Don't Cross Kat

Ola Latino USA listener, it's Mariao Hsa today the story of Brazilian Kat Torres or if you're Brazilian Kacrres.

I never met a person like that before, just the assertiveness and almost like being able to manifest immediately the future that she wanted for herself.

Kat Dorris has a seemingly perfect life. She's gorgeous and I'm talking about walks into a room and you cannot stop looking at her kind of striking beauty. And she's also really big on social media, with hundreds of thousands of people following her every move. She's also well a little bit out there. She posts about rituals that she calls alien baths. But as time passes and her following grows,

Just wanted to know if she was alive, if everything was okay.

This is a story of influence of control, about a false sense of connection with people that we just follow online, but at its core, it's really a story about friendship. Futuro Studios, our podcast division, has been working on this story and I have to tell you, dear listener, I love it and I know you're gonna love it too. The series is called Don't Cross Cat. It's based on a mega hit Brazilian podcast that journalist Shiko Feliti brought

Excuse me, how are you doing doing well?

We're journalists from Brazil and we're writing a story about their former name.

Wow.

Yeah, the biggest news that's ever had this neighborhood, probably the only one that will.

I'm not the first Brazilian to set foot in Leander, Texas, and the Brazilian women who came and lived here before me made quite the impression on their neighbors. Wayne Murray lived across the street from them.

They said that you might know something. You might have spoken to them.

Wayne says that in Leander people do two things, wave to each other and then mind their business, at least Wayne did. Then in twenty twenty two, that's when these new neighbors moved in right us the street.

So they were not terribly friendly.

We have this traffic servile right so I'd come in, I'd wave to them. They never wave back.

And there was something else about his new neighbors.

Very pretty young women.

They looked like supermodels.

Very attractive, blonde and a pretty attractive brunette.

Tall, thin, gorgeous, right out of the latest Victoria's Secret fashion show. I mean, I'm super gay, and even I can see it. And it wasn't just having a house full of gorgeous Brazilian women in a nondescript American suburb that was unusual. One day, he just stopped seeing them. The house was empty, the women were gone. Eventually a rental company came to clear the house. They put out the girl stuff in the front yard for anyone to take, which was interesting.

We got quite a bit of this stuff. We just took them.

Actually, look later, I did keep the voodoo dolls.

Voodoo dolls, doo dolls. I got three voodoo dolls. May I just take a look at that? Sure, wel come on in.

One of the women was a social media influencer famous in Brazil with more than a million followers. I was there because, well, I'm kind of an influencer myself, but that was basically an accident. I'm a journalist first, and I've made a name for myself investigating stories in Brazil where things aren't quite what they seem. And that's what brought me to Texas because the woman who lived there cat tourists seemed like she had a picture perfect life online.

Thank you man.

Sorry, I'm Chico, by the way, Fran Yeah, okay, that's me. Waynne told me.

The more he looked through the stuff the women left behind, the more questions he had about them.

They had an altar in their yard, not a Christian altar, because she had I can never remember the name of the pronounced the name of the drug, Hisca. That's it, that Brazilian drug.

They had packages of dried orbs and it has what they're good for, good for romance, good for this, good for that. Three of them were also good for exorcisms.

And that wasn't all one thing I found. I still have it.

It's a leather color and like a leather plate in these chains and there's a handle on it. When I finally buckled it up.

It's for a dog.

That's why I was mental as was it the human hardness.

Or it was a dog hard.

Wayne started to wonder if he had been getting a little carried away, But soon he would see reports of what was really going on in that house and he would realize that maybe he was right to have been because there was something troubling going on, something dark, dangerous, even water.

Place for Hi.

I'm calling because I would like to know if you guys did a well nurse check on that you're missing Brazilian girls.

Is an obstare going to go over there and talk to them because they really need you?

Could?

I think with the person that's in charge of the investigation that's going on for those.

Three girls that are from Leander.

I'm helping a family that has a grow missing and they didn't tax.

It's a little bit scary, to be honest.

From wondering, I'm Chiico Feliti and this is don't cross cat. Like most of you and anyone else, I post on Instagram quite often. I post pictures of the usual stuff, my dog Pashocha, my travels, and my overpriced outfits. Actually, my producer pointed out that in quite a few posts, I don't seem to have my shirt on, but hey, cut me some slack.

I'm Brazilian.

