Influencer gets 90 days in prison for falsely reporting attempted kidnapping

A California woman and Instagram “mom influencer” who falsely reported and posted online that a couple had attempted to kidnap her two young children in 2020 was sentenced to 90 days in jail on Thursday, prosecutors said.

A Sonoma County Superior Court judge sentenced the woman, Katie Sorensen, 30, the Sonoma County District Attorney’s Office said in a statement Thursday. She was convicted in April of making a false report, a felony.

Prosecutor Carla Rodriguez said 60 days out of 90 could be served in a job release program.

Ms Sorensen was also sentenced to 12 months of informal probation. During this time, she was ordered not to be present on social media, submit to search and seizure of her electronic devices without a court order, and complete a four-hour implicit bias training program, in addition to paying various fines and fees, said the prosecutor. . Ms Sorensen had received a maximum sentence of six months in prison.

She was remanded immediately after her conviction.

“Ms. Sorensen has been held accountable for her crime and we believe the judge has handed down a just sentence,” Ms. Rodriguez said in the statement. to abduction of two young children, somewhat close.”

Ms. Sorensen’s attorney, Charles D. Dresow, did not immediately respond to a request for comment Friday.

On Dec. 7, 2020, Ms. Sorensen visited a Michaels craft store in Petaluma, California, about 40 miles north of San Francisco, with her 4-year-old son and 1-year-old daughter, prosecutors said.

After buying some items, prosecutors said, she loaded her children into her car and exited the store’s parking lot.

“A few minutes later, Ms. Sorensen called Petaluma police and reported that a couple had attempted to kidnap her children,” prosecutors said.

About a week later, Ms. Sorensen posted a video to Instagram in which she “described the near kidnapping of her young children, adding important details that had not been disclosed to the Petaluma Police Department,” prosecutors said.

In the video, which has since been removed, she said she wanted to share her story to raise awareness “and encourage parents to be more aware of their surroundings.” She described being followed through the store by a couple who had made comments about the children and tried to kidnap them.

The video was viewed more than four million times and Ms. Sorensen appeared on a local news program to repeat her story to gain more attention.

When Petaluma police officers followed Ms. Sorensen, she identified a couple from surveillance video at the Michaels store as the alleged kidnappers.

The couple, Sadie Vega-Martinez and her husband, Eddie Martinez, who said they shopped at the store, “fully cooperated with the investigation” and “denyed the allegations against them,” Petaluma police said at the time. .

In 2021, Mrs. Sorensen was charged with three counts of falsely reporting a crime. The jury acquitted her of the first two charges, which related to statements she made to a police dispatcher and a police officer on December 7. But she was condemned for her statements during the third interview, which lasted a week. later with a detective.