A sports photographer had $22,000 worth of camera equipment stolen from him while covering the Copa America soccer tournament this month.
Mohammed Alam is an experienced sports shooter who has 20 years of experience covering Super Bowls, NBA Finals, national championships, and more.
He had been tasked with following Argentina, Brazil and the United States during the tournament that took place on American soil.
Everything had been going smoothly until Brazil’s game against Colombia at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, California.
Alam tells WGN9 that after documenting the game on July 2, he went back to the photographer’s area and set his gear down as he prepared to leave.
He spotted some colleagues and went over to say hello. Ten minutes later, he came back and found his most important camera gear had vanished.
“I come back to my table and my main gear, which is a Sony 400 f/2.8 lens, and the camera body is a Sony a1 body with a grip, batteries and my card with all the images, still in the camera, I come back and that rig is gone,” Alam tells WGN9.
“The lens itself is $12,000 retail, plus tax. The camera body, $6,500 plus tax. The grip is, I think $450 plus tax, the cards alone were $300 each and then the monopod and the polarizing filter, the combination of those two are about $1,000.”
Alam criticized the organizers — a common theme during the Copa America — because security was guarding the front entrance of the photo room while the backdoor had none.
“That just didn’t make sense. So people can come and go from the backdoor, but to get in the front, you have to be cleared,” Alam adds.
Alam was not the only person to be robbed that night, two others had credit cards and cash stolen from their bags in a separate room.
Alam tells WGN9 that the police took all of the victims’ testimonies but that his loss had the biggest value.
Detectives are investigating the incident but Alam says they are still waiting on security video from the stadium.
“In 20 years, I’ve never had anything stolen from me,” says Alam who adds the Copa America organizers haven’t spoken to him about the incident.
There was still plenty of the tournament left after the theft. Sony Professional Services loaned him some gear so he could finish his job but he is now facing having to fork out for new camera kit.
“It’s, you know, money hard earned from all my work and now it’s gone,” Alam says. “And now I’m trying to sell old gear, trying to scrounge up whatever I can to reinvest in what I lost.”
CONMEBOL, the organizers of Copa America, has come under heavy criticism for the security and handling of the tournament with multiple incidents of violence not being dealt with appropriately.
“The entire organization, CONMEBOL, how they ran their security measures and whatnot, was absolutely horrid from day one,” Alam says.
“Very disorganized, very unprofessional, very humanly demeaning in how they treated us as media members.”
PetaPixel has attempted to contact Alam for more information.
Image credits: Header photo licensed via Depositphotos.