A wedding in Turkey was supposed to bring friends and family together. Instead, a carefully constructed deception left four people thousands of pounds out of pocket—and more than a year after Charlotte Blackwell was ordered to compensate them, they say they have received just £163 of the £13,750 awarded by the court.

Blackwell, now 32, had invented plans for a destination wedding, using forged travel documents, emails and financial records to make the scheme look genuine. She pleaded guilty to four counts of fraud at Cardiff Crown Court in March 2025 and avoided immediate imprisonment after receiving a suspended 12-month prison sentence. She had agreed to repay the compensation at £400 a month. The payments, however, have fallen dramatically short of that figure.

More Justice Left Unresolved: Blackwell’s victims aren’t the only ones left waiting for accountability after a conviction. For more, read our story on “Engaging in Lewd Behavior”: serial offender Calese Crowder back in custody following store reports.

Charlotte Blackwell fake wedding fraud: Why victims say only £163 has been repaid

The scale of the gap between what was ordered and what victims say they have actually received is striking.

Blackwell was ordered to pay £13,750 in compensation to four victims following her conviction in March 2025. They were Paula Thomas, the mother of Blackwell’s then-fiancé Daniel Thomas, and three of Thomas’ friends: Helen Morse, Sue Chapman and Tracey Roberts.

The original amounts handed over by the four victims totalled £12,682:

Victim	Amount paid into the supposed wedding arrangements	Court-ordered compensation
Paula Thomas	£3,296	£3,500
Helen Morse	£3,311	£3,500
Sue Chapman	£3,272	£3,500
Tracey Roberts	£2,803	£3,250
Total	£12,682	£13,750

The court set the compensation figures to “reflect the additional aggravation and distress” caused by Blackwell’s actions.

She agreed to repay the money at £400 a month.

Yet according to the victims, only £163 has been paid in total.

The figures had already been causing concern by October 2025. At that point, the victims had reportedly received just £25.45 each, amounting to £101.80 collectively after the first seven months of the compensation order. Since then, each has reportedly received another £15.30, bringing the combined total to £163.

The victims say no further payments have been made for four months.

When they contacted the Ministry of Justice seeking information, they said they were repeatedly given the same response:

“It’s being dealt with.”

For people who had already gone through the shock of discovering that the wedding they believed they were helping to finance never existed, the lack of clarity over repayment has become another source of frustration.

Helen Morse says the fake wedding scam changed how she trusts people

Helen Morse, who is owed almost £3,500, says the experience has affected much more than her finances.

“We’ve sort of given up because there’s nowhere for us to turn. It feels like she’s being protected rather than the victims.”

Morse works in administration at a GP surgery and had trusted Blackwell after Blackwell became engaged to Daniel Thomas. Along with the others, she believed she was helping organise and finance a genuine overseas wedding.

The group had welcomed Blackwell into their circle. But what initially appeared to be an exciting family occasion slowly became a confusing series of inconsistencies.

“When Charlotte got engaged to Paula’s son Daniel we all welcomed her, we went out with her a few times, and it turned out she was taking money from us for a wedding that didn’t exist.”

As the supposed wedding date approached, questions started emerging. One detail in particular stood out: Blackwell still had not bought her wedding dress.

“At one point we wondered why she hadn’t bought her wedding dress because it wasn’t long before the wedding date and we were saying: ‘You need to get a move on.’”

Then the wedding was cancelled.

Blackwell claimed she was ill, but Morse and her partner still wanted to travel to Turkey.

“She then cancelled the wedding saying she was ill. But I was 50 that year so my partner and I still wanted to go to Turkey.”

That decision ultimately helped expose the deception.

Morse went to TUI, the travel agency Blackwell had claimed was involved in arranging the trip, to check the holiday details. Staff attempted to locate the booking and, according to Morse, were “trying to ring a wedding coordinator who didn’t exist”.

After roughly an hour of trying to establish what had happened, the travel agency told her there was no booking.

The discovery confirmed what the victims had begun to suspect: the wedding had never existed.

For Morse, the emotional impact has lasted long after the fraud itself was uncovered.

“You trust people don’t you? This has made us really cautious now in everything we do. It’s sad but we feel like we wouldn’t trust anybody again.”

She had even taken a second job as a cleaner to help pay for the supposed holiday.

That makes the continuing compensation dispute particularly frustrating for her. Morse says victims should be receiving clearer information about what is happening with the court order.

“It’s very frustrating because, as victims, we should surely be informed of what’s going on but we get the same non-answer every time we chase the Ministry of Justice.”

