People have been talking about the Asplundh family because of Katherine Asplundh's controversial Instagram exchange in which she tried to buy someone's Instagram handle. But it has now been revealed that Katherine's Instagram scandal is not the Asplundh family's first scandal.
Katherine, who was previously Katherine Driscoll, recently married into the billionaire family that owns Asplundh Tree Expert Co., which is the 109th largest private company in the United States, reports Forbes. Katherine married Cabot Asplundh, 27, in April, the New York Post reported.
Cabot is a member of the family that owns Asplundh Tree Experts. In 2017, the company had to pay $95 million after pleading guilty to knowingly hiring undocumented immigrants, the New York Post and the Daily Mail reported.
A 2017 press release from US Immigration and Customs Enforcement said the amount that the company was fined was the "largest civil settlement agreement ever levied by ICE."
The press release said the company hired people who were not eligible to work in the United States and "the highest levels of Asplundh management remained willfully blind."
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People who were ineligible to work in the US were hired by the company from 2010 to 2014, according to the 2017 release.
The release also noted that the company employed people with "identification documents it knew to be false and fraudulent."
So why is everyone talking about a 2017 report about a vegetation management company now? It all started with Katherine arguing with another person named Katherine Asplundh on Instagram.
Because Katherine recently got married and changed her name to Katherine Asplundh, she wanted to change her Instagram handle to reflect her name change.
Unfortunately for her, the handle @katherineasplundh was already being used by someone else — so she decided to message that person and ask if she could "purchase" her username (Katherine's Instagram, which has since been deleted, was @katherinedrisc).
The person using the @katherineasplundh handle took to Reddit to share screenshots of her conversation with Katherine.
"I use this account to post and archive photos I don’t want to post on my main account," the Katherine behind @katherineasplundh explained on Reddit. "I thought this was a scam at first. I would have given her my username for free but her attitude threw me off."
The screenshots show Katherine asking the Instagram user if she can purchase her Instagram handle because she "just got married and this is [her] new name."
"Congrats," the Instagram user responded. "That's my name too." She also explained that a Google search revealed that selling her Instagram handle could result in getting banned from Instagram, which was not a risk that she wanted to take.
However, Katherine did not seem to accept this reason and continued to try to persuade the Instagram user to sell her username. She said she "purchased [her] username in the past actually," so it's "not true" that selling it would result in getting banned.
She also pointed out that the Instagram user did not seem to be very active on Instagram and had also changed her username before. "Is there anyway I can get you to change your username one more time?" she pressed.
She also noted that it was "so weird" because she "didn't know there was another [Asplundh] family out there. There no katherine asplundh in our family."
"This is my finsta I use it for private stories," the Instagram user responded. "I don't want to get banned. Sorry!"
But Katherine doubled down. "I actually don't believe that your name is Katherine Asplundh," she wrote. "Who would make their finsta their actual name?" She told the Instagram user that she reported her, then accused her of "pretending to be someone you're not."
Katherine continued to send messages to the Instagram user in attempt to "prove" that she was deserving of the Instagram handle. "The family I just married into is the only asplundh family in the US," she wrote.
"I'm not American," the Instagram user responded.
"Do you have proof that this is your name?" Katherine continued. "Would love to see that."
