17 Facts About Kendra Licari And The Michigan High School Catfishing Scandal

There are obviously major spoilers ahead for Unknown Number: The High School Catfish.

This post contains mentions of child abuse, suicide, and sexual content.

If you’ve been on Netflix recently, you’ve probably noticed there’s a new #1 movie in the US: Unknown Number: The High School Catfish. Directed by Skye Borgman, the documentary follows Michigan high school students Lauryn Licari and her former boyfriend, Owen McKenny, who become the targets of harassment from unknown numbers starting in early 2021.

The documentary takes a wild turn when it’s revealed that Lauryn’s mom, Kendra Licari, was the one behind the threatening and sexually explicit texts that Lauryn and Owen were receiving for more than a year.

So, in case you want to know even more about this case. Here are 17 facts about the Licari family, where these people are now, and more.

1.First, as seen in the Netflix documentary, Lauryn and Owen started dating before the anonymous text messages began. According to The Cut, when they began dating, Kendra always “came along, too.” Owen’s mom, Jill, explained that Kendra would talk about the kids “like they were going to be together forever.” One of Lauryn and Owen’s classmates also alleged that she saw Kendra read Lauryn’s texts to Owen, even typing out a text as Lauryn that allegedly read, “I love you.”

According to The Cut, during the COVID-19 pandemic, the Licaris and McKennys were spending even more time together as they were in each other’s “pandemic bubble.” This led to Kendra even volunteering to coach Owen’s track team in eighth grade, and was described as a “second mom” to him.

2.There were “tens of thousands of text messages” sent to Lauryn, Owen, and their friends, according to Isabella County prosecuting attorney David Barberi, who is featured in the Netflix documentary. He added to ABC News in 2022, “Whether they were messages just to her daughter or some of her daughter’s friends, the digital footprint was just insane.”

As depicted in the documentary, the FBI liason who worked on the case ultimately found that one of the numbers from which the texts were sent came from Pinger, an app used to disguise a phone number. After obtaining a search warrant, Pinger provided two IP addresses linked to Verizon that were associated with the number. A search warrant for Verizon found a list of numbers attached to the IP addresses. After Kendra Licari’s number was submitted to the FBI agent to cross-reference, they linked her number to the texts.

3.When director Skye Borgman began pre-production on the documentary and began looking through the texts Lauryn and Owen were receiving, she said there were “like 350 pages with multiple text messages on every page.” The texts ranged from the number telling Lauryn that Owen was breaking up with her to sexually explicit content, to even suggesting that Lauryn should kill herself.

Borgman told Variety that during the initial investigation, Kendra and Jill, Owen’s mom, were printing out pages of the texts and handing them over to law enforcement, which is what Borgman was going through while preparing for the documentary.

4.According to the documentary, Khloe, one of Lauryn and Owen’s classmates, was framed as the anonymous texter. According to The Cut, while meeting with law enforcement at one point, Kendra reportedly showed them screenshots of Snapchat DMs between someone and Khloe. Khloe alleged that she did not send the messages, and a fake account was set up in her name. It was reported that some of the messages from the fake account were even lifted directly from chats with Owen.

Khloe, who was a long-time friend of Owen, had reportedly screen-recorded the messages between her and Owen and sent them to Lauryn to prove they were not flirting. Then, they were suddenly showing up in these messages that Kendra was presenting as evidence to the police.

5.As mentioned in Unknown Number, Kendra had also been lying about her job when police confronted her about the texts and seized her devices. In 2019, she had reportedly been fired from her human resources job at Central Michigan University “for her performance,” and her new job in the IT department at Ferris State apparently did not come with a large pay increase, which is what she told her husband, Shawn.

In the documentary, when Shawn arrives at home to police, Kendra, and Lauryn in their kitchen, he finds out about Kendra’s involvement in the text messages as well as her losing her job nearly a year prior.

6.After Kendra’s arrest, ABC News reported that one of the “theories being floated out by prosecutors” as to why Kendra would catfish her own daughter was something like “cyber Munchausen by proxy.” ABC News described it as “[a parent] making their child feel bad, so that the child comes to them for comfort.”

According to the Cleveland Clinic, Munchausen Syndrome, now known as Factitious Disorder Imposed on Self, “happens when you falsify, create, and/or exaggerate having symptoms of an illness that you don’t really have. There isn’t a conscious goal or benefit to this behavior.”

In an interview with Netflix’s Tudum, Borgman cautioned against trying to make a medical diagnosis for why Kendra did this, saying, “To give it any sort of medical foundation is a little bit problematic. … But I think that there are elements about Munchausen by proxy — about harming someone to keep them close — that definitely existed.”

7.Kendra initially faced five charges, including stalking a minor and obstruction of justice. According to ABC News, she was released on a $5,000 bond, according to Michigan court records, following her arrest in 2022. At the time of her arrest, Kendra was facing “four felony counts,” each of which carried the possibility of “several years in prison.”

8.In March 2023, Kendra pled guilty to two counts of stalking a minor, according to the Michigan-based newspaper, The Morning Sun. Reportedly, since Kendra pled guilty, the Isabella County prosecutor “dropped three additional charges,” which were one count of obstruction and two counts of using a computer to commit a crime.

