Cases of photographers being drugged and robbed have been rampant recently. Many photographers in Nairobi and the outskirts have reportedly lost expensive equipment to thugs who pose as clients.

The most common trick the thugs are using is booking the photographer’s services online and request for a home-service shoot, after which they drug them and flee with their work equipment.

June July is among the photographers robbed in duty. Narrating the ordeal that happened early this year, June said she received a message from a lady requesting for her service after seeing her good work online.

The lady went ahead to inform June she preferred an in-house photoshoot over a studio shoot, something that was not strange for June as she had previously done in-house shoots for her clients.

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Armed with equipment and ready to create memories for her new client, June boarded a cab to Nairobi’s South B Estate, where the shoot was supposed to take place.

‘’Problems arose when I asked her for directions to her home. She send me a pin that was not completely accurate and was pinning to a generalized area.

I didn’t know the area very well and thought perhaps there was a house there,’’ she said in a recent interview with Citizen Digital.

After requesting for a live location, the client recommended meeting June at the Sana Sana shopping outlet in South B.

June accompanied her client to a nearby apartment where her water was drugged and her equipment worth Sh 350,000 stolen.

‘’We were in the apartment, and she was like any African woman, so she served me some food, but I usually don’t eat in my client’s house. I told her just to give me a glass of water.

She went ahead to offer me a soda. When she poured soda into a glass, I noticed there was a fume that settled on top of the soda, which was looking very strange, and I said I’m not going to take that,’’ she said.

Based on the appearance of the house, June could tell the lady was not the typical type of her client.

She started noticing something fishy was going on because the client was never getting prepared for the shoot despite having booked her for one hour, which was already lapsing.

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The Trick

The lady told June she had ordered some flowers to be used in the shoot and requested for her company to get them.

‘’I thought she felt uncomfortable leaving me in her house, so I accompanied her. We went to a certain road, and she handed me the keys to her house. then she was like, the rider is just around the corner; let me just go and pick the flowers; I’ll be right back,’’ recalled June.

The lady never came back, and it’s at this time, June realized she was becoming tipsy. She contacted the lady, but the number was already switched off.

She went back to the apartment only to find an empty camera bag in the living room. She started looking for her equipment in the entire house only to discover it was an Airbnb.

 A CCTV footage showed a man getting inside the house immediately after June and her client left and walking away with June’s camera, two lenses, Speedlight, and an iPhone.

‘’I was able to call my friends because I was at a point where I couldn’t stand upright.  I was taken to hospital, and all the toxins flashed out,’’ she said.

The perpetrators are yet to be tracked at the time of publishing this post.