US-based wellness influencer jailed for trafficking and slavery
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New York: A court in the US sentenced the former Brazilian model and US-based wellness influencer, Kat Torres, to eight years in prison for human trafficking and slavery of women.
An FBI investigation earlier found two women living with Torres having gone missing in 2022.
The women alleged that Torres had trafficked and enslaved them, while narrating their experience of living with the US-based influencer.
The women told BBC that they were attracted by her success of emerging from impoverished Brazilian neighbourhood to be partying with Hollywood stars and rumoured to be dating actor Leonardo DiCaprio.
Torres, a fixture on Brazilian TV, claimed to make predictions using her spiritual powers.
The woman named Ana told BBC that everything about Torres was credible as ‘She was on the cover of magazines. She was seen with famous people such as Leonardo DiCaprio.’
Meanwhile, BBC reported Torres’ former flatmate, who shared a home with her in New York, as saying that Hollywood friends of Torres introduced her to a hallucinogenic drug called ayahuasca.
Later she turned out to be a ‘life coach’ and ‘hypnotist’ alongside setting up a wellness website, which promised customers “Love, money and self-esteem that you always dreamed of.”
Her self-help videos offered advice on relationships, wellness, hypnosis, meditation and exercise programmes and for one-on-one video consultation she reportedly charged $150 to solve ‘any of their problems’.
It is reported that over 20 women came forward complaining of exploitation by Torres.
They are receiving psychiatric therapy to recover from what they say they experienced, according to the report.
