desiree was like, no, absolutely not. There is no way in hell I am doing that just so that you can get rich from selling my body. But as we know, Kat definitely didn't take that lying down. She wasn't going to let Desiree backtalk her. So one day she told Desiree, you know what, get in the car. We're going to go somewhere special. It's a surprise. And when they got to their destination, it was a gun range,

which was sending a pretty clear message to Desiree. And I'm sure you're thinking the same way that she was. Desiree was absolutely convinced at that time that if she didn't agree to make more money this way, Kat was going to kill her, or at least hurt her badly. So, she agreed to do whatever Kat wanted, including selling sex. From there, Kat acted an awful lot like the way she had when Desiree was just stripping. Desiree had to make a certain amount of money, she had to hit this threshold, and if she didn't, Kat wouldn't let her back into the house for the night. Desiree had to sleep on the streets if she didn't make that money. I mean, acting like a pimp through and through, right? And Desiree was giving up literally everything for Kat. She cut off her friends. She cut off

her family. She was doing sex work that she did not want to do. She couldn't even look at herself anymore. She didn't recognize herself. And on top of that, now she couldn't even sleep in her bed with a roof over her head to keep herself safe. Not unless she gave Kat some absurd amount of money every single freaking night. It's horrible. It is literally enslavement, trafficking, and torture. And Desiree wasn't the only person that Kat forced into sex. Apparently, at one point, the other woman, Sol, overheard a phone conversation between Kat and another woman who lived in Brazil. During this call, Kat told her that she had to become a sex worker. She had no other choice. But get this, the reason wasn't because it was going to be an

exchange for God's blessings or the things that she had sold Desiree on. No. She was using this sex work as punishment because that woman in Brazil had apparently broken one of the many bajillion rules that Kat had. So now, as a form of punishment, you're going to go do sex work. So all of that catches us up to the day when Anna saw this missing persons report and she knew, she just knew in her gut, that Kat was hurting these women. She didn't know the full extent of it or what they had all been through, but she knew who was responsible, which was a very big deal. There were all of those battles on social media, a lot of attention going to this, you know, witch clan, especially with Yasmeen once she got involved and shined that light on everything because of how big her following was,

and it was a big enough deal for the police to finally take Desiree and Letitia's disappearances seriously. But they still at that point didn't have anything to charge Kat with. They didn't have any reason to arrest her. She still hadn't been arrested at this point, because remember, this was right when they were finally getting breaks in the case. But then one day leading up to her arrest, that's when they got their one big break. They were on websites specifically for sex workers who were trying to find clients. They were looking at different profiles in case Desiree and Letitia might have been trafficked because they were reported missing at that point. And wouldn't you know it, they were both on that site. So from there, it didn't take long for the investigators to track Desiree and Letitia down and realize that Anna was right in

all of this. They were living with Kat. However, so far, all they had in terms of evidence was Anna's tip, the sex worker profiles, some social media posts. That was really it. None of those were the sort of thing that could prove in a court of law that Kat was really keeping people prisoner, that she was enslaving them, trafficking them, all of those things. Well, at one point, the police actually called Kat and told her to put Desiree and Letitia on the phone so that the officers could ask them about their situations. Ask if they were free to leave, free to quit whenever they wanted. Try to entice them to say something incriminating against Kat. Because, you know, if Desiree and Letitia and the others were doing sex work willingly, that was going to be a different sort of situation than if they were forced into it. So anyway, on this call, the two of them didn't say much that was helpful to the

detectives. It was more of the same, more about how they were totally free, they were making the decisions that they wanted to do, they had 100% free will. But here's what's really key about that conversation. I'm sure you've been in one of those situations where you're signing into a Zoom or a Google Meets or whatever, and it's taking the app a minute to connect, so maybe your camera isn't on yet, nobody can see you, but they can hear what people are saying. We've all gone through that at least once, right? Especially since 2020. Well, that's what happened to this police officer too. Because before Desiree or Letitia started talking to him, he could hear Kat in the background talking to them. And she was saying

things that she clearly, clearly did not intend for him to hear. Specifically, she said, he will start asking questions. Guys, they are full of tricks. He's a detective. Be very careful. For God's sake, I'll kick you out if you say anything. I'll scream. Which, first of all, this is a very common thing for traffickers to say to their victims. They know that if a person is going to the police, they are absolutely screwed. So they will say whatever they can to make it look like the cops are the bad guys in the situation, all to keep that person under their control, under their thumb. But this little spiel from Kat also told the police that they shouldn't believe anything that

Desiree or Letitia said about how they were doing this so willingly and consenting to it. It was evidence on its own, even if neither one of them pointed the finger. okay i guess for some reason i thought it was black no no no okay my mistake and how are you like in uh america so far very nice everybody trained you kindly yes and are you well yes you're doing well you look like you're doing well i don't see what the issue is and again they came here on their own they didn't come here for me. They are helping me out, yeah. But I just don't want anything bad to happen to them. Plus, there were bank records that showed all of the money that Desiree in particular had been sending to Kat. Tens of thousands of dollars every single month.