I used Insta to post about my podcasts and my books too. I've been a journalist for twenty years now. I've reported all across Brazil, telling stories of armed conflict, homelessness, indigenous tribes.

You name it.

And somewhere along the line, people started following me. I remember when I reached one hundred thousand followers on Instagram and an American company offered me ten grand.

To pose with a bag of chips.

That was the exact same amount I got for a book that took me a year time, right, a whole year.

I'm not proud of it.

It's something I only tell my shrink, But nowadays I make a living from social media as much as being a journalist. This was not my plan. I have to emphasize, I promise. I became an influencer by chance. So when I came across the story, I knew I had to know more. Because it's all about influence, the lens people will go to have it and what they will do to keep it. It all begins far from Brazil and

It was an easy job for me because I could speak French. They are looking for someone that speaks French. I didn't have to speak a lot to English.

It was Patty Bertodo's first day on the job. She looked around her for someone to talk to as the restaurant staff bustled around her. She was not feeling great about being there. She had just moved to Canada from friends and needed money.

I didn't like that too much because in France I had my life, my job and communication and marketing. I was here not doing what I love to do.

As she continued to walk through the restaurant, Patty came across a young woman who said hi to her right away.

And she was beautiful.

She had this long blonde, beautiful her with big eyes, with this beautiful smile and that energy that you can see when a girl She's strong, but feminine and funny.

Her name was Decirie.

She wanted to welcome me to the restaurant, and she said that she was very so I was speaking Portuguese with a friend for the first time and so long.

Patty followed this around the restaurant as she briefed her on her new coworkers.

This one's really nice.

That one's not trustworthy, this one's just okay, like most of them, Patty was taking note.

Was like having a friend and a place that everything was new for me.

It felt so comforting to talk to someone from Brazil, someone who knew that in Brazil and Portuguese we don't have an equivalent for personal space, someone who knew that we don't just shake hands when we get someone, of course not we kiss twice, sometimes three times. After that first shift at the restaurant, Patty started seeing Desirael outside of work, at music festivals, the beach picnics, and soon they started texting each other daily.

She had a lot of friend and she was really hard working girl. She loved life.

That Aria was in a wonderful marriage with a man from Germany. She and Patty became close. They talked for hours, sharing their life stories. Desirat told Patty she had some struggles.

She had leukemia when she was pretty young, like a kid, and she wanted.

To share with people how precious life is.

One day, on their way to yoga, Desirat told Patty about a famous Brazilian wellness influencer she just found online.

Do you know that? A girl and Instagram?

She's so beautiful and she has this amazing life and she came from a real part family in Brazil and she's also helping people.

Her name was Cat Tourists. She had hundreds of thousand of followers on social media. She posted inspirational quotes about manifesting and nourishing your body and your spirit.

And nice but also used to tell me.

She posted hundreds of videos like this one looking beautiful in enough to show their summertop intellage.

My uncle daa as Haspital Sounds was a famous song.

Blessing the day with her energy. And here's the thing about Brazilians. We love a good life coach.

It's up there with how much we love supermodels and soccer stars because we value happiness a balanced life. And there are plenty of life coaches in Brazil who have found a lot of success by telling other people how to live their lives for a fee. Of course, Kat seems successful, healthy and healthy. She posted about her designer bags, fancy hotels, even exotic looking animals. She had a huge old vinyl dog that looked like a wolf and the really big cat that looked like a leopard. Dassia's eyes

If I thought it was a famous.

Cat had ability she could hear the voice.

She can communicate with the universe because she has this light that can speak to her and she can help you.

That phrase that cat talks to the light stuck out to Patty.

And then I was, okay, she talks to the light and a pretty much open mind person. But I was like, okay, if someone say to me you talk to the light, I will say, oh, you should just see a doctor first.

But Desiree wasn't nothing.

And it was now she's amazing And she also has a website that you can have music to clean your soul and everything.

Desiree talked about how pretty Cat was, how insightful she was, how she could read people's energies, how she could communicate directly with the universe to find answers to people's questions. And around that time, Patty did have a lot on her mind.

I was having this breakup with ex boyfriend, like made me a little bit more fragile.

When Desier heard about Patty's breakup, she insisted Patty tried booking an appointment with Cat.

She can help you go through that because she can see his energy, if he's meant to be with you and everything.

What did she have to lose?

So I was okay, why not?

