True Crime Conversations acknowledges the traditional owners of land and waters that this podcast was recorded on social media influences. They can hold a lot of sway with their followers. After all, they can convince you to buy products, invest in bitcoin, adopt lifestyle changes, dress a certain way, get plastic surgery.
But could an influencer make.
You give up your life, reject your entire family and friendship circle, and become a sex worker to pay for her lifestyle. When journalists started to uncover the truth about Brazilian influencer Cat Torres, they would have no idea just how far her influence had spread and just how terrified those who'd been sucked into her web would be to
share their stories. But a few brave women, some who would suffer the consequences of going up against self help guru and divine voice hearing Torres, would turn to the very same people who'd made Cat Torres famous to finally bring her undone. I'm Claire Murphy and this is True Crime Conversations, a podcast that explores the world's most notorious crimes by speaking to the people who know the most
about them. Cat Torres was a poor girl from the favelas of Brazil, but she'd managed to leverage her beauty into a life that seemed almost too good to be true, with famous friends and a modeling career in Europe and then the US. Her social media feed portrayed a life of wealth and luxury, of a woman who really really
made it. But looking behind that shiny social media facade was a much darker story, one of influence taken to the extreme of mind altering substances, contact with aliens, and a woman who took influencer to a level that he would not consider someone with a face as angelic as Cat Torres is was.
Even capable of.
How did an influencer become a cult leader and sex trafficker?
Well, it was as easy as hitting like and follow.
Gi Jo Feledi is a journalist, self confessed influencer himself, and the host of the Don't Cross Cat podcast. He sat down with us to discuss the intense tale of Cat Torres. Do you remember the first time you saw Cat Torres's face. I'm presuming you would have seen her on Instagram, but do you remember the first time you actually saw her face?
And yeah, I do recall obviously it was on social media. She was an big online presence in Brazil, but she wasn't quite my niche. She wasn't my cup of tea. I think she was very endearing to young Brazilian women and people who dreamt the American dream. But I do recall running by her profile on Instagram prior to all the accusations and prior to all help breaking loose, and I remember thinking, oh, good, just another one, just another blonde influencer, looks like a Barbie, and who's trying to
sell her stuff. She would try to sell everything, her lifestyle. She would try to sell quotes, she would try to sell tea, she would try to sell mystical consultations. And I was like, okay, one more seeing that, done that,
and I was done with that. But then a couple of months later, I would say, a year later, I start hearing the news and start reading tweets about her possibly committing crimes, and then my stare at her, my glance at her switches a little bit to a more professional glance, which is not She's not my cup of tea as an influencer, But she might be holding a good story. She might be the person whose story I'm about to tell so.
At no stage, looking at those initial shots of Cat Torris, do you think, yes, this is definitely the profile of a future cult leader, not.
In a millionaires, not in a millionaires. She looked like another influencer, and we're crazy about influencers in Brazil, were wild about them. So there are so many of them. Never would I ever have suspected that one of them might be the leader of a company.
Well, let's take a step back to where you decided to investigate Cat Torres. What was it about her story and about her case that made you think that there is something really interesting here.
I like crimes that whole a bigger story behind them, And I do believe that when we talk about Cat Tooris and we talk about the power of influencers in twenty twenty five, we're talking about a game of deception. We're talking about the how much of our agency and how much of our time and how much of our energy we're giving a way to people we don't know and we're choosing to be scammed. Because it might sound a little dramatic, but I do believe that the internet,
especially social media, our lives. We're lying all the time, even if not consciously We lie all the time on our social media, all of us, including myself, and I'm
an influencer, so I'm shooting my own foot here. So I do think that it was about time for us as a society to start discussing what social media is doing to us and Cattorists is the ultimate example of how bad things can go if you follow someone you don't know, and you believe in someone's lives up to a point where you will give them your life basically, well.
Speaking of lives, let's let's just have a little look at kattar as his life first before we get to where it led you to investigate her. What was her childhood like in Brazil? Was it a pretty standard upbringing? What do we know about her family life before all of this came to be?
