River Castro, a hunky Colombian man, managed to romance a bevy of beautiful women in Bali without ever having met them in person. Then they learned he never really existed. In Part 1, we interviewed the women behind the catfishing scandal that’s become the talk of Canggu to learn the truth behind the web of lies.
Read Part 1 here.
In February, Coconuts Bali published a story about Alexandra Saper, a 31-year-old American social media influencer who fled the island out of fear following the arrival of an alleged stalker from the UK.
After Josefina Bucaj’s Instagram story revealing the connection between “River Castro” and Sophani recently went viral, we reached out to Alexandra once again to ask if she knew about Sophani, since she previously lived near Canggu in Pererenan.
Alexandra confirmed to us that Sophani had stepped in during her traumatic stalker situation and offered her assistance.
We verified this piece of information with Sophani, who said that she had, indeed, assisted Alexandra after she came to her for help.
“I did my best. I was even in an 8-hour stakeout with the police team. I sat with her with the police team,” said Sophani.
Related
Before the catfishing scandal broke, Sophani had earned a reputation around Canggu for helping people in need like Alexandra. We independently verified that she was involved in numerous charity projects, from fundraisers to aid the victims of the 2018 earthquake in Lombok to organizations working with orphans and street kids in Bali.
“As much as people are making me out to be a monster, I still have a pure heart.”
Coconuts Bali conducted a 40-minute interview with Sophani on May 18, followed by several shorter calls over subsequent days.
In the first interview, Sophani said that she was at the airport, heading to Singapore in order to clear her head.
“I just decided to go to Singapore and then I’m going to Thailand and then Cambodia to see my family,” she said.
When we asked her, point blank, if she had indeed created River Castro, Sophani admitted to inventing and pretending to be the fictitious persona.
“This started about 10 years ago, when I was crippled. I was pretty injured and [I was] in a wheelchair,” Sophani told us of River’s origins.
She said the Instagram account that eventually became River’s began “as a poetry page where I used to write a lot of dark, deep poetry. So it was a place for me to vent.”
Sophani said that since she had just moved to Bali at the time and didn’t know anyone, she felt particularly lonely. But soon people started noticing her Instagram poetry, and then sending direct messages, telling her that they could relate to the poems and asking about the person who wrote them. That’s how the River Castro persona began.
“It was a page I created just to be something, someone else that wasn’t myself, because I was extremely unhappy with my life,” she said.
When Coconuts Bali asked her why she chose a handsome, muscular man to be the face of River Castro, Sophani said, “It became a fitness page because I really got into fitness. Trying to get active again. And then I just built this persona in my head.”
The pictures Sophani misappropriated to create River Castro are of a man named Beto Malfacini, who has about 244,000 followers on his Instagram. Coconuts Bali has reached out to him for comment.
(“The real guy Beto – I actually saw him briefly in Milan, as we had mutual friends. I was there modeling when I was 19,” quipped Malin Svenson. “When I told ‘River’ that he looked familiar, he said, ‘Well, I do have a brother.’ But he said they were estranged and it was triggering to talk about him.”)
I’m not going to speak on their behalf, but let’s be honest, they have to be quite lonely too to find comfort in somebody they haven’t met. You know what I mean?
Sophani
While she claims the account was “not necessarily targeting women” and that men also sent messages about its poetry, Sophani, who identified as a lesbian, said she found comfort in talking with the women who interacted with the account.
“And I admit they were beautiful, beautiful, beautiful women and they are something that, you know, that I could never get in person,” Sophani conceded.
“But then, I didn’t even think it was possible for people to just fall in love with a persona or, you know, get romantically linked or anything.”
But soon, that’s exactly what happened.
“Really, it just became an addiction,” Sophani said, adding that when a woman found out that River was not a real person, they would move on.
“And then the next person. The same thing happened again.”
“If you’re going out there and you fall in love with somebody on social media… sometimes people are trying to fill a void. Obviously, I was trying to fill a void, and they were trying to fill a void.”
Sophani said that her loneliness didn’t stem from a lack of people in her life. As she made more friends in Bali and became involved in various charity and social projects, she was soon surrounded by people seeking her assistance.
