‘Do you have an appointment’: Inside a Sydney solarium’s panicked mid-raid pantomime

The operators of an illegal solarium coaxed customers out of their tanning beds and thrust tanning creams into their hands in a vain attempt to hoodwink officers raiding their establishment.

F.A Beauty, trading as The Tanned Me, was ordered to forfeit nine tanning beds worth $90,000 each and pay $35,300 in fines plus legal fees after officers from the NSW Environment Protection Agency and NSW Police raided its Bondi Junction and Fairfield solarium salons.

It has been illegal to operate commercial UV cosmetic tanning services in NSW since the state government introduced a ban on the cancer-causing practice in December 2014.

More people develop skin cancer from the so-called ‘sunbeds’ than develop lung cancer from smoking, globally.

The Tanned Me case is the first successful prosecution of a solarium business by the NSW EPA, as the watchdog targets underground operators and a cottage industry of at-home solariums that promote their businesses on their websites and social media, which is also illegal.

On August 8, 2024, an EPA officer and police officers rang the intercom at the locked door serving as the entrance to The Tanning Me’s Bondi Junction salon, according to the agreed facts of the case.

A woman’s voice answered, saying, “Hi, do you have a booking?”

When an EPA officer identified herself and told the woman they were there to conduct an inspection and that she needed to open the door, the intercom call cut off.

After seven minutes and several more attempts to use the intercom and knock on the door, a customer let the officers inside.

During those seven minutes, an employee rounded up all the customers in the tanning rooms and handed them tanning creams, telling them they were there to buy the products, according to the agreed facts.

There were four UV tanning beds or upright booths, all switched off. But when officers put their hands on the units, they were still warm, according to court documents.

Each tanning unit was capable of admitting UV radiation in wavelengths of 100 to 200 nanometres, for the purpose of tanning human skin.

EPA officers had also inspected The Tanning Me’s Fairfield premises in November 2023. They found five UV beds or upright booths, tanning goggles, tanning lamps, a price list for tanning minutes, tanning accelerator creams, melatonin injections, $615 in cash and an envelope labelled “keys to the tanning rooms”.

The officers found more than $800 in cash across both premises and evidence of client bookings made through private online messaging platforms.

“This case is the culmination of a long and detailed inv