She was poor, And when I say poor, I mean Brazilian poor, which is so much poorer than an average Australian or an average North American. She was miserable. She was really poor. She comes from no money, really hard upbringing. She barely had food on the table. But she was graced with beauty or what people tend to find. A beautiful body, a beautiful face, a beautiful complexion, a beautiful mane of blonde hair, and she used it to get where she wanted. So she comes from a region in
the Amazon Forest. She moved a lot because her father was an alcoholic and he wasn't able to keep a steady job, and she had many problems in her upbringing. She she comes from a dysfunctional family and she eventually starts working when she's fourteen or fifteen years old, always using her body and her looks in order to obtain what she wants, whether that is money, whether that is power, whether that is influenced. She it was her way out, I'd have to say, And many of her childhood friends
say so. Her sister says, so she was one that used what nature had given her to get somewhere, and she did got somewhere.
So modeling was her ticket out of there.
Right, but first modeling, but she wouldn't quite be a fashion model. She wouldn't be in fashion shows. She wouldn't be She moved to Milan at a very young age when she turned eighteen, but she wouldn't get the prestigious gigs. So she would do laning reef photo shoots. She would do swimsuit photo shoots, all that sort of stuff. And she started having relationship with relationships with elder men when she was about nineteen or twenty years old, richer and older men who would provide for her.
There was a rumor that those older men might be connected to Russian mafia. Wasn't it like that Potentially one of those men that she was I guess they call it a sugar baby for sugar Daddy was maybe even friends with Vladimir Putin. Do we even know if that was proven or was that just discussion amongst her friend group.
That's that's what's very peculiar about kat story story. I mean, many of the facts that are circling around and seemed like rumors turned out to be close to truth. So her former husband, which I met in the US, Cobra Bell says, she stated herself that she had dated someone very powerful in Russia that was in the petrial industry, and she knew about geopolitics of the Middle East, of Russian and Russian well kept secrets that weren't in the
New York Times. So she had access to classified information about Russian politics. So that shows that's what is very astonishing for me in cattorists in her case that many things that seem outrageous seemed impossible Semeida turned out to be true. And this is one of the facts that
couldn't be verified. But many people who lived with her and were friends with her, or even her former husband, say that she had access to information that no one outside of the clothes circles of Russian oligarchs would know. So she holds truth. It's such an unbelievable whole cautionary tale, but it holds so many truths. Like dating Leonardo DiCaprio.
She was reported to date Leonardo DiCaprio, and Leo's people of course denied that, but then against they were photographed together in can in Con Film Festival, so that's undeniable. I mean she was in the same room as Leonardo DiCaprio and they exchanged glances, and they touched each other and they had some physical contact. So many of the things that helped her become an influencer and famous and
on social media were based on truth. If they were not altogether truth, they were pretty much based on accurate events.
Can we talk about her early Instagram life, because in the beginning, it was about ensuring people believe that she was living that rich and fast lifestyle, that she was actually in that crowd and was earning that kind of money. And her husband told you about like having to quickly take photos of her up against rich people's cars, which obviously not hers, like ferraris, et cetera, but like having to get the shop really quick before anyone busted them.
Basically, yeah, she was faking it until she made it. She was pretending she was a millionaire in the US, which is something that holds a lot of value in Brazil. In Brazilia and the whole Latin America would look up to the US, especially people who don't have many opportunities here, who couldn't go to college and who couldn't get a new job. They see moving to America as a potential to get rich and to have accessed to a wealth they wouldn't have in Latin America. And she was playing
downright for those people. She was acting as if she was shopping Gucci in Prada, and so she was taking pictures with Gucci bags over her badge. She was taking pictures lying down in the hood of a Ferrari, which wasn't hers. She would just go out and street and act as if she had a writ she didn't. She would go into five star hotels and ask to see a room, and then you have several pictures taken inside that room and said, yeah, I'm staying here at the Marriott,
I'm staying here at the Four Seasons Beverly Hills. And she actually wasn't. But the fact is she was actually getting somewhere in the US. Her projection of image on Instagram and social media wasn't completely fath I mean she made it to a music video of a fast and furious song that was on the franchise of the movies. I mean that is big for someone who came from South America with nothing and had no parents and no
relations in the US. I mean, she achieved things, but of course she would showcase on the Internet a larger version of those things she had achieved, or a misperception of those things she had achieved. She would act as if she was Angelina Julie or something, whereas she was I he will be an actress who was struggling, who was hustling a lot in the US.