More Financial Deception Uncovered: Blackwell isn’t the only case where a paper trail exposed a scheme that seemed too good to question. For more, read our story on the $65 million drug bust, as the Coast Guard seized a cocaine shipment and CBP found meth hidden in leeks.

How Charlotte Blackwell built the fake Turkey wedding scheme

The fraud took place between November 2022 and May 2024.

Blackwell and Daniel Thomas had been in a relationship for several years before becoming engaged in February 2022. Prosecutor Anisha Rai told the court that the couple had initially decided to marry abroad.

“The couple initially decided to marry abroad.”

Blackwell then presented the destination wedding as a real event and asked people close to her for money towards the arrangements.

Turkey was presented as the destination.

But behind the scenes, Blackwell was creating material intended to make the supposed wedding appear legitimate. She produced fake flight confirmations, fabricated emails and bogus financial transactions. She also created fake email accounts to make it appear that she was communicating with travel agents.

The deception began to collapse when Morse checked the booking information with TUI.

The booking reference Blackwell had provided did not correspond to the alleged wedding. Instead, it related to an entirely different holiday involving an elderly couple from the previous year.

Even after that discovery, Blackwell supplied the victims with additional documents designed to resemble genuine TUI booking confirmations.

The deception ultimately resulted in four fraud convictions.

Blackwell later admitted to police that she had invented the wedding as a way of obtaining money to deal with her online gambling debts.

More Trust Betrayed: Blackwell’s fabricated wedding isn’t the only case where a close relationship became the setup for a deception. For more, read our story on “Is He Really Dead?”: a family dinner that ended in tragedy as an Albuquerque man faces a murder charge.

The earlier children’s cancer charity fraud involving Blackwell

The fake wedding case was not Blackwell’s first fraud conviction.

Before the wedding scheme, she had been convicted over an attempt to obtain £4,000 from Morgan’s Army, a children’s cancer charity established by the family of Morgan Ridler.

Morgan died from cancer aged three. His parents established the charity to support families in south Wales affected by childhood cancer.

In that earlier case, Blackwell falsely claimed that her daughter needed expensive cancer treatment in Germany. In reality, her daughter was in remission and was not undergoing the treatment Blackwell claimed was necessary.

The money linked to that fraud was frozen and recovered after the deception was discovered, so the charity ultimately did not suffer the claimed £4,000 financial loss.

Blackwell was sentenced in August 2024 to a 10-month prison term suspended for 21 months. She was also ordered to complete 180 hours of unpaid work, 10 days of rehabilitation activity and a four-month curfew.

The case was particularly distressing for Morgan’s mother, Natalie Ridler, because Blackwell had presented herself as another parent dealing with childhood cancer.

Ridler previously said:

“This particular individual was a parent of a child in remission and it astounds me that someone who has been through it could do it to another cancer family.”

More Elaborate Cons Unraveling: Blackwell’s fake bookings and forged emails fit a familiar pattern of deception built on fabricated paperwork. For more, read our story on the Bangkok host bar shaving an 18-year-old bald over an $1,800 bill as police investigate alleged coercion.

Gambling debts and Blackwell’s financial circumstances explained in court

During the wedding fraud case, Blackwell’s barrister, Alice Sykes, told the court that her client had experienced serious difficulties after her daughter had been diagnosed with brain cancer.

“She was going through a difficult time after her daughter had been diagnosed with brain cancer.”

Sykes said Blackwell had left employment while dealing with financial consequences surrounding her daughter’s illness and later turned to gambling in an attempt to recover money.

According to Sykes, Blackwell subsequently took steps to prevent herself from gambling again.

“She gave up work to deal with the money issues that came with that and gambled to try to get money back. She then placed blocks on websites to prevent gambling and has taken steps to prevent that happening again.”

Sykes also told the court that Blackwell was capable of paying the compensation. At the time, she was working full-time as an estate agent, earning approximately £1,700 a month, while also receiving Universal Credit.

That assessment of her ability to contribute is now an important part of the victims’ frustration because the payments they say they have received have been nowhere near the £400-a-month amount Blackwell agreed to pay.

More Repeat Offenders: Blackwell’s pattern of prior convictions echoes a familiar thread in cases involving repeat deception. For more, read our story on 17-year-old Sarah Santiago facing murder charges from hundreds of miles away in the San Diego mosque shooting.

Blackwell returned to Cardiff Crown Court over unpaid community work

The compensation issue was not the only part of Blackwell’s sentence that created problems.

In October 2025, she returned to Cardiff Crown Court after failing to complete the unpaid-work requirement attached to her suspended sentence.

