Whatever Happened To Diana Tamayo From The Bling Ring?
In 2008 and 2009, a group of brazen, young burglars targeted the homes of celebrities and absconded with millions of dollars worth of clothing and jewelry. In a Vanity Fair feature, writer Nancy Jo Sales noted that the "Bling Ring" was one of the most popular sobriquets bestowed on the criminals by the media.
The stars they robbed included Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan, and Orlando Bloom, and one of the Bling Ring's members was a minor celebrity in her own right: Alexis Haines (née Neiers), star of the short-lived E! reality series "Pretty Wild." While this gained her more notoriety than some of her fellow thieves, another member of the group, Nick Prugo, told police that their former high school classmate Rachel Lee was the ringleader. The other Bling Ringers were Diana Tamayo, Courtney Ames, Roy Lopez Jr., and Johnny Ajar.
Their crime spree eventually came to an end after a security camera recorded them inside Lohan's home, and Lee ended up doing the most time out of everyone in the group. Per People, she was sentenced to four years in state prison but was a free woman after 16 months. Prugo and Haines later decided to revisit their criminal past for the Netflix docuseries "The Real Bling Ring: Hollywood Heist." However, other Bling Ring members opted to shun the spotlight after their 15 minutes of infamy were up. They include Tamayo, who turned her life around by pursuing a career helping others.
Diana Tamayo's was afraid she'd get deported
According to Vanity Fair, Diana Tamayo attended the same Agoura Hills high school as Nick Prugo, Rachel Lee, and Alexis Haines (née Neiers). She was class president, but some of her classmates said that she frequently fought with other students, The New York Times reported. Prugo's attorney claimed that Tamayo was so diminutive in stature that she was able to use a doggie door to gain entry to one of the homes the Bling Ring robbed.
In 2012, Tamayo was charged with burglary for her involvement in the heist of Lindsay Lohan's home, per the Los Angeles Times. Because she was an undocumented immigrant, she reportedly got emotional in court, fearing that she would be deported due to her involvement with the Bling Ring. However, she just ended up doing two months of community service and being placed on probation for three years.
When the Daily Beast reached out to Tamayo in 2013, the outlet received a text back that read, "Hi, I have chosen not to talk to any media because I want that to be in my past. But I will say that my life has changed. I've found God and starting to get my career with fitness and nutrition going. Thank you, have a beautiful day." An insider later told Us Weekly that Tamayo had become a personal trainer and gotten married.
No character in The Bling Ring movie was based on Diana Tamayo
In 2013, a sensationalized film inspired by the crimes of Alexis Haines (née Neiers) and her peers hit theaters. Sofia Coppola directed "The Bling Ring," and Emma Watson played a character named Nicki, who was based on Haines. But, while Nicki committed multiple Hollywood heists, Haines was only involved in one. "It's not really at all accurate to what happened," Haines told "Today." Another way the film wasn't true to life was its omission of a character based on Diana Tamayo.
Jezebel accused Coppola of whitewashing the movie and argued that including a character based on Tamayo would have made it more interesting because, unlike the other members of the Bling Ring, she did not come from a privileged background — per The New York Times, she lived in a small apartment outside of Calabasas. Then there was the real-life threat of deportation she faced. According to the Journal Star, Tamayo's attorney also accused law enforcement officials of telling Tamayo that her family could be deported to coerce a confession from her. However, a judge sided with the police when they repudiated this claim.
To some, casting a Latinx actor in the film could have reflected badly on the undocumented community, Colorlines noted. But Marco Galaviz, an NYU film student and former undocumented immigrant, argued, "It is important to show these roles, to be able to show the complexity of undocumented people that are living in the U.S."