So that does evolve over time, that Instagram presence. Do we know what started that shift from trying to live that life to trying to be more of.
A guru once again. I think there's some players of truth to her change, because she started going to aauasca rich wolfs, which is the root of the tree in the Amazon in Brazil that has psychedelic effects, and it's a religion in Brazil. It's an ancient religion which is used by indigenous communities. But then she started hanging out with some people in Hollywood who would drink the tree the tea, but they were not related to the Brazilian tradition at all. It was more of a party, was
more of a new vibe thing. People close to her and even herself told me that she actually believed in the tea, and the tea changed her mind, and she did become more spiritualized to the point of thinking she was able to talk to God saying out loud. She was able to have conversations with Jesus and aliens. So I do believe there was a fruitful winner change in her prior to changing her niche on Instagram. I don't
think it was just a business plan. Now I'm going to serve new age and I'm going to sell yoga clothes and I'm going to sell I do tend to believe, And we have learned that she actually changed herself. Prior to changing her online personace.
She wrote a book called The Voice, which she did do an interview with the Brazilian talk show host about and admitted that she'd written the entire thing whilst in a trance. But what was this book about and what is this voice that she's referring to?
She says in the book and in the interview with Amaldis Junior that she had a connection with a voice that could be God eventually could be Aliens. She changes her version quite a bit, that would tell her things about the future, would predict the future, would let her read other people's minds. And she said she drifted apart from the voice when she was at an early age, but after starting having ayahuasca, she got in touch again
with a voice. She restated this contact with the voice she heard in her mind, which is hard to define because she herself is not able to define it very well. But I would say it's a voice that sometimes it's God and sometimes it's Aliens. It's fishy. It's hard to try to make sense out of it because it's very nonsensical, but that's what she says in the book. It's a memoir book in which she narrates her life with changes and facts that are not verifiable and things that are
bluntly why. But it's her version of her own story. The book is her version of her own story. And it was really successful in Brazil. It wasn't a bestseller or anything, but it did reach many young women who looked up at Kat and who admired her, and who started believing she was a guru, believing she could help them out with her superpowers.
So through this time, her online following goes from like a couple one hundred thousand to more than a million, and so she's really starting to influence a significant amount of people. And she's utilizing this voice that you described to have these one on one consultations with women about a myriad of things, their career choices, their families, about
their relationships. But what are we finding out that she's actually telling these women in these consultations, Because you did speak to some women who'd had those consultations and who had friends who'd had these consultations. What was she doing and telling these people to do during those one on ones, she.
Was pretty much advising young women to be submissive and to look for rich men and to act very girl like around them, and to pretend to be more frail than they actually were, and to drop out of college and to try to get pregnant with someone who was richer than them. So it was very I would say it would Dwelve a little misogyny. They were very misogynistic advices. And I've heard from tens of people who had consultations
with her and who followed her advice. And she would even tell people who were in an abusive relationship who were better women, who were actually better not to look for the police, not to call the police, not to break up with the boyfriend, not because that was male energy. So it's a little surprising that a self made woman would She was almost like a rad Piel in that sense.
When does it start to change from having these one on one consultations and giving women advice like that to her kind of flipping to wanting women to come and physically join her and live with her because she's moved to Texas by this stage with another man, not the husband that you referred to earlier. She's divorcing him, but then she wants to create essentially a witch's coven.
It's not quite clear because she wouldn't tell it outright the to her clients, to her followers, she would always ask for help for the first at least for the first couple of them. Referretas always. One of the main characters of from Crosscat. The podcast was told that Kat was in a bad place and she was having suicidal thoughts and she needed someone to be around her, so she didn't quite invite desire to live with her to work with her. She was like, I'm not feeling good.
I'm in a bad place. I'm afraid I might hurt myself. Can you come here and keep me company? And Kat buys her plane ticket to go to Texas and live with her, allegedly to help her out through dark times. When desire gets there, Kat starts proposing her a business partnership, and she says they will have a holistic clinic together. They will open up ASPA, a place of well being, but they would need the resources for that, so Desiree
should get that money somehow, and she suggests Desi. Ray starts dancing in street clubs and THATSI, Ray starts doing sex work.