“I became like this person in the community who people just go to for help and constantly, if you ever went through my WhatsApp, it’s just people asking for favors, asking for help.”
“But it just got to the point where people don’t… How about [asking] how am I? And it did get to that place where it went really dark and I was very alone, even though I was out every night at dinners with people. But I just felt like I didn’t have any deep conversation or deep connection with people.”
Sophani said she felt “blinded by so many things that were happening and the stories that were created” and it was not until Josefina revealed her story that she saw how much damage she had done emotionally.
“And this is why I’ve deleted the page. And I want nothing to do with it. And I just want to focus on telling the truth now,” Sophani said.
Explaining her reasons for maintaining the River persona for so long, Sophani said, “In the end, let’s face it, people only get approached if you are, like, this attractive thing.”
“That’s the reality of life. And that’s why it did get to a lonely place and vice versa, these women were lonely too. I’m not going to speak on their behalf, but let’s be honest, they have to be quite lonely too to find comfort in somebody they haven’t met. You know what I mean?”
“At the same time, from the bottom of my heart, it really tore me apart. And the bit that tore me the worst was Josefina, because she’s such a fucking good human being and we connected. She’s the first person that gets my mind and doing that to her, I just didn’t have the heart to tell her the truth.”
The accusations
Body Factory Bali (BFB) has confirmed to Coconuts Bali that Sophani’s gym membership has been revoked and will never be reinstated.
“Body Factory Bali has always been known as a positive space for community connection. We were as shocked as everyone else to learn of the disturbing nature of the accusations involving a once trusted, now former, member of the BFB community,” the management said in an official statement.
‘Taking total advantage of the trust of other members is a massive abuse of power. We have since been informed that the same person has used other businesses and communities in the same way.”
BFB also denied that anybody named River Castro was ever one of the gym’s owners (or a silent owner, as River had claimed to Josefina when confronted).
Sophani said she was sorry that BFB had been associated with the scandal since it was hurting them and the people she knew who worked there. But she denied using the gym as a pick-up place. “They made me look like I went there to scoop women. I will be completely honest with everything. I would tell you now that I never went there to scoop women,” she said.
Separately, the administrators of the Canggu Community Facebook group released a statement on May 18, saying that they “have cut all ties with” Sophani after hearing about the cases, talking to her victims and especially after hearing Sophani’s confession in the latest video from Allyson Mayle.
The statements also note that Sophani was never a founding member of the Canggu Community.
“I’ve never said I was the founder but I played a big role when there was nobody else in the picture during the pandemic. Now there are more people. Obviously the Canggu Community is getting a lot of backlash at the moment, and I don’t want to hurt them anymore,” Sophani said.
Damages
Coconuts Bali asked Sophani for her response to some of the specific accusations made against her by the women we interviewed.
When asked about the story regarding the menstrual cup, Sophani said that “it was not anything perverted” and that the woman in question actually came to her for help as the menstrual cup had been stuck for hours.
“It was actually a funny moment. She was using chopsticks to try to pull it out, and then I just said, look, just relax your jaw or whatever. And because I use a menstrual cup, too, I know how to use it. But I removed it in less than, like, 10 seconds,” Sophani said.
Sophani, who said that she chose the name River because she likes it (“I do love River Phoenix,” she quipped), insisted that she had never used a voice distortion app to alter her voice into River’s. In fact, she said, it was simply her own voice but spoken at a lower register so it became deeper.
She also claimed that none of the women ever asked her for video calls.
“Even if they did, I would’ve made an excuse not to, obviously,” she added.
Sophani also denied Allyson’s account about River telling her to come to her place in the middle of the night.
“She was next door to me [at the time]. If anything, I could’ve just knocked on [her] door. We were neighbors, not more than literally two meters from each other. And we used to sit on the front porch and talk, laugh and all these things. So, it was actually a really nice friendship [or] so I thought,” she said.
Why?
When Coconuts Bali told the women about Sophani’s explanation for the whole thing — about feeling lonely and wanting to “fill the void” and how the women involved were, to quote her, “beautiful, beautiful, beautiful women” that she could not get in person — their responses varied.
