When two young Brazilian women were reported missing in September 2022, their families and the FBI launched a desperate search across the US to find them. All they knew was that they were living with wellness influencer Kat Torres.
Torres has now been sentenced to eight years in prison for the human trafficking and slavery of one of those women. The BBC has also been told that charges have been filed against her in relation to a second woman.
How did the former model who partied with Leonardo DiCaprio and graced the cover of international magazines come to groom her followers and lure them into sexual exploitation?
“She kind of resembled hope for me,” says Ana, describing her reaction on stumbling across Torres’ Instagram page in 2017.
Ana was not one of the missing women targeted in the FBI search – but she too was a victim of Torres’ coercion and would be key to their rescue.
She says she was attracted to Torres’ trajectory from impoverished Brazilian favela to international catwalks, partying with Hollywood A-listers along the way.
“She seemed like she had overcome violence in her childhood, abuse, all these traumatic experiences,” Ana told BBC Eye Investigations and BBC News Brasil.
Ana was in a vulnerable situation herself. She says she had suffered a violent childhood, moved alone to the US from southern Brazil, and was previously in an abusive relationship.
Torres had recently published her autobiography called A Voz [The Voice], in which she claimed she could make predictions as a result of her spiritual powers, and had been interviewed on reputable Brazilian media shows.
“She was on the cover of magazines. She was seen with famous people such as Leonardo DiCaprio. Everything I saw seemed credible,” she says.
Ana says she was particularly taken with Torres’ approach to spirituality.
What Ana didn’t know was that the inspirational story Torres told was based on half-truths and lies.
Torres’ ex-flatmate in New York, Luzer Twersky, told us that her Hollywood friends had introduced her to the hallucinogenic drug ayahuasca, and she was never the same again.
”That’s when she kind of… started going off the deep end,” he says.
He said he also believed that she was working as a sugar baby – paid for romantic involvement with wealthy and powerful men who were also paying for the flat they shared together.
Torres’ wellness website and subscription service promised customers: “Love, money and self-esteem that you always dreamed of.” Self-help videos offered advice on relationships, wellness, business success and spirituality – including hypnosis, meditation and exercise programmes.
For an extra $150 (£120) clients could unlock exclusive one-to-one video consultations with Torres during which she would claim to solve any of their problems.
Amanda, another former client who lives in the Brazilian capital, says Kat made her feel special.
“All my doubts, my questions, my decisions: I always took them to her first, so that we could make decisions together,” she says.
But it appears that advice had a dark side. Ana, Amanda, and other former followers say they found themselves becoming increasingly psychologically isolated from friends and family and willing to do anything Torres suggested.
When Torres asked Ana in 2019 to move to New York to work as her live-in assistant, she agreed. She had been studying nutrition at university in Boston, but arranged to study online instead, and says she accepted the offer to look after Torres’ animals – and do her cooking, laundry and cleaning – for about $2000 (£1,564) a month.
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