She's not the only one, right. There were several women who waded up going to Texas with I, all essentially forced in domestic labor or sex work whilst living with Can.
We've got in touch with three women who were able to prove they labeled her in Texas, and two of them report that they were cohers to dance in strip clubs and to do sex work. And the third one of them, Jamila, who was a yoga teacher already in the US. She was living in the US in the Boston region. She moved to Texas because she was about to be affected. She was about to become homeless, and she moves to Texas to teach yoga to Cat and
two Cat's followers. She gets there, there's no yoga classes, and she has to drive Kat around to be Cat's chauffeur, Cat's driver and to clean the house up. But she refuses to dance at a strip club, and she refuses to do sex work, so she only stays there for a couple of weeks and leaves, whereas the other two eventually so come eventually agree with Cat's requests and Cat's orders and start working in the sex business in the US.
Do these women ever see any of the money that they are generating for Cat?
Like, how are they surviving?
I mean they were staying at Cat's house if one of them had a room. But it's a classic case of human traffickings. She would say she needed to pay for the groceries, she needed to pay for the guests to drive them to the strip club. She needed to pay for all of her basic needs. So Cat toorists would keep all the money they would make doing sex work or dancing at strip clubs, and she would keep keep it pretty much out to herself. So they would make thousands of dollars a night and they would not
see this money. They would come home and they would have to hand out each and every dollar bill to Cat, who put it away and said she was saving that money so she could invest in the business they would eventually open up together, which wasn't quite true. She was spending that money in her lavish lifestyle. She then would show on Instagram to get more followers and get more people to live with.
You're listening to true crime Conversations with me, Claire Murphy. I'm speaking with Chicho Feliti, host of the Don't Cross Cat podcast. Up next, we uncover what Cat was telling women to keep them from leaving once they'd realized that they weren't there for the reason she'd claimed. How did she convince these women to stay after they realized that they're not there for the purposes that Cat has drawn
them in? As like, cult leaders employ lots of different tactics to keep people believing in what they're telling them. What was Kat telling them and what was she doing to make sure that these women didn't up and leave?
I do think it's a complicated issue because human trafficking and cult leaders employ different forms of coercion, which are not specifically locking a door kicking someone at gunpoint. But these people who went to live with her, not Jamila Jamila. I think that's why Jamila was able to get away so quickly, because she wasn't a follower of cats. She did not buy the kool aide, She did not believe in anything. She thought it was all mumbo jumbo in
her words. But the other two women who ended up living with her in Texas, they really believed in her. They had paid her thousands of dollars for counseling, and they really saw her as an idol and a friend. So at first there's a flattering sense of this person I admire so much. I know from the internet she's so famous. She actually wants to live with me, so that's almost like an awarding feeling. And they also believed, or claimed they believe in her superpowers, so they were
afraid that she would manage them. She would threaten them by saying, I can do bad things to you and to your family. I can use the voice to make your life miserable. And there are recordings of her saying she's able to make someone have butt cancer, and that's the term she uses, but canser, I'm giving you butt cancer with my words. So they actually believed in the witchcraft and all of the domestical stuff Kat was selling online.
So I do think that was part of what led them to stay in the US, even though they were being clearly abused. They have been traffic.
This is something that seems to be a thread throughout all of this in your podcast and every other thing that I've seen about Kat Toros is that people are genuinely terrified of her. Like the people who have since spoken out after everything happened, a lot of them want to remain anonymous because they don't want to be targeted. But like, she's one pretty blonde lady with an Instagram account, Like what are they so scared of?
I do think there are two things to fear there. The first of them is the mystical powers, which is not very rational, and I don't think that we who stand from an outside perspective are quite able to understand. But there's a very palpable one, which is she was famous, and she would dis people on the internet. She dogs Patty, who's Desert's best friend, and who starts an investigation to
try to find her friend. Once Desires disappeared, she actually posted pictures of Patty and her kids online and said that Patty made her infants, made her small children do sex work, and that was seen by hundreds of thousands of people. So she actually had the power to ruin someone's reputations. She actually and that is not a mystical power, that's an actual power. She was able to destroy your life if she wanted to. She docked Patty's address, Patty's
phone number. Patti started receiving hundreds or thousands of calls after Catturists published her phone number on Instagram. So there was the mystical site to be feared by the ones who believed in it, But there was also a potential of destruction and influence she held online and that was very palpable and very objective.
