TLDR: Seattle wedding photographer “Cyrus The Prodigy” is an (at least) twice documented scammer that will take advantage of both clients and other photographers in order to get an easy buck.
I’m hoping to find other stories about this individual. There’s no way there isn’t more people he has fucked over. This is an ongoing situation that started in July of 2023. We’ve been to court, I have a police report filed with SPD (2025-923053).
I am a low-key, novice-intermediate event photographer on the side, and back in July of 2023 I posted an ad on Craigslist advertising as much.
I get an email from a guy named Peter. Peter really needs a photographer for a small wedding THIS WEEKEND. A couple days away. I assume he’s a part of the wedding party, or the groom or something. Alright Peter, I’m your guy.
Texting Peter later after the brief intro call, turns out he IS the photographer of this event, who is sick (along with his second shooter/videographer) and looking for somebody to photograph the event in his stead. At this point, his name has now changed to Cyrus. Weird! Oh well. I’m going to make $400 for a couple hours of shoot time. I go and shoot the event, it all goes great. Clients are happy with my presence and compliment the final product (yes, I very stupidly delivered the photos without first being paid). However, according to Cyrus several days later (was supposed to get paid the day of or day after), the “clients were not happy with my work” and that they were not delivered all that they signed up for (video, 2 photographers).They renegotiate a price with Cyrus, and Cyrus then decided that I will not be getting the agreed upon $400. After weeks of back and forth, ignored texts and emails, Cyrus says he will pay me a lower amount. I do not budge on 400. He never paid. So I filed a small claims case. We met at court, friendly enough. We went straight to remediation and came up with an agreement. Monthly payments from him to me until the full amount was paid. shortly after my second court appearance for this case 1 whole year later (to hopefully finally get paid), I came across another victim of Cyrus on a Yelp review, where it looks like he pulled the old “cancel my non-refundable contract the day before the job.” You can see this here: https://www.yelp.com/biz/cyrus-the-prodigy-seattle Another thing found in my research is a listing on Stop Stealing Photos.com, showing how his entire portfolio was full of stolen and stock imagery: https://stopstealingphotos.com/cyrus-the-prodigy-in-seattle-wa/ Please, be wary of this person. He is shirking accountability in my case, ignoring court orders and continues to scam.
If you happen to have worked with this person in the past, have hired him or seen him around at all, please share your story.
If you have any ideas on better places to share this, please let me know.
