A FIFTH woman has come forward claiming that she was tricked by a bogus studio photographer who used fake Facebook accounts to dupe aspiring models to submit nude photos in exchange for a high fee that he never paid.
Professional model and actress Violeta Lorens raised the alarm earlier in the week when she posted a warning on her profile page that a man, claiming to be a photographer, had approached young women and offered them €10,000 for their nude photos.
“I posted that message after I was contacted by around 25 women who wanted to know whether that man was really a photographer,” Lorens told the Cyprus Mail. She said that she reported the case to the police and that within a week a fifth woman also filed a complaint.
Lorens said that the alleged photographer had created a fake Facebook account using her name and photographs, and that he used that profile to convince other unsuspecting women to pose for him naked or even agree to participate in an erotic video.
“He was offering from €2,000 for nude photos to €50,000 for a video and was sending them bogus receipts of the Limassol Coop bank, with the sum they had agreed,” she said.
She added that around half of them told her they fell for the trick, while at least three had agreed to shooting a video. The victims are from all districts, Lorens said.
“He had posted on my fake Facebook profile a message that I supposedly sent him saying that I had spent the €4,500 he had sent me and that I was waiting for the remaining €6,000 we had agreed to,” she said.
Lorens said that the bogus photographer, in order to convince women to pose naked for him, was sending them photos of friends or of other women who had allegedly agreed to pose. He also sent Loren photos of her own friends, she said, to convince her to pose nude as well.
“When they were asking for their money, he would tell them ‘as if I was going to give you whores any money’ and blocked them,” Lorens said.
She said that the man, who used to communicate with his victims through Facebook, Skype and by phone, is between 30 and 35, from Greece, and was staying in Cyprus. “He was saying he was living in Larnaca, that he was a photographer and a manager in a shipping company. Lately he was saying he had moved to Dubai,” Lorens said.
After Lorens and four others so far reported the case to the police this week, and after telling her story on a TV chat show, the con artist, she said, deactivated his Facebook account and the phone number he was using. He is also certain he will not get caught.
“A few days ago he spoke to one of the girls through Skype and told her that he was not afraid of the police and that they would not find him,” Lorens said.
She said that the reason she went public with this story was to encourage the victims to report to the police.
On Friday, she said, she had escorted a woman that was tricked to the Paphos CID to report.
