Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast - This Model Faked Her Own Kidnapping - The Chloe Ayling story

Episode Date: July 6, 2025

20-year-old British model Chloe Ayling traveled to Milan for what she believed was a legitimate photoshoot, only to be shoved into a duffle bag, and transported 120 miles to a secluded farmhouse near Turin Italy. Her abductor, Lukasz Herba—claiming to work for a fictitious dark web syndicate called "Black Death"—threatened to auction her as a slave unless a ransom was paid

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After three months, plan auto renews and 1299 a month, terms apply. Did this woman fake her own kidnapping just to jumpstart her modeling career? Now the woman's name is Chloe and Chloe's 20 years old living in London and Chloe loves attention. Like she's very fame hungry, she'll take attention any way she can get it. And Chloe's also a model and she's doing pretty well at that. She's got an agent and she's like booking gigs and stuff. But one day in 2017 she gets an offer to do a shoot in Milan, Italy. And this is great for her. I mean, she'll make some extra money, she'll get some exposure,

and she'll get to travel and see Italy. And so Chloe flies from England all the way down to Italy. And there she takes a taxi to the location, which ends up being an old abandoned warehouse. Which an abandoned warehouse immediately sounds sketchy, but a lot of modeling shoots happen in these kind of places because sometimes they just want that aesthetic. So Chloe thinks, all right, whatever, and she heads in. Once she gets into the building, suddenly, boom, a man grabs her from behind and another man sticks her with a needle full of ketamine. And pretty quickly, Chloe passes out. Then the two-man handcuff her, put her in a duffel bag, and they throw her in the trunk of a car.

And as she fades in and out of consciousness, the kidnappers drive from Milan about 130 miles over to the city of Turin. And there they end up at a little farmhouse away from the city. Once inside, she finally gets to meet her two kidnappers. This guy, Lucas, and his brother, this guy, Michael. So Lucas and Michael, they handcuff her to address her so that she can't run away, and they just leave her there while she just cries, I guess. Then about a day later, Lucas comes to talk to her, and he explains to her that he is part of this dangerous Romanian crime gang

called the Black Death Group, which Black Death Group immediately sounds made up. But he tells her not to try and escape because the whole farmhouse outside is surrounded by Black Death Group foot soldiers. He then explains that Black Death Group is planning on selling her as a sex slave to some guys in the Middle East and that once these Middle Eastern guys are bored with her, that they're going to probably feed her to tigers. Like what? And at some point, Lucas takes this picture of her. And he sends it in an email to Chloe's agent. And in this email, he says, we, the Black Death Group, have kidnapped Chloe.

And if you don't pay us, 300,000 euros ransom, we're going to sell her on the dark web. And over the course of the week, Chloe sleeps next to Lucas in his bed. I guess she's just happy to sleep somewhere that isn't the floor. But during that week, Lucas really starts to open up to her. He tells her about being part of the Black Death Group, but he says that he doesn't really want to be part of the organization anymore. he had been thinking about leaving, but that he really wants to rescue her and that he's putting himself at a lot of risk to do so. And so he's like, you know, you and I, we're basically on the same side. And I guess Chloe, like, believes him because she begs him to let her go. I mean, she has a

two-year-old son at home, she says. And at the very least, she wants him to let her see a picture of her son. And Lucas is like, oh, snap, you have a kid? He then tells her that the Black Death Group has certain rules they like to follow, like they don't traffic women who are young mothers. Which is weird that this trafficking group has a strict code of ethics. Regardless, because she's a young mother, Lucas says that the Black Death Group has agreed to let her go. Just like that, they went through all this trouble of luring her in and kidnapping her, but she has a kid, so I guess their plans are totally foiled. Now, if what this kidnapper is doing isn't making sense to you, it's because,

Because the guy doesn't make sense. This kidnapper is full of shit. He's not a criminal mastermind. He's just a freaking liar. There is no Romanian crime gang, the Black Death Group. There are no foot soldiers outside the farmhouse. And he certainly isn't about to turn on the Black Death Group in order to rescue Chloe. He and his brother Michael pulled off this kidnapping by themselves in order to get some ransom money.

But it also sounds like somewhere along the way, Lucas decides to try and smash with Chloe by telling her, no, no, but I'm really here to rescue you. But whatever, Chloe doesn't know any better. She's scared for her life, so she believes everything he's telling her. Anyway, after six days in captivity, Lucas decides he's going to let her go. And he comes up with a plan to exonerate himself as well and make himself look like a hero. His idea is to drive Chloe to the nearby British consulate. Then they will both just walk in.

And Chloe can lie to them and say that he's her friend and that she called him to come rescue her. And she'll get to go back home and Lucas won't get in trouble with the police and he'll look like a hero. And so Chloe agrees to this plan. And he drives her to the nearby British consulate, the two walk into the building

And Chloe tells the people working there that she was kidnapped for six days and had just been released. And then she lies and says that she got someone's phone and called her friend Lucas there to come save her. And that's what he did. And I'm sure the consulate's like, holy shit, what the... And so they get the police involved. And pretty quickly, Chloe is telling this whole story to the police that she was kidnapped, but that Lucas came to rescue her. But see, police, they're skeptical that Lucas actually came to rescue her. She claims that she called him to come help her.

So the police are like, oh yeah, well, what's Lucas's number? And Chloe's like, uh, because, you know, she doesn't know it. And so police are like, all right, tell us what really happened. So then Chloe tells them what really happened, that she went to Milan for a modeling shoot and that when she showed up, Lucas himself and his brother Michael actually kidnapped her. And so police investigate all this. And they immediately find that the Black Death Group doesn't exist.

like it's completely made up, and that Lucas is just a shady dude. However, they're also skeptical of Chloe's story, because they have evidence that while Chloe was being held captive, Lucas took her shoe shopping, and they were holding hands in the store. Lucas also took her to breakfast at a cafe at one point, and she didn't, like, try to run away or anything. And why was she so prepared to lie for the guy, her own kidnapper? Was it all a hoax?

I mean, she really loves attention. We've already established that. But was she in on it? Hoping to get some fame from it so that she can jumpstart her modeling career? And when police ask Chloe all this, she basically claims that she was just being nice to Lucas because she believed that the Black Death Group were all around watching and that Lucas was actually trying to help her get away from them.

Anyway, and so, Kaboom, this story blows up and the media's all over it. Like, wow, a model gets kidnapped. However, a lot of them are doubting Chloe's version of events. Many accused her of making the whole story up, an elaborate publicity stunt for fame and fortune. Also, bam, police arrest Lucas. Here's his mugshot. And Lucas tells police a completely different story. He says that he and Chloe actually orchestrated the whole kidnapping together to give her more fame and jumpstart her modeling career.

However, when police investigate and look into everything, they find no evidence that he and Chloe dreamed up this whole scheme together, but they do find mountains of evidence that Lucas and Michael acted on their own accord. And so, bam, they eventually arrest Michael too. Here's a picture of him. Ugh. And so Lucas is found guilty of kidnapping and extortion, and he gets 16 years in prison,

while Michael is also sentenced to 16 years in prison.