Blackwell had been ordered to complete 120 hours of unpaid work but had completed only just over 55 hours. She had attended 21 of 34 scheduled appointments, with her remaining absences described in court as “unacceptable absences”.

She was fined £50 and ordered to pay £150 in costs.

Judge Eugene Egan warned Blackwell during the hearing:

“Please don’t come back again Ms Blackwell. No one wants to see you fail on this order – least of all you.”

He added:

“The ball is in your court. Please make sure you complete this order, you are fully capable of doing it, I have no doubt.”

The judge also expressed his hope that Blackwell would not return to court over the matter.

More Mitigating Circumstances in Court: Personal hardship shaping a defendant’s sentencing is a recurring theme across the justice system. For more, read our story on “Safety of Students Is Top Priority”: a 77-year-old Dothan school volunteer facing a harassment charge after a fight with a child.

What happens if a compensation order is not paid in England and Wales?

The Ministry of Justice declined to provide specific information about Blackwell’s individual case because of data protection rules.

However, the department said:

“These were heartless crimes. We take the recovery and enforcement of financial penalties very seriously as we know how important it is that victims get what they are owed.”

The Ministry of Justice said enforcement mechanisms can include taking money directly from an offender’s benefits or salary. Where necessary, authorities can also seek a warrant to seize possessions.

An offender can potentially be sent to prison if they fail to pay a financial penalty and the court has no means of recovering the money.

Under the government’s general guidance on compensation orders in England and Wales, criminal courts can order offenders to compensate victims for loss or damage resulting from an offence. The amount and payment arrangements are determined while considering the offender’s financial circumstances.

Compensation payments take priority over other financial orders such as fines and the victim surcharge.

Government guidance also makes clear that compensation orders can be paid in instalments when an offender cannot afford to make a lump-sum payment.

What remains unclear is the precise enforcement action being taken against Blackwell. That information has not been publicly disclosed.

More Second Chances Tested: Blackwell isn’t the only offender whose compliance with court orders has come under close watch. For more, read our story on ‘I Made Mistakes’: Nathan Gallagher convicted in absence after failing to appear in Australian court.

Four victims are still waiting for the money they were promised

More than a year after the compensation order was made, the central issue for the four victims is no longer whether Blackwell was convicted. She was. Nor is there any uncertainty about whether the court ordered compensation. It did.

The question is whether that order will ultimately translate into money reaching the people who handed over thousands of pounds believing they were contributing to a real wedding.

The original fraud cost the four victims £12,682. The court subsequently ordered £13,750 in compensation, with the amounts reflecting their financial losses and, in part, the additional aggravation and distress caused by the deception.

But according to the victims, just £163 has reached them.

For Helen Morse, Paula Thomas, Sue Chapman and Tracey Roberts, the financial loss is only one part of the story. They say the experience damaged their trust in other people and left them feeling forgotten once the criminal proceedings were over.

A fake wedding became a real financial loss. A criminal conviction followed. A compensation order was made.

Now, more than a year later, the unresolved question is whether the promised repayment will ever catch up with the order imposed by the court.

More Questions About Enforcement: Blackwell’s case isn’t the only one raising questions about how consequences are actually carried out. For more, read our story on George Santos receiving Kalshi’s first lifetime ban after a $17,000 State of the Union betting scandal.

Disclaimer

This article is based on publicly reported court proceedings and information attributed to the victims, their legal representatives and the Ministry of Justice, together with official UK government guidance on compensation orders and enforcement. The statements attributed to individuals have been presented as reported and have not been independently rephrased as established fact. The reported £163 repayment figure reflects the latest information available at the time of publication and may change as enforcement proceedings continue.

The story has been prepared following research into the publicly reported information from the following sources: BBC News, “’Heartless’ scammer vowed to repay victims but still hasn’t a year on”; GOV.UK, “Compensation in the justice system”; Property Industry Eye, “Estate agent behind shameful fraud scheme back in court”; Property Industry Eye, “Estate agent narrowly avoids jail after ‘shameful’ scams”; and The Negotiator, “Welsh estate agent sentenced after admitting fake wedding fraud.”

Sources

• BBC News — “’Heartless’ scammer vowed to repay victims but still hasn’t a year on”
• GOV.UK — Compensation in the justice system
• Property Industry Eye — Estate agent behind shameful fraud scheme back in court
• Property Industry Eye — Estate agent narrowly avoids jail after ‘shameful’ scams
• The Negotiator — Welsh estate agent sentenced after admitting fake wedding fraud

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