You speak to Patty throughout the Don't Crosscat podcast and she really put herself on the line to try and help her friend get out of the clutches of Kat Torres.
But Kat really tried.
Very hard to get rid of Patty, right, So you mentioned that she docks her, but also she got desiraate to record messages to tell her to go away and tell her everything was fine. But was it Patty and that group of people who started to investigate things themselves because police seemed very reluctant to get involved in this investigation. Was it their motivation to expose is that finally did bring Kat undone?
I think that for people who are close to Desiree and Letisia, the two young women who actually stayed in the house for months in Texas, it was a search based on friendship and love and concern. But then when it started getting traction on social media, there were so many armchair detective zimbers all over the country who started investigating this case by their own not making a penny, and they were able to help, which is something I
also find fascinating about the story. It's interesting that of armchairs detective as incompetent people who were standing on the way of police or the justice system. Know in this case, the armchairs detective saved the day, which is something I had never heard of. And they were young women, young women who many of them followed Cat as well when believed in Kat for a while prior to turning against
her and to taking her to justice. That's why it's such a fascinating story to me, in the sense that we usually tend to think of the tops as the good guys, or the justice or the prosecutors. In this case, had not been the armchair detectives in the network of fens or hundreds of Brazilian young women who are on the internet obsessed with this case, I don't think Atturis would have been arrested and afforded.
So it's the best and the worst of the Internet all combined. Social media influencer gone bad. Chair detectives come to the rescue.
Very well, said the.
FBI does eventually get involved after Kat is exposed and she flees. What happens to Kat after she's arrested in Maine.
First, the American authorities have to check on her on her status because she was married to an American man, so if she had the right to have a green card, she could have been there legally, but she never requested a green card, so she was illegal there and that based on that, the American authorities decides to deport her to Brazil so she can be judged by her crime in Brazil. She's not an American citizen and all of the victims were Brazilians as well. None of the victims
who came to public were American. They decide to deport her in Brazil and she gets to Minajette Eyes and is immediately arrested by the Brazilian federal police since she was in the interval wanted list. She was at an international wanted list already, so she goes straight to jail as soon as she lands in Brazil.
She is eventually convicted, sentenced to eight years in jail, and then she gives that unhinged interview to the Babas.
From jail, there is no way.
I sent a message to a person saying, come to live with me in America. I'm going to slave you or are you going to work for me my house? Nobody worked.
I think the messages that we've seen from absolutely yes. What about the bank transfers from Desiree where she's depositing money into your account.
The same thing.
What do you make of that interview, because she's asked about whether she could influence people to do the things that they did, and she basically claims she's completely innocent.
She does, and it's how the trial goes as well. During trials, she denies acts that are easily verifiable, and she denies having those women over at her house. And there are pictures, there are videos, there's I mean they
weren't there. There's a neighbors saying there's everyone saying there's the police find them there, and she lately denies it upright, And then she also gets some hints with the judge and she starts bossing the judge around, and she starts asking the judge to be quiet, something I don't think
many lawyers would advise on. So I haven't got the chance to be face to face with her, but we did exchange letters, and she showed another side of her in which she denied the crimes, but she admitted to having relations with those young women who moved to Texas, but also having a big expectation of her followers saving her from jail. She actually says, and that's where badim. If they know I'm here, they will destroy this prison and they will get me out because they love me.
So there is something there. There's a sense of grandeur and there's a sense of importance which might not be persons which might not correspond to the reality.
Next, I asked Tejo what he thought of Kat after he got the opportunity to speak with her one on one. From your interactions with her, would you say that she was corrupted by the power that she managed to achieve with her millions of followers, or does she seem genuinely mentally unhealthy? Like, what's your take on where she's coming from?
Now? It's hard as someone who's seen the story from outside, it's hard to tell. Well. What I can say that she's been assessed by psychiatrists, she's been medicated, she's been diagnosed, she's been deemed healthy enough to serve time in jail, not to serve time in a psychiatric ward. And I do think there's something deeper there in which her behavior is a reprodution of what life has made to her.
