A 23-year-old man and a 23-year-old woman from Los Angeles are facing robbery and attempted carjacking charges in Alameda County after authorities say they lured a San Leandro man into a fake sex date, then robbed him at gunpoint outside an Estabrook Circle apartment complex on February 9. Nafis Sami and Madison Droney have not yet appeared in Alameda County court, and both remain innocent until proven guilty.
According to court records cited by The Mercury News, the San Leandro victim was directed to the apartment complex on Estabrook Circle after arranging what he believed was a sex-for-money encounter. Authorities said he paid a woman $200 through a Cash App account listed under the name “trophy droney” before the situation turned violent. A robber then took the victim's wallet and his gun, which authorities said was worth about $2,000, before the victim fled and later returned to find his vehicle had been rummaged through.
Authorities said the suspects had used a parking spot belonging to a suspected sex worker who lived on Estabrook Circle during the February 9 robbery. Police said Droney had been in contact with that same woman, whose vehicle was later noted by authorities as present at a separate, unrelated shooting in April on the same street.
A Familiar Scene on Estabrook Circle
That April incident, which Hoodline previously reported, involved a man shot in the leg after confronting people he believed had stolen his car. Authorities described the April shooting as occurring under similar circumstances at the same complex, though the case is separate from the charges against Sami and Droney. The overlap in vehicles tied to the property has raised questions among investigators about broader activity at the location, though the dossier of public records reviewed for this story does not resolve what, if any, connection exists beyond the vehicle's presence at both scenes.
San Leandro police noticed similarities between the February robbery and a separate case out of Los Angeles, where authorities say the same pair had been identified as suspects in a motel robbery. In that earlier Los Angeles incident, a victim who had arranged a sex-for-money date was allegedly led to the bathroom by an armed man who held a gun to his victim's mouth before the robbery. Those similarities, according to court records, contributed to the charges eventually filed in the East Bay. Sami and Droney were arrested in Los Angeles on February 16, about one week after the San Leandro robbery, authorities said.
Digital Trail Through Cash App
The $200 Cash App payment sent to the account “trophy droney” became a key piece of digital evidence connecting the victim to the suspects. Peer-to-peer payment platforms like Cash App preserve detailed transaction logs, account metadata, IP addresses, and device locations, which law enforcement routinely obtains through search warrants served to parent company Block, Inc., which processes such warrants through a dedicated portal, according to Penlink. That kind of digital paper trail has become an increasingly common anchor in East Bay robbery investigations involving online meetups.
In July, Hoodline reported on a similar case in Oakland in which female suspects allegedly used a knife to force a victim to send $1,000 through a payment app before stealing his car, illustrating a pattern of setup robberies across Alameda County that pair online arrangements with digital money transfers and car theft.
Charges and What Comes Next
Sami and Droney face robbery and attempted carjacking charges in Alameda County, in addition to charges stemming from the alleged motel robbery in Los Angeles. Under California Penal Code 211, robbery is classified as a violent felony carrying up to five years in state prison, with sentencing enhancements adding up to 10 years if a firearm was used, according to Eisner Gorin LLP. Attempted carjacking under Penal Code 215 is punishable by three, five, or nine years in state prison, and carjacking convictions require defendants to serve at least 85 percent of their sentence before becoming eligible for parole.
Both suspects are currently housed in Los Angeles County Jail and have not yet come to the Bay Area for arraignment in the Alameda County robbery case. Under California criminal procedure, defendants held in one county typically must resolve local detention holds before being transferred to another county for arraignment, according to Bulldog Law. That means the timeline for when Sami and Droney will face the Alameda County charges in person remains an open question. Once transferred, the case would fall under the Alameda County District Attorney's Office, with felony proceedings handled at courthouses in Oakland or Dublin.
The case comes amid a broader statewide decline in robbery rates, with the Public Policy Institute of California reporting a 7.5 percent drop in California's overall robbery rate in 2024, even as violent crime overall remained higher than pre-2019 levels. Locally, San Leandro recorded 10 robberies in February and 12 in April, part of 58 total robberies reported in the city during the first half of the year, according to city crime statistics.
