Complaint Review: Ryan Lee NYC - Jersey City, New Jersey

Ryan Lee Aguirre NYC will claim to be a legit agent when you are contacted through model mayhem or facebook. He does have a model or two who are signed with agencies who he claims are with him, but they never actually get any work through him. This "agent" is actually just a perverted scam artist and fails miserably at finding work for any of his models. He meets them and sexually harasses them by asking for disgusting sexual favors when they fly out to his small broom closet sized apartment in New Jersey. 

He'll tell you that he wants to make your portfolio in NYC and offer to fly you out, pay for your stay (you sleep on the couch in his tiny apartment), and comp all of your food. He tells you to pay for your own flight, taxi, and pay for all of your (and his) food which will be reimbursed to you in a few months. As a model, this can come pretty standard, so you'll believe it. Personally when I got scammed from him a year ago, I spent over $900 dollars on a flight, taxi, and food, and have still yet to be reimbursed for my expenses. He'll tell you that he sent it, but it will never come. Then he'll pretend to send it again, and none of us were surprised when it still didn't come. He'll eventually just never answer his phone for you anymore and pretend he never gets your calls. One of the things that should have been a red flag is when Ryan Aguirre told all of us not to tell his boyfriend about him reimbursing us. Ryan Aguirre said that his boyfriend would "get jealous". 

He has scammed myself along with many other models, 7 of which I have personally talked to, and many others that I've heard of. He will first contact you and tell you how great he supposedly is and everything he does in the fashion industry (which is absolutely nothing). He'll claim to work with RED agency, DNA, along with many companies. It sounds pretty legit but it's all a scam, which the other models and I later found out after we started "working" with him.

Once you get to his place, he will tell you about an "upcoming job" he will get you that pays a decent sum of money. He told me and another model that he would get us a shoot with Calvin Klein's new upcoming campaign that paid $10,000. Ryan Lee told us that he was the casting director. He stated that he would give the job to whomever wanted it the most. At first he kept it vague, but he then went into how it's all about who can "please" him the most. I declined as it just wasn't worth it to me. The other model agreed and went into his room where he did the deed. After talking with the other model later, he said it was absolutely awful, embarrassing, and just down right disgusting. But it was worth the money to him to sexually please Ryan for the job. (Later we found out the job never even existed, meaning this particular model "impressed" Ryan Lee Aguirre for no reason) Once you meet the guy, it's even more embarrassing to know that it could have been you. Not only is he an awful scammer, but is severely obese, smells awful.

Ryan will tell you he is an extremely busy man with all he does in the fashion industry. But when you use your hard earned money to fly out to his place, you realize it is the exact opposite. We stayed with him for 6 days, and his claims of always being busy could not be further from the truth. His days consist of waking up at 9am to dance flamboyantly to  music videos for a few hours. Then he'll either watch a movie or play the video game World of Warcraft for the remainder of the day while you sit around doing NOTHING productive (really successful guy!). Then he'll start to cook dinner before his boyfriend gets home from work (who actually has a job). In the 6 days we were there, we did a total of 2 hours of shooting, when we were supposed to be traveling around NYC with big companies and making new contacts to get our name out there. Instead, we sat around and did nothing. Another thing he likes to do is get on grindr (gay hookup app for iphone) and use other people's pictures so that someone will actually flirt and maybe meet up with them. It was really strange to see him crave attention acting like someone that he is not in order to get invited to parties or free drinks.

My advice to anyone thinking of "modeling" for him is to stay away from him at all costs, unless doing sexual favors for a 300lb man with bad hygiene for nothing in return is an aspiring goal of yours. This guy is bad news on all levels and unless you really want to waste nearly a $1000 of your own money to hang out with a perverted drama queen for a few days.