And that was pretty compelling evidence that Kat was using her, specifically pimping her out. So that November, Kat was finally her, specifically pimping her out. So that November, Kat was finally arrested and charged with human trafficking. She was deported back to Brazil so that she could go on trial there, and Desiree and Letitia also went back to Brazil to be reunited with their friends and family members. And if you may be thinking, okay, Kat has been exposed, everybody knew that she wasn't some spiritual guru or mentor or witch or whatever. It was time for her to now drop the act and just be real about what she had been up to? Definitely not. Hard no for Kat. Because in jail, she acted just as unhinged as she ever had before.

When she finally did do an interview with the BBC, Kat actually implied that she had magical powers. And she announced that these interviewers were about to find this out for themselves firsthand. Now, if anyone legit got cursed afterward, it sure didn't make it to the news. I'll just say that. But I'll go ahead and I'll just say this. I do think that the reporters figured it out. Figured out that Kat was full of garbage. Hot, reeky, stinky crap. It's almost enough to make me wonder if she really believed her own bull, you know? Because statements like that were not doing her any favors. There is no way I send a message to a person saying, come to live with me in America,

I'm going to enslave you. Now, the one detail that has me thinking that she might have actually still been trying to manipulate people and play people is that she insisted that she never did any of the things that we definitely know that she did do. I'm talking about the things that she posted publicly on social media. So it's things that are not difficult to verify, yet she still is denying them. And I wanted to post a clip illustrating that, but unfortunately, it's in Portuguese, so I'm going to read a transcript of it instead, the English translation. So the reporter began by saying, Anna says that you kept her at home, working as if she were a slave, that you didn't pay the amount that you had agreed with her, and that you threatened her. Kat responds, uh-huh. Reporter says, we read a post on social media in which you say you actually kept her as

a slave. Cat responds, uh-huh. Reporter says, her skull would be hung in your house. Cat responds, God forbid. Reporter says that she would pay with her life for what she did to you. Cat responds, I don't know who posted this, but it wasn't me. The reporter says, that was on your Instagram account. Kat responds, So all to say, there's no way that anybody could really take anything she said seriously. And the lies never stopped. But thankfully, the jury didn't believe her either, because in July of 2024, they found her guilty of human trafficking. She was sentenced to eight years in prison, which

to me feels pretty short, if I'm going to be honest, especially with how many people she hurt and how many lives she absolutely destroyed. And the really scary and frustrating part in all of this is something that one of her former friends said, somebody who wants to remain anonymous. She was worried that once Kat got out, there was nothing that was going to stop her from doing this again. Nothing to stop her from hopping back on Instagram, saying she's changed, saying she's learned her lesson in prison, now she's doing better, and telling all of these lies to attract new followers, and essentially, new people to hurt, which does sound very, very possible to me. But frankly, even if Kat doesn't do that, somebody else could. We're seeing people do this all the time, really just preying on vulnerable people who want to enrich their lives

and have growth and be better, whether it's financially, emotional, with love. We've seen the Twin Flames people. I mean, all of these people using social media to feed on other people. It is horrible. It is like the worst praying ground. Back in the day, I remember when social media was just a platform. And I say just, but it's very serious. But like just a platform where you had to worry about being catfished, maybe some bullying, maybe a sexual predator, like how to catch a predator, preying on younger people. Again, still serious things, don't get me wrong,

but now you have this whole new facet of it where people are using social media for cult behavior, to prey on people, to make them slaves, human trafficking, financial burdens, all of these things. Social media is a very scary tool and just full of scammers and manipulators. And I'm happy that so many people are now talking about it because it has been going on for years, but now people are finally recognizing it and platforming it like we are with this episode, which I think is so helpful because it generates awareness and it educates other people on what to look for. For example, if somebody out here is listening right now and you listened to either the 7M cult deep dive we did or even the Twin Flames deep dive episode that we did, hopefully now

if somebody tries to DM you, slide into your DMs and say, you know, like, hey, I saw that you are on eHarmony and Match.com and you're looking for a soulmate. I can help you with that. I can help you. Trust me. I'm hopeful that the right people are hearing this to where it would give you pause and you wouldn't be so vulnerable in that moment to where out of desperation you'd be like, yes, please help me and then be sucked into these cults. That's why it's important that we cover all these episodes, even if a murder sometimes

didn't occur. A lot of the time in cults, it does occur. But even if a murder didn't occur, it's important to talk about this because hopefully it's educating people a little bit and generating awareness, creating awareness. That's the goal. And I'm not trying to say be a pessimist and, like, don't think that there are good people out there. But if something is too good to be true, it generally is. If somebody is offering you to move into their house for free, that they're going to find you your soulmate, that they're going to take you to the next level spiritually,

you're going to be able to have conversations with God, it's probably not true. Call me jaded, but I just don't think so. So be careful who you trust, even if it's somebody who you really admire. Because remember, anybody can say anything online, and anybody can stage a picture to make their life look super glamorous, and you never know what is going on outside of the frame. So please take care of yourself, take care of your loved ones. I'm not going to do my normal sign off here of the be nice, don't kill people. Instead,

I'm going to say, don't join a cult. All right, guys, take care. Thank you so much for listening to today's episode and hearing all about Kat and her crazy antics and letting these victims continue to have their voice and their stories told and be heard. I'll be back on the mic with you Thursday with an all-new episode of Headline Highlights, breaking down everything going on this week in the true crime world. So I will talk with you very, very soon. Bye.