9.In April 2023, Kendra was sentenced to a minimum of 19 months and a maximum of 5 years, according to Michigan Department of Corrections records. At the time of her sentencing, the judge ruled that she was allowed to have contact with Lauryn, and according to a news report, it was “up to the family about how they want to go about moving forward.”

According to the documentary, Lauryn and Kendra were in constant communication while she was in prison, with Lauryn saying, “I liked communicating with my mom while she was in prison. I can talk to my mom on Mondays and Wednesdays.”

10.During Kendra’s sentencing, Judge Mark Duthie said, per The Morning Sun, “This is a truly horrible case. It’s the kind of case that makes me glad that at the end of my term, I’m retiring.” He added, “Sometimes, you see the worst in human nature … I can’t imagine any parent saying such horrible things to her own daughter.” Duthie also reportedly spoke about the nature of the texts, saying it was not just a single lapse in judgment, but a thought-out scheme.

Also, during sentencing, Duthie reportedly commended Kendra for pleading guilty so the victims would not have to live through a trial. He also commended Kendra on seeking counseling for mental health issues, however that did not excuse her actions.

11.Kendra’s defense attorney reportedly told Judge Duthie that Kendra had begun counseling in August 2022 “of her own accord,” according to The Morning Sun. He also revealed she had been taking parenting classes, and a “psychiatric examination determined [Kendra] suffers from mental illness.” Due to all of this, Kendra’s attorney requested Duthie delay her sentencing, however she was immediatly taken into custody.

Crying during her sentencing, Kendra told the judge and the courtroom, “I never want to hurt anyone else like I have already done. I actually look forward to continuing my work and continuing my progress. I have caused a lot of damage to my family.”

12.Following Kendra’s arrest and sentencing, Lauryn reportedly finished her sophomore year at home, but returned to Beal City High for her junior year. Meanwhile, Shawn divorced Kendra and received full custody of Lauryn.

According to Michigan’s Department of Corrections documents, Kendra still lives in Michigan with a condition of her parole being that she is not allowed to leave the state.

13.According to Michigan Department of Corrections records, she was released on parole in August 2024, after being sentenced in April 2023. She is currently still on parole with a supervision discharge date listed as February 2026.

According to the Netflix doc, since being released from prison, Kendra and Lauryn have not seen or spoken to each other, with Lauryn saying, “I’m not allowed to see my mom now that she’s out of prison. I wanna see my mom when the time is right. I think it would just be a relief to see her, but also hard.”

14.Originally, Kendra was not going to participate in the documentary. According to Borgman, most of the film had already been completed by the time Kendra agreed to be interviewed. In an interview with Netflix’s Tudum, Borgman said, “It was a long process with Kendra.”

Borgman added that what led to Kendra to agreeing to do the documentary was when she realized this allowed her to direclty speak to questions about the case. Borgman added, “She wanted to do it, I think, for her daughter.”

15.Unknown Number: The High School Catfish is set up so that the “twist” that Kendra was the one behind the messages comes in the middle of the film. Borgman said setting up the documentary that way came out of their interviews with Kendra, who was initially “nervous about going on camera,” but ultimately “ended up really loving the experience.”

In an interview with Variety, Borgman elaborated, saying, “At the end of it, [Kendra] said it was kind of fun. She laughed about things, and I think it was really an opportunity for her to think about things a little bit more in depth. Every time I would ask a question, she would really have to think about some things, and I think that was really good for her.”

16.When filming began on Unknown Number in the spring of 2023, Borgman told Netflix’s Tudum that Lauryn initially just “wanted her mom back in her life.” However, when filmmakers returned a year later, following Kendra’s release from prison, they noticed Lauryn’s “perspective had shifted.”

Borgman added that Lauryn, “wanted to approach the relationship with more caution in our second interview.”

17.And finally, in May 2025, Lauryn, Owen, Khloe, and the rest of their classmates from the documentary graduated from Beal City High. According to The Cut, Khloe signed a college volleyball deal. Meanwhile, Owen spent the rest of his high school years becoming homecoming king and even catching a touchdown in the school’s state football game. And, as the documentary states, Lauryn is planning on attending college and studying criminology.

According to the documentary, Lauryn and Owen also do not speak anymore following Kendra’s arrest and prison sentence.

Unknown Number: The High School Catfish is streaming on Netflix now.

For even more, you can read The Cut’s feature on the case, titled “Who Was Cyberbullying Kendra Licari’s Teen Daughter?”

BuzzFeed has reached out to Kendra’s attorney for comment.

Dial 988 in the United States to reach the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline. The 988 Lifeline is available 24/7/365. Your conversations are free and confidential. Other international suicide helplines can be found at befrienders.org. The Trevor Project, which provides help and suicide-prevention resources for LGBTQ youth, is 1-866-488-7386.

If you are concerned that a child is experiencing or may be in danger of abuse, you can call or text the National Child Abuse Hotline at 1-800-422-4453(4.A.CHILD); service can be provided in over 140 languages.

The National Alliance on Mental Illness helpline is 1-800-950-6264 (NAMI) and provides information and referral services; GoodTherapy.org is an association of mental health professionals from more than 25 countries who support efforts to reduce harm in therapy.

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