About

Kendra Licari, also known as Catfishing Mom or Catfish Mom, is a woman from Beal City, Michigan, who was arrested in December 2022 after the FBI investigated her for harassing her daughter, Lauryn, and her boyfriend, Owen McKenny, when she sent the two hundreds of text messages between late 2021 and early 2022, ultimately being charged with two counts of stalking a minor and two counts of communicating with another to commit a crime. Kendra Licari later appeared in the Netflix documentary Unknown Number: The High School Catfish, which was released in late August 2025. Following the catfishing documentary, Licari quickly became the subject of considerable media coverage and online discourse in late 2025, as well as numerous memes. Many of the memes featured Licari crying with tears in her eyes or looking at her phone, which were used in image macros and captions about her leaving bad reviews, among other topics related to her controversial behavior in the documentary.

Background

On December 8th, 2022, Kendra Gail Licari, 42 at the time, was arrested in Mount Pleasant, Michigan, and charged with two counts of stalking a minor and two counts of communicating with another to commit a crime. According to NBC News,^[1] she sent months of harassing text messages to two teenagers, which were her daughter, Lauryn Licari, and her boyfriend, Owen McKenny.

Per People,^[2] Lauryn Licari and Owen McKenny, were widely regarded as a close pair, often referred to as the "Golden Couple" since their years in junior high school. Their relationship became the subject of local notoriety in October 2020, when they began receiving anonymous and harassing text messages. Although the communications ceased temporarily, they resumed in 2021 again.

The messages, sometimes numbering between 40 and 50 per day, included accusations of infidelity directed at McKenny and threats aimed at Lauryn Licari. The perpetrator used an application that generated new phone numbers with each message, making it difficult to block the harassment and hindering initial efforts by law enforcement to trace the source. The harassment continued for approximately two years before the FBI intervened. In December 2022, the FBI identified the sender as Lauryn’s mother, Kendra Licari, who was subsequently arrested.

Kendra Licari has since claimed that "suppressed childhood trauma" led her to harass Lauryn and Owen McKenny. Kendra was ultimately sentenced to serve 19 months to five years in prison.

Years later, on May 11th, 2024, Lifetime adapted the story of Kendra Licari and her cyberbullying in a TV drama move, titled Mommy Meanest.

The Netflix documentary Unknown Number: The High School Catfish featuring Kendra Licari and the story of her daughter and her boyfriend was then released on August 29th, 2025. The documentary quickly garnered virality online leading into September 2025.

Online History

Following the release of Unknown Number: The High School Catfish in late August and early September 2025, Kendra Licari began trending online as people discussed her and started using clips or still images of her from the documentary in memes.

For example, on August 30th, X^[6] / Twitter user @AtticsOfUrLife made a post featuring Licari and the Unknown Number documentary, criticizing her alongside a reaction GIF of actor Dan Levy from Schitt's Creek. The tweet received over 170,000 views, 4,000 likes and 40 replies in 10 days.

The narcissism & caucasity it takes to sit dwn & attempt to gaslight the world into believing #KendraLicari she just wasn't herself when she told her own 13yo child to kill herself; among other abhorrent commands from an #UnknownNumber is some of the sickest shit ever. pic.twitter.com/jsWAt6hSQB

— 🏳️‍🌈🌹🥀🍉🫒яσsιℓүη🫒🍉🥀🌹🏳️‍🌈 (@AtticsOfUrLife) August 30, 2025

On September 2nd, 2025, TikTok^[5] user @reen_machine posted a skit about Licari, mocking her and garnering over 848,000 likes and 16,400 comments in a week.

On September 6th, Redditor Tazmerican posted a meme to the /r/memes^[3] subreddit featuring Licari and the Phillies Karen woman, receiving over 17,000 upvotes and 360 comments in three days.

On September 7th, 2025, Redditor No-Basis-144 posted a meme of Licari looking at her phone to the /r/memes^[4] subreddit, making a catfishing joke about leaving bad reviews, garnering over 9,600 upvotes and 50 comments in two days.

Various Meme Examples

Search Interest

External References