Planning a wedding takes a lot of hard work and dedication. Finding a good vendor to provide all the services you need requires you to do lots of research, and even then you sometimes end up getting someone who is terrible.

That is what happened to the many couples from this story who hired a videographer to document their weddings only to get completely scammed.

He recorded the weddings, or so he claims, but he never sent them the complete footage. Instead, he keeps making up excuses and even says that he is going to go become a rap star and then will hire someone to edit their videos.

At the end of the day, this guy has ripped off over a dozen couples who just desperately want the videos from their weddings. Sadly, it seems that they will be left with nothing, not even a refund. Keep reading to see how this happened.

Videographer steals $30k from 14 couples and runs away to become a rapper

So, my husband and I are one of (so far) FOURTEEN different couples that have been scammed by an Arizona videographer over the last 2 years.

Our local ABC station did a story about our group of couples who’ve been waiting months for their wedding videos and I wanted to share just the tip of the iceberg of the messy, infuriating backstory that they didn’t include.

The happiest day of our lives has turned into an absolute nightmare filled with frustration, tears, and anger. Collectively, he has taken around $30,000 (and counting) from everyone who trusted him.

Buckle up.

Everything seemed legitimate at first.

The playbook was essentially the same for all of us: we saw great reviews and a solid portfolio online, signed contracts, and paid deposits.

He seemed incredibly attentive, friendly, and professional- right up until the day after the wedding.

That’s when everything fell apart.

First came the silence. Weeks turned into months. When he did pop back up, it was always some wild sob story that entirely contradicted the one he told us prior.

Does he expect these people to feel bad for him?

Suddenly he’s so broke he only has $1 to his name and needs to file bankruptcy, he’s homeless, he’s sick, starving, recovering from a breakup, dealing with a parental divorce, his car got totaled, he didn’t have access to his phone number, you name it.

If we all got paid $5 every time he’s gave us one of these insane sob stories, we’d probably have enough to recoup the money he’s stolen from us.

It is natural to feel bad for someone when they are going through something hard. But that clearly isn’t what is happening.

And of course, we all felt bad for at least a little while, because who doesn’t have a heart?

But then we’d see him on social media literally living a different life: showing off in fancy music studios, posing with luxury cars, flexing with friends, searching for new clients, and even uploading a video where he and his buddies were JUMPING someone in front of their studio (???).

Meanwhile, he blocked most of us on Instagram so we couldn’t see his “I’m him” egotistical social media posts while he still messaged us about how “hard things have been for him lately.”

What was this guy doing?

Some of us have still never received a single frame of footage. Others eventually received incomplete raw footage 6 months-1 year after their weddings, but the quality is subpar to say the least.

The lion’s share of footage is a lot of 1-3 second unusable clips, the footage is shaky, some clips are missing audio entirely, he’s recording his feet while parent dances are happening, and, there are actual moments where you can hear him talking over key moments by promoting his own social media to guests.

I genuinely wish I was kidding.

They paid him for the video, but they have gotten nothing.

It’s now been almost 2 years for some of us.

Anniversaries have come and gone, and NONE of us have our finished videos. None.

For the record, the final edited film was the main point of most of us hiring him.

They are just getting the run around.

As a group, we have tried literally everything to either get our footage or money back:

• Following the ADR process in our contracts (he made himself unreachable)
• Sending demand letters through lawyers (ignored- surprise surprise)
• Contacting the state Attorney General’s office (every case was closed because he wouldn’t respond)
• Hiring multiple skip tracers to have him served (they couldn’t find him???)

What’s he been up to recently? Instead of providing priceless wedding footage to the countless clients he has unfulfilled contracts with?

He is running quite a scam here.

Nothing much, just trying to run away from everything he’s done and rebrand by starting a new studio venture under a different name.

Also, he’s trying to start a new music “career” as a rapper (lol).

He even told one of the women that she wouldn’t see an edited film until he made his big break in music so he had enough money to pay an editor to do it for him.

How can someone do this to people?

Since the stories were released, despite his “I’m a good guy and want to handle this with dignity, this weighs soooo heavy on my heart ):” act for the reporter, it’s been close to radio silence from him for all of us still.

He’s spent more time doing damage control for his reputation and blocking people for calling him what he is instead of working on getting all of us our footage and films.

In the last week or two, we’ve also found out that he’s deactivated all of his social media pages and made himself even more unreachable than he already was. Welp.

It is hard to believe how low some people will sink.

It’s both heartbreaking and ridiculous that such sensitive memories are being held hostage by some wannabe Soundcloud rapper who would rather chase clout than do his job.

We’re all still trying to get our footage and films, so it’s an ongoing situation.

At the very least the guy should send them the raw footage that he has (if he still has any). What is the point of not sending that along? That way they could edit it themselves or even hire a legitimate videographer to do it for them.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about an IT department who keeps receiving tickets for a company that was previously spun off.

Read on to see what the people in the comments on Reddit have to say about this story.

If he has the raw footage, he should send it over.

At least this would be funny.

This isn’t a bad idea at all.

Here is someone else who got ripped off by a videographer.

This person says the guy never actually took the video.

Scammers like this are the absolute scum of the Earth. They don’t just steal money from people, they take away the videos and pictures that they were promised of one of the most important days of their lives. How can anyone be so awful as to do something like this?

This guy is the lowest of the low and deserves to rot in jail. These people trusted him with their wedding and he betrayed them in every way.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a customer complaint that led to them losing their VIP status.