A lawyer famous for re-enacting gang crimes online, is under fire after a Brazilian police raid allegedly linked her to a real-life criminal underworld faction
A stunning legal eagle who became a social media sensation for dramatizing gritty underworld crimes is now facing a real-life legal drama of her own. Glamourous Gabriela Vieira Serafin, famed for her first-person re-enactments of gangland cases and drug raids, is under the microscope in Brazil.
Detectives fear the glamorous defence attorney may have crossed the line from representing criminals to joining their ranks. Authorities in Florianopolis carried out a high-stakes dawn raid on Gabriela’s home on Tuesday (May 12).
While the lawyer herself wasn’t there, her mother and legal representatives watched as police scoured the property. Investigators reportedly discovered a number of devices, including two mobile phones, SIM cards and memory sticks, secretly tucked away inside a child’s glove in her bedroom.
Known to her followers as “Advogata”, a cheeky play on the Portuguese words for lawyer (advogada) and cat (gata), Gabriela built a brand on re-enacting the chaotic lives of her clients.
However, Santa Catarina Civil Police suspect her professional boundaries may have blurred by becoming involved with a criminal faction.
One possibility reportedly being examined is that she may have acted as a courier for messages between prisoners and gang members on the street.
Her stepfather, Anderson de Souza Machado, was detained during the raid, though Gabriela has not yet been officially charged.
The lawyer’s Instagram feed is packed with staged accounts of criminal life. In one particularly prophetic clip, she played a woman caught red-handed in a narcotics den.
“I was inside a bedsit weighing drugs. The tactical police burst in. I think someone grassed me up,” she said in the staged video.
In another post, she detailed a cold-blooded ambush where rival gangsters rented a flat next door to a target to monitor his every move.
She said: “The guys were at war, but it was hard to catch their enemy out on the street. So what did they do?
“They rented an apartment in the same condominium as their enemy. Almost door to door. They stayed there just watching the movements.”
While her videos aren’t illegal, police are now analysing her seized devices to determine if Gabriela has truly joined the dark side.
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