NEW ORLEANS (WVUE) – It’s been nearly six months since Rayyan Behi married the love of her life in New Orleans, but the newlywed has yet to see the professional photos she was promised and paid for.

Behi only has cell phone photos, videos, and selfies from her special day to look back on. Her most prized clip is a four-second video of her dancing with her brother Mohsin. It is one of the last images of her brother before he tragically died a few weeks after her wedding.

“I could care less about the money. I want the memories. That’s all that really matters to me,” Behi said.

She has been in a months-long waiting game with the photography company she hired and the freelancer photographer that was sent to take photos of her wedding, including images of Mohsin.

“We were very much alike. (Mohsin) always referred to me as his mini-me, his twin. And so after he passed and knowing I might never get these pictures, it genuinely hurts me,” Behi said.

In Spring 2023, Behi was going through the wedding planning process online while adjusting to New Orleans after moving from her home in Oklahoma. She says she used a smartphone app designed to help couples easily plan their special day with companies and freelancers in the area.

They settled on Positively Photo & Video out of Hammond due to the positive reviews, sample work, and a $200 discount that owner Arief Harlan was offering at the time.

But on November 26, the day of Behi’s wedding, it wasn’t Harlan who showed up to take pictures.

“The contract is between me and the photographer. I am under the impression that Arief is the photographer that is coming to take our pictures. So the day of the wedding, I’m getting ready and this girl named Jaselin shows up,” Behi said.

Jaselin Bonilla arrived at Behi’s wedding and reception to take photos, which the bride said was not told to her in advance.

“We hired (Bonilla) as a contract shooter to cover a wedding and she attended and shot it. However, she has not returned any of the photos that are due according to the contract she signed with us,” Harland said.

Fox 8 spoke to Harlan over the phone. He did not want to do an in-person interview with Fox 8 or share the contract that he says he signed with Bonilla before paying her to shoot Behi’s wedding.

From Bonilla’s Instagram page, her bio says she is a Houston fashion and brand photographer and her Facebook profile says she is from LaPlace.

Harlan says he found Bonilla on a freelance photography Facebook group and thought she would be a good fit to shoot Behi’s wedding. Harlan says Bonilla was supposed to send him the photos she shot, he would edit them and then Harlan would give them to Behi.

But when Behi’s brother suddenly passed away, Behi asked for her $800 wedding photos to be ready in time for her brother’s funeral.

“I texted (Harlan) and I let him know, ‘Hey my brother passed away. I would really like to see those photos of my brother.’ I even sent him photos of what he looked like,” Behi said.

Harland managed to get three unedited photos from Bonilla that had Behi, her brother, and another family member in them. Behi says the photos did not line up to what she was contractually promised and paid for.

“I was supposed to have five hours of coverage and I received three photos that looked like duplicate photos,” she said. “This doesn’t look like quality work from someone who would have gotten a thousand dollars worth for taking photos.”

Harlan says he texted Bonilla multiple times for more photos of Behi’s wedding, especially of photos with her brother, but his messages went unanswered.

“I thought it was all going to be ok but then for some reason she wasn’t going to send the rest. I’m not sure. It kind of all went downhill,” Harlan said. “She gave excuses about getting it in or traveling and stuff and all of the sudden it seems like her phone got disconnected and we haven’t been in touch since.”

Eventually, Harlan texted Bonilla, asking her for a $175 partial refund since she wasn’t following through with the photos. He also threatened to take her to small collections court if she didn’t fulfill the contract.

Ultimately, he told Behi his hands were tied after he received no responses from Bonilla.

“(Harlan) said he has been having problems getting it from Jaselin and I should reach out to her and see if I could get it from her,” Behi said.

Behi says once she had Bonilla’s full name and contact information, she went searching for her on Facebook, where she found multiple complaints from people who said Bonilla did not produce photos for them.

She questions why Harlan hired Bonilla in the first place.

“It all looked good to go but then after her being hired is when issues among other groups started arising,” Harlan said.

Even though her social media pages say Bonilla is from LaPlace and based in Houston, she is a member of several photography groups for various cities like Los Angeles, New York, New Orleans, Houston, and Hawaii.

In the group called, “Photographers & Models Wanted Hawaii,” Bonilla posted that she would be holding two days of photo shoots in Honolulu for $50 advanced payments. Those photo shoots were supposed to be just five days before Bonilla had to be in New Orleans for Behi’s wedding.

One Hawaiian model, who wants to remain anonymous, says she reached out to Bonilla about the shoots, eager about the low cost.

“Her profile basically said, ‘Oh I’m a Christian woman. I believe in helping other women, lifting other women up,’ and that made me trust her,” the model said.

The model paid Bonilla the $50 on November 14 but on November 19, the day before the Honolulu shoot, Bonilla messaged the model saying she never took a flight to Hawaii.

“It’s less than 14 hours before the shoot, she should definitely be here because she’s flying from New York, and then she tells me she got sick and wasn’t able to fly to Honolulu,” the model said.

Bonilla then said she would return to Hawaii in December if the model was still interested in a photo session. While she waited, the model asked for a refund from Bonilla but over four days, Bonilla told the model multiple times that she had issues with her bank that prevented any transactions.

The model made an anonymous post on the Facebook group saying in part, “What do I do if the photographer cancels last minute and is semi-ghosting me since I asked for my money back?”

“When I posted about her anonymously, people were like, ‘Oh this is that girl from New Orleans?’” the model said.

The model says multiple people commented and messaged her, sharing their own negative experiences with Bonilla. Eventually, Laura Dulgerian, a New York jewelry store owner, reached out to her with her issues with Bonilla.

“You win some. You lose some. I just know I’m never going to use her again,” Dulgerian said.

Dulgerian says Bonilla reached out to Humble and Spark, her store on Etsy, on July 5. She wanted to see if Dulgerian was interested in a photo shoot for some of her pieces.

The pair agreed on Bonilla’s silver package for $500, but with some modifications: only one model and 10 pieces of Dulgerian’s jewelry.

Dulgerian says she fast-tracked the jewelry to Bonilla’s Houston address overnight. She says Bonilla wanted to fly to Miami the next day and meet with a model for the photoshoot.

“(The photos) weren’t great. A lot of them weren’t edited. They weren’t my brand. I sent her my brand packet which is basically the color scheme I work with. None of them matched my brand colors,” she said.

Dulgerian says it took two months for Bonilla to send back around 60 photos from the photoshoot, but she says trying to get her jewelry back from Bonilla was the most frustrating part of the whole ordeal.

For months, Bonilla says there were issues shipping back Dulgerian’s merchandise or that she was too busy traveling to ship them in a timely manner.

“And then I did get merchandise back but I only got half of it. She didn’t send all the pieces back. Maybe total it would’ve been maybe a few hundred dollars,” Dulgerian said.

Now, almost a year after the photo shoot, Dulgerian says she has given up trying to get her missing pieces back.

“That’s long gone. That’s long gone,” she said. “If you jip everyone out of 200, 300 dollars that adds up.”

Dulgerian and others who say have had issues with Bonilla want to warn others of their experiences.

“The fact that she is doing this so much to other people that is just such a disappointment,” Dulgerian said.

Behi says mourning the loss of her brother is that much more painful knowing that she might never get her wedding photos from Bonilla.

“It just hurts. If you took the pictures and you have them, why hold them hostage? Why can’t you just hand them over to me unless you didn’t take them at all,” Behi said.

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