“The hard part about this question is it makes you feel somewhat bad for Sophani,” said Allyson.
Allyson recalled that River would constantly criticize Sophani’s health and appearance, saying that she was “out of shape” and “looks terrible.”
“She was telling me about her insecurities through River,” said Allyson.
Malin quipped that Sophani did not come across as insecure, but instead was “very sociable and confident.”
“I think that she’s more obsessed with beautiful women because, looking at the women that she has targeted as ‘River’, they were all very beautiful,” Malin said. “The fact that she can do this because of her selfish reasons is just disgusting and horrible.”
Allyson agreed with Malin’s assessment.
“Whenever I asked her why she was not dating someone or in a relationship, she would always say she did not have time and had no desire to be in a relationship. Yet, she always talked to me about new attractive women in Body Factory or that she had seen around the island,” Allyson said.
“She even told me about Josefina before she made Josefina one of her victims. She even said that beautiful women trust her and like to be friends with her because she is not a creepy man. Funny how ironic that is now. She always said to me that her guy friends were jealous because she always had beautiful women around her. Which is true, she did always have beautiful women around her. That’s because we trusted her, not only as a healer but as a woman herself.
“It was as if she wanted to have a relationship with these beautiful women but knew that it could never happen in reality, so she instead formed the persona of River to engage with us in a sexual manner.”
She keeps going with trying to manipulate me and I’m not even sure if she is realizing that herself.
Josefina
Allyson admitted that River did fill a void caused by her estrangement from her brother.
“As for my relationship with River and if I spoke to him to fill a void, I could honestly say that I did. While I was in Bali I was extremely open and vulnerable. River, to me, was an older man that I thought I could trust,” Allyson added in retrospect.
“I was seeking a brotherly-like figure due to what I discussed with her in our sessions, and she morphed River into that figure for me to engage further with him.’
As for Malin, she says that she never felt lonely, but noted that Sophani had asked her to cut ties with many people – including her former boyfriend – by saying that they were bad for her and had done horrible things.
“I was in a vulnerable state and I did not have a lot of people in Bali, so I trusted that she had my best interests at heart. So she made up a lot of stories to basically just have me for herself,” she said.
Malin says Sophani also convinced her to buy a ring and other items such as sunglasses from her as a gift to River. Sophani then offered to go to the post office to send the gifts to him.
“She basically just put it in her pocket because there was no guy to send them to,” Malin said.
The third woman, who asked to remain anonymous, also said that Sophani had gotten her to spend thousands of dollars on “gifts” for River.
(When we asked Sophani for her response, she said that the women bought crystals and jewelry for themselves as she only did men’s collections this year and last year. “And I gave them gifts, too,” Sophani said).
Looking back, Josefina said that River changed his personality after her first conversation with Sophani about him, during which she had called River “annoying and self-focused.”
Sophani had responded by saying that didn’t sound at all like the River she knew, describing him as “humble, egoless, and having a heart of gold.”
“Sophani attuned ‘River’ to become the man I wanted to a certain extent, like an instrument,” Josefina said.
Malin says that she would never return to Bali unless Sophani — who told Coconuts Bali that she is currently in Thailand — was deported from Indonesia.
“The fact that she’s still playing the victim and feeling sorry for herself more than for any of the girls that she’s done this to is just sickening. She honestly deserves to be behind bars,” she said.
Josefina, as the whistleblower to this whole web of lies and deception, said that, at first, she wanted to give Sophani a chance to confess to her personally and tell her side of the story. That is why she is still in touch with Sophani, while the other women are not.
“Talking to her made me realize very fast that she is still not aware of the pain and trauma she causes,” Josefina said, adding that she is split between feeling anger and feeling sorry for Sophani.
“She keeps going with trying to manipulate me and I’m not even sure if she is realizing that herself.”
Josefina, who said that she is “anti-prison” in general, told us that she did not want Sophani to face legal consequences for her actions, or to make her suffer in order to get revenge. But she went public with her story to stop Sophani from hurting other people.
“She needs to be called out in order to first stop hurting innocent beings and also, as her own opportunity to wake up, she needs to face the storm she caused. This might be her only opportunity to finally wake up and heal.”
Read Part 1:
