Beware of photo con: Shooter’s cancer is exploited to solicit photos from celebs

A well-known Mitchells Plain photographer, who was diagnosed with cancer a month ago, says a scammer is using his illness to solicit photos from female models and celebs he has worked with before.

Dale Sylvester, from Mitchells Heights, has been shooting models and celebs such as Lalla Hirayama, Amanda Du Pont, Abigail Visagie, Kim Jayde, Jimmy Nevis and Candice Manuel for six years and has been in demand for his kwaai photography skills.

Sadly, Dale, 27, who is the only breadwinner in his home where he lives with his older brother and mother, was diagnosed with Lymphoma cancer on 27 January.

A week later, he landed up in hospital with breathing complications and a doctor told him that “it looks like stage 4 cancer”.

Dale has been unable to work since then but he remains positive about beating cancer.

It now appears as if the scammer is trying to cash in on his ill health. He says he found out about the scam when his friend, plus-size model and influencer Candice Manuel, alerted him to it last year and then it reared surfaced again on Monday.

He says: “This person is now using my ill health as a reason to gain these images. I don’t know what they want to do with the images.

“On Monday morning, a girl requested her original images from me because she says she received an email from me about the images and she also wished me well for my surgery, but I was confused because why would I request such a thing.

“Also, I’m not due for surgery but we then discovered it was a fake account trying to get the pics.”

Part of the email from [email protected] reads: “Hey morning Candice happy Valentine’s day to you, may I ask you a favour please, I am going in for surgery today and I’m getting ready for it now.

“I’m having kidney stones removed at 10am, don’t worry about me I’ll be fine, all I would like you to do for me is send me all your photos to me here please via link because I’d like to save it to the cloud which I didn’t do previously. I don’t know if I’ll make it after surgery… please don’t tell anyone about my surgery.”

Dale says he feels too sick to pursue the matter with police at this stage and is begging the scammer to stop their nonsense as it could damage his professional reputation.

He is also requesting anyone who’s worked with him before to ignore and block the bogus emails.

[email protected]