BEL AIR, LOS ANGELES (KABC) — Burglars broke into an influencer’s Bel Air home early Monday and found what looked like hundred dollar bills — but turned out to be prop money used during a recent photo shoot.
The break-in was reported shortly after 1 a.m. in the 15000 block of Milldale Drive, according to the Los Angeles Police Department. The residents were not home at the time of the incident.
Officers responded to the scene and searched the house but did not find the suspects, described only as two men. News video from the scene showed police using a ladder to climb over a wall that surrounded the property, because they were initially unable to open the front gate.
What initially appeared to be hundred-dollar bills and high-end designer handbags were seen on the street. But in a statement provided to ABC7, influencer and best-selling author Amanda Frances confirmed that the money was fake.
“I’ve worked incredibly hard my entire life to build what I have and own my home in Bel Air,” the statement said. “I am disheartened and distraught that the city I have dreamed of living in-since I was a child being raised in a tiny town in Oklahoma-has turned out to be an unsafe place to raise a family.”
She noted that she founded an online education and coaching company specializing in financial empowerment courses for women in 2011, while in graduate school.
“We recently did a photoshoot for one of my digital courses designed to help women improve their relationship with money, in which my photographer suggested we use prop money for safety reasons, as opposed to retrieving and returning money to and from the bank as we’ve done in the past,” Frances said. “(Real money was used in my book cover in 2020, for example.)”
She added that the burglars ransacked her closet, damaging the home in the process, “but they dropped nearly everything, prioritizing the prop money when confronted by a neighbor’s security guard.”
“Today, Karma won,” Frances wrote.
Precisely what else may have been stolen during the burglary was unclear, and how the suspects gained entry to the home was under investigation, an LAPD spokesperson said.
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