On April 21, 2025, influencer Monniky Fraga and her husband, Lucas, were approached by three armed men just as they were returning to their home in Igarassu, Northern Brazil. Monniky would later tell her tens of thousands of followers that she and her husband went through a brutal ordeal, but a subsequent police investigation revealed some shocking details.
“I was returning home with Lucas, and they surprised me on my street,” Monniky told her followers. “There were three armed men, and at first I thought they were going to take my car. When they ordered us to get out of the car and get into another vehicle, I understood that the situation was much more serious.”
Recounting the ordeal through a series of social media posts, Monniky Fraga said that she and her husband were taken to a forest by a river and forced to pay their own ransom. The armed men kept warning them that they were going to shoot them if they didn’t comply, and the influencer was convinced they would never see their family again.
“In my head, I was only thinking about my children and saying, ‘I’ll give you everything you want, you don’t have to do anything with me, when I leave here I’ll forget about it,'” Monniky recalled. “They were threatening me all the time. ‘I’m going to shoot you in the knee, I’m going to shoot you in the foot,’ but I begged so much that nothing happened.”
Monniky and Lucas were eventually released in a rural area after their families paid the ransom demanded by the kidnappers. The influencer’s husband, who was reportedly beaten by the three armed men, decided to go straight to a police station and file a formal complaint. The Civil Police launched an investigation through the Special Operations Group (GOE) to identify those responsible.
Soon after police began investigating Monniky’s kidnapping, they realised something was off. Phone records showed that she had maintained contact with one of the alleged kidnappers before and after the crime, and analysis of the evidence showed that “this extortion by kidnapping was nothing more than a plot between the alleged victim and one of the perpetrators,” according to a police commissioner.
There was just one thing that didn’t add up. Monniky’s husband didn’t seem to have had any part in setting up the kidnapping, and the investigation concluded that he had been the only victim. Not only did he believe his and his wife’s lives were at risk, but he was also beaten by the armed men during the kidnapping.
On March 25, almost a year after her kidnapping, Monniky Fraga was arrested on suspicion of extortion,
procedural fraud, and filing a false police report. One of her three alleged accomplices is also in custody, another one died last year, and a third is still being sought by police.
Monniky’s lawyer has declined to comment on his client’s situation at this time.