Coming up on this special episode of Latino USA. More from Futuro and Wondering Studios new series Don't Cross Cat. Stay with us. Hey, we're back and today, dear listener, we're bringing you something really special. It's a preview of our new series from Futuro Studios in partnership with Wondery. It's called Don't Cross Cat Now. It's the story of Cat Torres or Katci does if you speak Brazilian Portuguese.

Patty went home and pulled up Kat's website. She was curious but skeptical. She scrolled through the supermodel photos and got the payment plans.

So I booke an appointment with Kat that was so expensive, by the way, I was a most of more than two hundred American dollars for one hour.

But money wasn't everything.

I wanted to believe that someone could help me to feel batter.

On the day of the appointment, Patty rushed home to get set up for the video call.

She was a little nervous.

I was so curious of what is she going to say about my energy? I have a good energy. Is she going to say something that is new about myself that I don't know.

Patty was hoping to actually get some answers. Was she meant to be in Canada, had her breakup in the right decision, would she ever find happiness? So she sat down in front of her computer, ready for this beautiful woman with psychic abilities to tell her the answers.

But then she wasn't there.

She was late. I was going nut.

I was texting and trying to call in no information.

Then twenty minutes later, Kat finally appeared.

Then she said, I'm sorry, I had an appointment before, so we started not a good food, I would say, because I was a little bit upset.

So okay, she was late, Petty thought, but Decirier had spoken so highly of Kat that this was about to be good, real good, right.

She was just asking a few questions, and then she started asking about my work up, but just really generic.

Questions, nothing special.

So far was pretty much like talking to a friend that was not my friend.

Then Kat started talking about her guiding light.

The light, saying that he's not a good person for you.

Patty had to hold back from rolling her eyes in front of Cat.

And paying two hundred bucks for that. So at this point I was okay, let's finish with this.

She didn't get why Deciriel was so taken with Kat, so she decided she would gently bring it up with Desiree. Patty wasn't thinking about how Kat would feel about all of this. After all, Kat was just a life coach on social media. She couldn't cause any harm right. Not long after the consultation with Kat, Patty met up with Decirae at the gym. She had a plan for how to start a conversation with her. She was going to keep it simple.

I didn't want to be rude to her and say that that person that she was putting in so much phle was a scam.

Patty waited for the right moment.

I did just say that. Oh I didn't like it. I don't think it was helpful for me. I remember that I say, you should just be careful.

Patty paused, waiting for Decire's reaction, but then she.

Tried to convince me to have a second man.

Desiree just didn't want to hear what Patty was telling her about Kat. Kat's relationship with her followers seemed to be superficial, at least from what I could see publicly, Her fans would write comments complimenting her on her appearance and advice. Kat's response to them would be just emojis, or she would try to sell herself, saying things like, hey, book a one on one with me. Essentially, Kat was hot, blonde, and appeared American.

That was the big appeal. Anyway, After the day at.

The gym, Desiree only got more obsessed with Kat.

It seemed Kat was all she talked about now.

She talked about how Kat told her what to eat, what to wear, and even what to do with her husband. Now, Desiree was saying that she wanted her husband to be more spiritual, to join her in working with meditation, energy and yoga. But Patty knew the spiritual stuff wasn't his thing.

He was more like playing video games and finance the spike.

She wasn't too worried though he was crazy.

In love with her.

You could see that she was in love with him.

They've been happily married for years. This was just normal couple stuff, and then came the pandemic.

You were having to adapt your lives to cope with this pandemic.

And continue to base our response.

A public health emergency or a state of emergency.

As COVID brought the world to a standstill, Desire's life changed completely. Her husband lost his job, which meant that they would have to move back to Germany. Desire promised to stay in touch with Patty as much as possible, but as she began her new life in Europe, Patty noticed that Desiray started to see more and more of Cat. Patty says, Desiree was booking two, sometimes three consultations with Kat every week, and Decier's husband noticed.

It was hard because he didn't want this here to spend too much money. She was spending her whole money and consultations, and.

Of course Desiri told her life coach all about her husband's concerns. Patty could see how this was going to go for Desire's marriage.

So they started fighting because of that for sure.

It was mid twenty twenty one, about a year since Desirier had moved away to Germany, and Patty's phone rang.

She called me and she was crying.

And she said, Kach told me that he was doing black magic. He's doing black magic. It's why I can't leave him. It's because he's far saying me to be with him.

