Sometimes, it’s online, on our timelines, where the maddest true crime stories play out. And that’s certainly the case with the story of Kat Torres.

Earlier this month, a BBC documentary revisited the shocking case of the Brazilian model and influencer, who, after building a wellness empire, was sent to jail for eight years for human trafficking and slavery. Torres lured numerous women to live with her, before they were later pressurised into sex work. (These are claims Torres vehemently denies, and she has appealed the conviction.) Like, Follow, Trafficked: Insta’s Fake Guru, is a gripping watch about the fall of a woman who once partied with Leonardo DiCaprio – and claimed to have spiritual powers.

At the height of her fame, Torres had over a million followers on Instagram, and with snaps of glamorous holidays and designer clothes, her rags-to-riches tale (Torres grew up in a poor area of Brazil) was almost too good to be true. Her website told followers they, like Torres, could have the ‘love, money and self-esteem [they] always dreamed of’. There were self-help videos, too. And for a fee, clients could tell Torres their hopes, worries and problems one-on-one via video call. Her ex-husband Colborn Bell says in the documentary: ‘Her goal was helping people really achieve and manifest their dreams for themselves.’ Her inspirations? John of God, a Brazil guru who was later convicted of rape, and American spiritualist Tony Robbins.

As well as her online presence, in 2017, Torres wrote a book A Voz (The Voice), in which she claimed she could communicate with higher powers. She was also interviewed about the book on TV shows, telling one host she wrote the whole book in a trance. ‘It was really a voice from above.’ She also sold merchandise to her followers, with one former client saying: ‘I would buy everything Kat made. Everything she did, I bought it.’

Previously a model, before the big wellness influencer boom, Torres moved in glamorous circles. And in 2013, one of her biggest claims to fame happened – 24-years-old at the time, she was photographed with Leonardo DiCaprio in Cannes. Torres claimed to have dated him, telling Brazilian newspaper Extra: ‘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.’ DiCaprio has never said anything about Torres, or her claims of a relationship.

‘The story about her and Leonardo DiCaprio didn’t harm her at all,’ a childhood friend, played by an actor, said in the documentary. ‘I think it actually made her name in the Brazilian media. If she was smart, she could have actually taken advantage of it, but she moved to the US.’

Speaking on the documentary, her former New York roommate says Torres started to change after she took ayahuasca, a hallucinogenic plant-based drug.

And some of her clients allege to the BBC that they started to feel isolated from friends and family. When she was living in New York, one of her followers, Ana, moved to live with her, and be Torres’ live-in assistant. But Ana says she was surprised by the unkept state of Torres’ living space, and that she never saw the money. ‘I see that she was using me as a slave,’ she later said.

It was in 2022 Torres’s life would start to unravel. Two women in Brazil – Desirrê Freitas and Letícia Maia – were reported missing, which sparked a campaign on social media to find the women. And when former assistant Ana heard the stories about Letícia and Desirrê in the media, she contacted the FBI, to recount her experience with Torres. 

By now, Torres had moved from New York, and was living in Texas with a new husband. And she wanted her most loyal followers to join her, living and working at her home. Another woman, Sol, said she only managed to leave living with Torres with the help of a former boyfriend.

Desirrê wrote a book about her experience called Searching Desirrê. She claims Torres bought a ticket for her to join her in Texas, and that she was later forced to work in a strip club, with all the money going to Torres. Later, Desirrê became a prostitute. Prostitution is illegal in Texas, so Desirrê alleged that Torres would threaten to report her if she ever spoke about wanting to stop. To add to her fear, Desirrê also believed Torres could curse her. Financially, there were also targets for her to make. ‘She said I could only return home once I had reached a daily goal of $3,000 and I ended up sleeping on the streets several times because I couldn’t reach that,’ she wrote.

Escort accounts online were found for the missing women, and that’s when Torres went on the run with Desirrê and Letícia. Footage obtained by the BBC shows the moment a law enforcement officer calls to check whether Desirrê and Letícia are OK – but Torres doesn’t know she’s being filmed, and beforehand warns the women she would ‘scream’ if they said anything. Torres was eventually persuaded to go to a police station with the women, where staff noticed the women’s unusual behaviour.

The documentary ends with a bizarre interview, where the BBC obtained a court order to speak to her before the verdict of the trial, regarding what happened with Desirrê. Torres – wearing heavy black eyeliner, a white sweatshirt and her long hair cut in a bob – looks dishevelled, almost unrecognisable from the glossy woman on Instagram.

She denied everything, even laughing at the interviewers. ‘When I was seeing the people testifying, they were saying so many lies,’ she alleged, in April 2024. ‘So many lies that at one point, I couldn’t stop laughing.’ Torres also said that she couldn’t believe any of her former clients were traumatised. She added: ‘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, that’s it. It’s your choice. It’s your mind.’ She also said she ‘absolutely’ did not deserve to face legal ramifications.

A few months later, in July 2024, Torres was sentenced to eight years in prison for the human trafficking and slavery of Desirrê. Torres’ lawyer told the BBC she has appealed her conviction and maintains her innocence. An investigation into the allegations from other women is ongoing in Brazil.