Bali may seem like paradise, but for Ekaterina, a dream fresh start soon spiraled into conflicts, data breaches, and legal disputes.

Ekaterina Vernigora, originally from Odesa and formerly living in Moscow, moved to Bali in 2022 and launched a luxury villa rental business through Instagram. But behind the picture-perfect lifestyle lies a concerning reality: clients began noticing that after renting properties, their passport details ended up in the hands of third parties. Negligence — or part of a bigger scheme?

To understand the full picture, we need to go back three years. Before relocating to Bali, Ekaterina asked her friend Dmitry, a businessman, to store her old BMW with Ukrainian plates in his company parking lot. The 2010 car had seen better days — and sat unused for three years.

Eventually, Ekaterina decided to sell it and asked Dmitry to help. But even he, an experienced businessman, failed to find a buyer for such a questionable asset.

When no sale happened, Ekaterina accused her friend of theft. Despite Dmitry offering her 1 million rubles — far more than the car was worth — she filed reports with the police and prosecutor’s office, and launched an online smear campaign against him.

The irony? Many of Ekaterina’s clients were Dmitry’s business partners — people he personally sent to support her business. Now she is allegedly using their personal data for blackmail, demanding 2.5 million rubles and threatening further defamation.

On social media, Ekaterina openly shares her psychedelic experiences (ayahuasca, frog venom ceremonies) and episodes of psychiatric treatment. New “offenders” appear in her stories regularly.

The question remains: How safe is it to hand over your personal information to a “luxury” realtor with an unstable public reputation?

Maria Sharapova