Leaved her husband was using supernatural forces to keep her with him, an idea that Kat had put in her head. Patty told Desierer that it all sounded crazy to her, that she didn't think her husband even knew what black magic was, but.

That's very believed Cat.

A couple of months later, it was all over between Decirie and her husband.

She deleted everything, his phone number, his family, everything. She was like, I don't want to talk to him anymore, and she moved to another place. Was crazy.

Patty tried to support this Syria as much as she could across the time zones. She texted her all the time.

It's so hard, right, she's a young age, she's twenty three, so whenever, just a young girl making decisions and you don't have too much power to decide for her.

Not long after the divorce, Desirit told Patty that she had started dating again, but to Patty, it didn't seem like Desire's heart was in it. After one of her first dates, Desirit called Patty in tears. She told her she was thirty minutes late to her date and the guy got upset and said a bunch of mean things.

To her, and then she was like, I was trying to explain to him that I got lost, then I took the wrong bus and everything.

He didn't want to listen to me.

Patty told her to ditch the guy, it wasn't worth her time. But when Deseret told Cat about it, she had a very different answer. Catt told Decret that guys like him have a strong energy, so they need women with an energy that's a little more soft, and Desires seemed to agree.

So was there that I could see for the first time that something was pretty wrong with her, that she was giving way too much power to count in her life, to decide for her everything. But every time that I tried to say something, she would get so mad that to me she would say, you know how much she is important to me?

When she would not listen.

Patty's concerns kept growing. She decided to look at what Kat was posting on social media, and what she found.

Was disturbing.

When Patty looked online, she saw that Kat's social media had changed. She wasn't the same gentle life coach that Patty had met a few years before, when her online presence gave more of a yoga than vibe and she posted videos of inspirational meditations, breathing exercises, and positive affirmation. Now she had become intense, angry. Even she posted long

YouTube, poor Quella Comesso.

She warned everyone not to follow people like Kat on Instagram and.

One layer to pravosis sav Instagra.

All the criticism didn't sit well with cat.

Kiss Denis.

Comme athalogy Lynha Cat said psychologists were a bunch of quote shits.

She said that people were wanting to lynch her, but she wasn't going to stop talking.

She was saying so much stuff in her Instagram, and every time that someone would say something that would go against what she was saying, she would be so aggressive and say bad words and say really mean stuff to peoples public avenge, she would say.

Then one day Just when Patty thought she had seen it on, a new, more bizarre video popped up on Cat's Instagram profile.

Tell me to come down and need to come down.

Cats said she had been kidnapped by Russians.

I need you right now.

I'm going to die.

They're going to kill me. She filmed herself against a white wall. No details provided. It was honestly all very cryptic, like how did she even have her cell phone with her anyway? She said she needed her followers to send money to help pay for answer.

I don't get angry, Amy, I need help, help, help, help, help, help, help, help, help helcome.

A few days later, Kat posted another message she was.

On the SPA.

Oh I'm okay. Thank you for everybody that helped me. And she was on the SPA probably with the money that people sent to her.

Right.

But Kat wasn't relaxed for long because there was one of her followers who hadn't sent her any ransom money, Desiri, so my whole gun. Kat went live on Instagram talking to her million strong following.

She got crazy.

My best seal, Desira is so fucking arrogant, Kat said, She's an idiot.

I tell you a mora.

She's saying to her followers.

Desiree was not grateful for everything that she did for her, and she blocked Desire.

Soon after, Patty got a frantic voice message from Desirie. She couldn't believe Kat would do that after everything she had done to show her loyalty. This is not the person I knew, Desire said on the voice note. I'm not going to waste my time. Patty saw her chance. This was the moment she'd be waiting for, so she sent her a message.

Back that girl, she's just a crazy girl.

She needs megical help, not people sending money, so she needs someone to.

Go to the hospital with her.

In the zero was yeah, she's crazy.

Finally, this was the fork in the road, the point when Desiree would see Kat for the scammer Patty saw. A week later, Patty noticed a new post on Kat's Instagram. Kat said she was making some changes around her house in Texas. She was expanding her business and from now on, Kat wouldn't be the only one providing the coaching services. She had some assistants living with her. The post read meet the Witches who work for you, and there in the photo was a familiar face.

And this area wasn't the team.

Patty realized the truth. Her best friend hadn't left Cat at all. Instead, Desiree had gone all in on what Kat had to offer.

So I Textedviseirel and I was like, what is going on? What she's talking about? Are you going to work with that crazy girl? And I used you word crazy.

Four or five days went by and nothing. Patty texted again. This time Testi red did.

Reply stop saying mean stuff about Cat. You know how much he is important to my life and if you can't accept that, I prefer not to talk to you anymore. Was really sad for me to hear that from her, and I remember that I told her, how can you say that I'm your friend for years now and I'm always here for you, I'm always listening to you. You know me, you come to my place, you was lept in my bed and so I know you.

How can you.

Put an Instagram influencer ahead of the friendship we have? Patty wrote, someone you're paying to give you attention. After that, Testierate disappeared.

She was not on what'sapp anymore. I texted her and she was not engating the text, so I went to an Instagram and she has no Instagram anymore and Facebook no Facebook anymore. Okay, that's is really weird. So I brought her an emails everything.

It's okay.

If you don't want to talk to me anymore, it's okay. Just let me know if you're okay. Weeks went by and still no reply, so I started being really worried about her.

Patty started looking for other people who may have been in touch with this siery.

I can maybe a friend that know her from somewhere, so I texted people e Vancouver that knew her.

She even called Desire's former school in Brazil, hoping to find a contact for her parents.

So no one know news.

I just wanted to know if she was alive.

Everything was okay.

True friendships are often at the core of our lives, which are innermost secrets with our friends. They are the people we turn to when we need help, the people we would drop everything for. But in an online world, it's easy to have a sense of closeness with the people we see on Instagram every day. So when a beautiful, rich influencer gives you attention, even if you're paying for your time with them, it could feel like a real connection, like you really know them and they really know you.

Still to come.

I can be pretty much dangerous, and I'm angry, but I think the police in America has more dangerous people to catch. Why she's talking about suicide?

Maybe she was going to kill her.

It's the most stupid thing I've ever heard in my life. That Kat was as kN kidnapped to grown women.

No one's being held against her will, no signs of distress.

Everybody seems to be okay, no mercy, Sorry.

What don't tell?

She's in my mouth?

Don't tell?

Haters?

Dotted pages on Instagram.

With millions and millions of people.

I am a famous person. Do you want to get you?

Fucking when people cross me?

How do I behave?

Very scarious?

That's all coming up on this season of Don't Cross Cat.

All right, Well, that is a cliffhanger for season one I'm gonna be binging on a dear listener, I bet you will do stay with us, because after the break I sit down with Schiko Feliti, the host and creator of Don't Cross Cat, will be right back. Hey, we're back, and today, dear listener, we brought you a special preview of our new podcast. It's called Don't Cross Cat. It's a production of our very own Futuro Studios and Wondery, and it's based on a massive hit podcast in Brazil,

Thanks for having me, Maria. I'm glad to be here.

I just listened to episode one as I was driving up to the studio and I am estoy hooked in Brazilian Portuguese hooked. How do you say it?

Uh, piz Goda oscada. We would go with obsessedda.

Obsca el obscada right now with don't cross cat tell us like the first time that you heard about this influencer Kat Dorris, and what was it that you said, Oh my god, this story.

I have to tell this story.

I think this story it's quite peculiar because it started as a jest, started.

As a joke, at least to me.

I was one of millions of people who were following Kattories online because she was so quirky and she had such a weird internet persona. I think she really wanted to make it and she really wanted to be Internet famous. In one of the ways she started doing so was creating memes with her own face, and they were surprisingly successful in Brazil. They were dead jokes. They weren't like

Let alone, and.

Like bad jokes, really bad bad jokes. But they were really successful on Facebook. So she crafted an image of herself as a meme.

So she was.

Making fun of herself. She was making memes of herself and then she just began to take herself ridiculously seriously.

That was her first step as an Internet persona to then become this lifestyle influencer as they call them on Instagram, that someone who portrays wealth in the US and like posing in a ferrari and posing with Gucci bags. And then from that from a lifestyle influencer, was this gorgeous supermodel who had moved to the US, who claimed to have had an affair with Leonardo DiCaprio and started selling

Wait wait, yeah, okay, hold on, I know razor.

Blades, razor blades and stuff, stuffed animals into a tub with like rose patals and cologne and all of the Okay, what she had, this witch persona that was funny to someone who would like me, did not believe her. But little did I know that some people really followed her and believed the stuff she was selling.

When did you, she goes say, like, okay, wait a second, this is crossed into another line, and therefore I'm obsessed.

I think that things started getting dark by early twenty twenty one, when nameless people anonymously would say on the Internet that followers of cat Stories were disappearing after being invited by her to live with her in the US. She was also selling all this mystical mumbo jumbo, but she was also selling this image of self made woman in the US. She had made it in the US,

I mean, as a journalist and you're an investigative journalist, there's something in you that just said, wait a second, could people actually be disappearing here?

At first, on the first few days, I was like, no, this is just Internet gasa, this is not But then tens of Twitter profiles and then hundreds of Twitter profiles would claim that they knew people who followed katories and had.

This appear here in the past months.

So then I started taking it a tet seriously and started digging into the story and found out not only the women had vanished from Brazil and contact with their relatives had been secluded, and that I also discovered that Katsori's life story and trajectory was unbelievable.

It was almost fictional. It looked made up.

So did kat Torres kind of represent this like an American dream appeal? Because she's blonde, right, she's light skinned, she's living in the US, she's making it in the United States? Is that something that actually really appealed to people?

Definitely, it resonates a lot with the Brazilian youth. I do think we hold the United States of America as a mecca in Brazil as a place where you can go to make money, you can go to get rich. I mean, we're a third world country and we're not even geographically close to the US. It's an eight hour flight. But even with such hardships, people will try to make life in the US.

Okay, So I'm kind of I'm getting the feel that katoris represented multiple things for a lot of different people, but specifically young women. But why do you think that this story is going to resonate with US audiences. I know nothing about the stories, but I'm already like, okay, I need episode two.

I do think that it's a story with many universal strings to touch the heart. For instance, it's a story about friendship because, differently from many other true crime cases I investigated, this case was solved, or was at least helped to be solved by armchair detectives by friends of the women who had disappeared. One of the most characters in the story is Patti Bertodo, who was one of

I was asking so much to the universe to help me to find her, just to find if she was okay.

That's when we started playing detectives ourselves.

Everybody was so involved, no one was sleeping who We're talking twenty four hours a day.

I'm totally fascinated by Patty and I'm at the point where she's like, wait a second. Somebody that I liked disappeared. This is a friend of mine. I'm going to call everybody. She's like, I'm going to find out remember remember what grammar school she went to to try to get in touch with the parents. I was like, Oh, check out this armchair investigative journalist that it's going to be unveiled right, how important they are. Let me ask you a couple

Have no idea.

I was so nervous about doing this in English that I just loved What did you do?

I mean faked? So you make it? It's like cats or.

Is it just how do you say that in Portuguese?

And we don't have it.

It's not a Brazilian value, so don't we don't have something similar to it. So I have to learn an American value, which is faked. So you make it. That was my approach to it.

It was so hard, It was so hard.

You have no idea. It was the hardest job I had in twenty years. I guess we're always questioning ourselves. We're always as non native English speaking people were always double thinking. I mean, it's such a burden. We always

Police in Texas.

For instance, they want to call the police and they want to ask if their friends are okay, but they do not master the language well enough to do so.

So that becomes part of the narrative.

I mean, how are you going to help someone who's in a country where you cannot communicate? Wow, Department, yesterday I message because of a girl her family in Ze is not able to look sorry for.

The person that's in charge of the investigation for those three girls that are from Leander.

I believe her name.

Is kat Letitia.

And this aread that you're missing Brazilian girls and Leander.

Yeah, they are lots and all the leading social media right now.

It's a really scary.

All right, Yeah, let me go ahead and get the Senate has to to give you a call.

Okay, okay, And this is happening in the state of Texas.

Yes, okay.

They had tens of calls a day asking about missing young women and I don't know if the calls were quite taken seriously enough, had been one call from an American citizen asking about the whereabouts of an American citizen, maybe the Texan police or the Leander police would have dealt in a different way.

I'm also wondering what it was like for you to get really deep into doing a story that looks into the power of online influencers, because you know that's how it starts out. You're like, look, we're gonna talk about online influencers, and you're like, I'm not a critic because I am one myself.

I'm the first person to point at myself and say I won't be a hypocrite. I'm doing it myself. I'm making money out of the Internet. But we're all selling lice. Every influencer is a salesperson of lives. I know that's a harsh Yeah, I know that's a harsh take, but

Yeah, because there's this thing that happens, let's say, like on Instagram, where you really feel like you're close to the person who you're watching online, right, And those of us who are doing this, like you or myself, actually part of what we try to do is to show our more real side of ourselves. And so I'm wondering how did that part of the story come up for you when you were working on a story about a social media influencer who obviously took it to a whole other level.