She was advising these women to act well exactly like she had acted all her life and had achieved the things she had achieved by acting that way. By acting submits that by going out with older, richer men who would provide you, by getting pregnant of someone who was very powerful, I do think there's a level of trauma there, and there's a level of someone who had very little
chance in life and made it. One of her friends says that she was honestly trying to help this She believed Catories was actually trying to help this women by giving her her roadmap, the roadmap of her life, And that makes a lot of sense to me. I don't think because she it wasn't a big scam. She didn't got rich with as she We're not talking about millions
of dollars. We're talking about a lot of money. But had she married someone who was a millionaire or a billionaire in the US and she had the opportunity to she dated a big movie director in Los Angeles, who was a millionaire by hundreds of millions. She could have made more money acting in a different way than trafficking her followers. So I do think there is something there which we might not never reach on her psyche is
why has she done this? She could have made money if it was for the money itself, She could have made money in different ways. Why would she choose to traffic her followers to the US and put herself in risk? And she knew she was committing a crime where she could have made money in many other different ways which were not necessarily getting diego. So I do think there's something there that speaks to her so which is hard for us to define.
There's definitely less in this for all of us.
I mean, you personally have reflected on the fact that you are actually an influencer yourself, and you have to take into account the power that being an influencer holds. But do you think there's a lesson in us maybe having to stop and remember that a lot of what we see on social media platforms is essentially a lie, a lie.
There's an example in the Portuguese version of the podcast, which didn't make the cut to the US version. One of our friends is when you go to a beach, do you take a picture with the crowd and the crowded beach, or do you try to go to a specific point of the beach where in this right angle with the right light, it would look like you're alone in the beach. And we do it all the time.
Everyone's lying all the time on social media. I lie all the time on social media, and it was somewhat difficult for me to realize that I was also part of it, mistigating this case. I mean, if I have an advertising today for let's say a pop company, a soda company, and I've got bad man migrainar had a huge fight with my husband and I'm feeling like shit, I'll smile nonethe less and I'll say, this is a delicious soda, you should have it, and it's alive. It's
an up, it's a job. I think we should first of all, always be aware that the Internet does not correspond to the reality this. People with hundreds of thousands or millions or tens of millions of followers are not your friends, and that they're they're working, which is legit, which is okay. It's a job like anything else. We do not expect Drew Barrymore or merrow Street to be your friend. They're there work, even though we admired them
and we feel close to them. But there's a sense of proximity which exists in social media, which is very the siffing. People who are influencers tend to act as if everyone who's following them as their friends is their friend or has access to their personal life, and it's part of their enter rush. You're not, you're not. It's just maybe we should see them as we see narrow free and that would be a healthier decision. And I
guess we would give less away our agency. WI would give less away our time and our money for people who are acting as if they are friends. They're not our calls.
They're not to know what happens to Kattaras when she finishes her sentence, like will she be allowed to go back and be an influencer?
Was she allowed to have another Instagram account?
Like?
Is she bard from doing any of that? Once she gets out, she will.
Come back, and she'll come back stronger, especially knowing Brazilian social media landscape like I do. People will be so interested on her she will make it to Big Brother Brazil, which is our biggest TV show. I know Big Brother is kind of small in some countries, and it's huge here. It's our biggest television show. And she doesn't make it to Big Brothers. She will make it to which is the second one. I think it's more probable because they do like people who have been involved in the problems
and controversy in their cast. But she will come back stronger because that's what the Internet lives on the Internet rereads on trouble, breads on novelty, breeds on beef, and she brings the beef. But she says she wants to be a country singer. According to her onward, the Internet is for idiots. I want to be a country singer. So that's the official version. But I'm doing a little projection here. I'm doing a little I think she will
come back stronger in Brazil specifically, it has happened. I mean, we I've created menda stars or one a young woman who killed her parents became one of our biggest stars on socially wow or killing her.
Pan watch this space. I guess when she hops out of jail. Keep an eye on Instagram or the country music charts whichever way she decides to go. Chito, thank you so much for sharing your insights with us on Kat Toys today. We really appreciate it and you're giving us some of your time.
Thank you all.
Michael Answer, Thank you to Chito for helping us tell this story. True Crime Conversations is hosted by me Claire Murphy and produced by Charlie Blackman, with audio design by Jacob Brown. Thank you so much for listening. I'll be back next week with
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