Kidnapped to be sold as 'sex slave': Chloe Ayling narrates how she escaped her captors

A 20-year-old London-based model, Chloe Ayling, was kidnapped from France under the pretence of a photo shoot. She was drugged and shoved into a suitcase before her kidnappers revealed their true intentions. A Docudrama on the kidnapping story was released in August 2017. She became well known in London, and her story is being adopted in a documentary on the BBC, Chloe Ayling: My Unbelievable Kidnapping, which has been airing since August 4, 2025.

In April 2017, Chloe, who was thought to be 19 at the time, went to Paris, France, for a photoshoot booked by her former agent, Phil Green. However, she soon found out that the job was a setup, as she arrived at the studio, two masked men drugged her with Ketamine.

Luckasz Herba, her kidnapper who had posed as a photographer, and his brother Michael Herba had said that they had been recruited by an international crime gang, ‘Black Death’, to kidnap her. If she does not pay the ransom of €300,000, she will be auctioned off as a Sex Slave on the Dark Web.

Chloe Ayling said she had ‘accepted that she was going to die’ following spending six days against her will. She then noticed that Luckasz had started to take a liking to her. Chloe convinced Luckasz that she would date him if he let her go. Chloe said that this softened her captors towards her, and Luckasz allowed her to sleep in his bed. Earlier, she had to sleep on the floor of a farmhouse. Luckasz then gave her a pizza, took her shopping to replace her missing shoes, before driving Chloe to the British consulate in Milan six days after her abduction.

"Even though I was out, I didn’t feel safe," said Chloe. As she had to put a stop to any investigation into her disappearance and stump up the hefty amount of cash for the ransom herself.

However, people did not believe her story and accused her of staging her kidnapping. This was fuelled by the CCTV footage, which captured her holding Lukasz's hand while they shopped for shoes. Authorities had insisted that she was merely playing along for her safety. Later, her kidnappers, Lukas and his brother Michael, were arrested and sentenced to 16 years and nine months in prison.