I mean, it made me look a little bit at myself and my life and rethink some things. For instance, I'm going to get a little personal now. I'm going through a divorce after a fifteen year old marriage. I'm so sorry. Yeah it's okay. I mean, O, we're good, we're friends, were we're transitioning into something else. But I haven't said that online. And I get people asking me every day, where is your husband?

Why?

Why aren't you showing your husband anymore? Are you divorced? Whatever's happening in that actually hurts me. Every time I get a message of someone asking are you getting a divorce? Are you no longer together? I get hurt and I have to intentionally and rationally remind myself that I showed my life to these people, so they feel entired, They feel like as if they are my friends. So they're not being brude or anything. They're talking to an imaginary friend.

Three hundred and fifty thousand people. Yeah, you said three hundred and fifty people, fifty.

Wish I wish, and fifty people that would be that would be easy to manage.

So I want to say, going back to episode one, I loved the you know something's going to be uncovered. What's going to be uncovered. But something that stuck with me was when the neighbor, the Texas neighbor, says, well, you know, here, we just say hello to everybody, we wave, and then we don't really interact a whole lot after that. But he said that when he waved at the women who were living with Catoris in this mansion, that they didn't wave back. And that is the part where I'm like, what.

Is Something's funky y weird, right, that's not Presilian at all. You could go to jail for not waving back in Brazil. That's a falony. That's a felony.

So okay, you're not going to do a spoiler alert, but I mean, give me a hint. What were they drugged? Were they warned that they could not interact with the outside world.

They were really under the influence of someone who they met on Instagram. They were beyond the influence. I mean, they would follow each and every word of this person they had chosen to follow. So maybe Paris who are answered without spoiling the narrative.

So anybody who's listening will just be like, Okay, well, I'm going to look up she goes. Also, I'm going to look up Cat Torris, and if you look up Cat Torris you will see, okay, something of a spoiler alert here she is in a federal prison in Brazil. So I don't want to know that part of it. We're going to figure out how that ends up happening. And by the way, is a Cat Torres or is a cat?

How we would say catch catchy because we always end with a knee Catci Dorris catchys.

So, so have you been in touch with Catchy?

I've been with her family and her lawyers. She keeps on changing lawyers. And they weren't against this investigation. They weren't against the first version of the podcast that was published almost two years.

Ago in Brazil. They didn't oppose to it.

Oh, but give us some highlights about what we can expect, and this way we can tantalize our listeners to go and download Don't Cross Cat, which is how we're calling the podcast here in the United States. So give us a little bit of a hint of what we can expect.

Sure, I think there are two major narratives in this podcast. The first one is the power of a friendship. Paddy Berthold with this terrific young woman from Brazil who starts an investigation to find out where her friend who disappeared is. There's also a deep profile on cat Tourist to find out how can someone who came from poverty, who came from nothing in Brazil become the alleged affair of Leonardo DiCaprio and ended up making.

It in America.

She is the personification of the American dream and it wasn't easy getting there, as it's not easy for any of us Latino to make it in the US, and she did make it in the US prior to being accused of crimes. So there's the fascinating story of this person who came from nothing, from rags to riches. And there's also the story that follows of two friends who fight.

For each other.

So yeahs, buy one, get one free.

I am so glad she could that you became obsessed with this story because of course all of Brazil has heard your podcast and now we get to hear it here in the United States. And tonsas muta brigada for your work and for bringing us this wonderful podcast.

Okay, so thank you very much, Mada.

That's it for today. The episode you Heard from Don't Cross Cat was hosted by Shiko Filiti. Fernanda Chawari was the senior producer Andres Cavairo was the producer. Don't Cross Cat is a production of Wondery and Futuro Studios. Sound design and mixing by Stephanie Lebau, Production assistants by Giovanna Romano Sanchez and Ottavio Bomfa. Fact checking by Zoe Sullivan. Executive producers for Futuro Studios for Marlon Bishop and Maria Garcia.

Latino USA is made possible in part by the Ford Foundation, working with visionaries on the front lines of social change worldwide, the John D. And Catherine T.

MacArthur Foundation, and the Heising Simons Foundation, unlocking knowledge, opportunity and possibilities.

More at hsfoundation dot org.