QAnon 'momfluencer' sentenced to jail for accusing Latino couple of abducting her children

A social media influencer with ties to the QAnon movement has been sentenced to jail for falsely accusing a Latino couple of trying to kidnap her children, Law & Crime reported on Friday.

"Kathleen 'Katie' Sorensen, a white mother of two, made an Instagram video in which she made up a story about Sadie Vega-Martinez and Eddie Martinez — a Hispanic couple she did not know — trying to kidnap her then 4-year-old son and 1-year-old daughter," reported Jason Kandel.

She was sent to prison for 90 days Thursday on a count of knowingly making a false report of a crime, the website reported.

Sorensen, who lives in California, originally went viral in 2020 as she claimed in a video from her car that a couple, later revealed to be Eddie and Sadie Vega-Martinez, tried to abduct her children at a Michael's craft store.

But her story fell apart almost immediately as police found "inconsistencies," and it turned out the whole thing was fabricated. She was arrested in May 2021.

Prosecutors believe she fabricated the story to boost and monetize her following, prosecutors noted — but there may have been a political and conspiracy theory basis for it, too.

"Before making the false claims about the kidnapping, Sorensen spent much of 2020 trying to establish and expand her “brand” on Instagram with limited success, authorities said in court documents," said the report. "She said she needed money to support her children’s home-schooling program and to pay for treatments for her autistic son.

"She sought to monetize her posts, much centered around scenes and stories regarding her family, personal life, and children. She also apparently adhered to the QAnon conspiracy theory, whose followers may tend to see kidnappers around every corner and draw false correlations between insignificant or innocuous behaviors, court documents said."

The QAnon conspiracy theory, known for its ties to the far-right and its support of Donald Trump, holds that America is secretly controlled by Satanic child-trafficking cannibals — an idea that borrows from other long-running conspiracies, including those that drove the Nazis' anti-Semitic ideology. Some of its followers have been driven to commit heinous crimes; last year, a QAnon-devout surfing instructor in California murdered his own children because he believed his wife was a shape-shifting lizard person who had infected their DNA.