A beautiful travel influencer who claims to be the first woman on record to visit every nation on the planet is embroiled in a court battle with other female globetrotters who claim to have done so first.
Cassie De Pecol, a Los Angeles resident who charges $4,500 per Instagram post, is being sued by consumer rights organisation Travellers United, which claims she deceived her 484,000 followers and lucrative corporate sponsors about the claim.
Travellers United also accused De Pecol, 33, of posting a bogus five-star review of her own book on Amazon in which she was compared favourably to Serena Williams.
De Pecol, who is from Connecticut, made news and featured on a number of television shows in 2017 after repeatedly claiming to be the first woman to visit every nation on the planet.
She was 27 years old at the time and had been featured in the New York Times, Cosmopolitan, and Teen Vogue, as well as on ABC News and the Today Show.
However, she was quickly chastised by the online travel community, which claimed that several other women had already broken the record.
Many people cited German traveller Nina Sedano, who wrote a book in which she discussed visiting every country on the planet. In Germany, Sedano released two more books on her adventures.
Audrey Walsworth, 87, of Marceline, Missouri, also claimed to have visited.
Dorothy Pine, who died in 2011, regrets having visited each of the world’s 193 recognised nations with her husband Robert.
Pine’s accomplishment was recognised by the Colorado State Legislature in 2006, and she is largely regarded as the first woman to have accomplished the feat among travel enthusiasts.
The number of nations in the globe might change over time owing to the number of authorities that formally recognise them. There are now 195, and De Pecol claims to have visited 196.
During the backlash, De Pecol changed her claim to say she was the first woman ‘on record’ to visit every country on the planet.
But Travelers United last year launched a legal complaint against her as they pointed out she had never verified her claims with popular travel tracking groups ‘NomadMania’; and ‘Most Traveled People.’
Instead her ‘on record’ caveat appears to be in relation to two Guinness World Records (GWR) she holds.
