Who is Kat Torres, the former model who destroyed her Instagram followers’ lives with bizarre spiritual advice?

Instagrammer and self-styled guru, Kat Torres, has been jailed for 8 years after being found guilty of human trafficking and slavery.

Spiritual gurus and life coaches thrive in our super-connected, super-lonely times. Take a virtual stroll down Instagram valley, and you will encounter thousands of shills who are desperate to help fix your crappy little life with 60 second soundbites of dubious advice. From Teal Swan to Tony Robbins, there has to be someone out there to mend your miserable existence, right?

How about Kat Torres? She, like a lot of her New Age compatriots, has the perfect rags to riches story. Okay, so it’s not Teal Swan’s, ‘As a child, I was used in Satanic rituals and sewn in to a corpse’ sob story, but still, it’s a life of hardship that Torres knew she had to escape. Born in to poverty and raised in a slum in Brazil, she moved to America and made her name as a catwalk model, at one point even courting the attention of Leonardo DiCaprio.

Things eventually took a turn for the weird when Torres began to experiment with the hallucinogen Ayahuasca, participating in regular psychedelic imbibing ceremonies with a select group in Los Angeles. Coincidentally, it was around this time that she claimed to discover her talents as a spiritual medium.

With over one million followers on Instagram, Torres had the kind of audience that brand ambassador influencers would kill for. But, instead of using her platform to sell other people’s products, she followed the real American Dream, and made herself the product. Armed with her new clairvoyant talents, Torres quickly rebranded as a lifestyle and wellness coach, launching a website and subscription service that offered guarantees of “Love, money and self-esteem that you always dreamed of” – all for $50 a month. Subscribers could dish out even more dollars for a one-on-one coaching session with Kat herself.

Step two in the journey of any guru is to publish a book. Her autobiography, ‘A Voice’, was an instant hit with followers, with one reviewer on Amazon leaving a gushing 5 star review.

Popularity ever growing, Torres made the next logical move – cult leader. Inviting her followers to come and live with her in her home, she attracted vulnerable women who were in transitional phases in their lives, who needed some direction. One follower, named Ana, made her way to Torres’ new home in Austin TX, to work as her assistant for $2000 a month.

When she arrived at the home she realized that the picture-perfect life projected on Torres’ social media was far from reality. Ana was horrified to find that Torres’ home was dirty, messy and chaotic. Forced to sleep on a sofa soaked with cat urine, Ana began a life of endless domestic chores and sleep deprivation. Having left her life behind to work for Kat, Ana felt that she had nowhere to go. Fortunately she was able to move in with a new boyfriend after 3 months of living with her guru. Unfortunately, others weren’t so lucky.

Leticia Maia Alvareng, and Desirrê Freitas followed Torres to Texas, with the promise of a spiritually fulfilling life where all of their wildest dreams would become manifest. When communications from the two women abruptly stopped, family members contacted the authorities. Both families declared them missing after profiles for both women were found on escort sites.

So, why was Torres sentenced to prison?

As it turns out, Torres was forcing young women to work in strip clubs and as sex workers to fund her lavish lifestyle. One victim said she was told not to return to the home until she had earned $3000 dollars each day, meaning that some nights she would sleep on the streets. As well as working non-stop to pay Torres’ bills, the women she enslaved were made to participate in bizarre rituals for videos for social media, with names such as ‘Alien Bath.’ Those videos are no longer available online, but they made up part of the evidence damning enough that meant that she would get jail time.

What does Torres herself have to say about all of this? In an interview given as part of the BBC Worldwide documentary, she sits in the courtyard of her new concrete home and is unrepentant. Protesting her innocence, she makes sure to let the audience know that the 20+ women who came forward with allegations of abuse at her hands, did so out of pure jealousy. Not wanting to leave the interview without a parting shot, Kat showed a glimpse of the person her followers fell victim to, saying to the interviewer:

“Beware, huh? Later you will find out if I have power or not.”

Let’s hope for the sake of all of us that she doesn’t make good on her promise.