Copyright walesonline
The victims of a repeat fraudster say they have received just £100 of the £13,750 she was ordered to pay them seven months ago. Charlotte Blackwell, from Bridgend , narrowly avoided prison after she defrauded her then-fiancé's mother and family friends – and they have now accused her of flouting the judge's orders. The 31-year-old – who was previously spared jail for fraud against a children's cancer charity – invented fake wedding plans in a scheme to pay off her gambling debts. Between 2022 and 2024 she took £12,682 from members of the supposed wedding party under the pretence it was for a planned ceremony in Turkey. The four victims were her then-fiancé's mother Paula Thomas, who paid £3,296, and three of Ms Thomas' friends – Helen Morse, who paid £3,311, Sue Chapman, who paid £3,272, and Tracey Roberts, who paid £2,803. In March, Blackwell was handed a suspended jail term, unpaid work, and an order to pay £3,500 in compensation to each of Ms Thomas, Ms Chapman and Ms Morse, and £3,250 to Ms Roberts, to "reflect the additional aggravation and distress" she caused them. Sobbing with apparent relief Blackwell promised the judge she would pay at a rate of £400 a month. But the victims say they have since received just £25.45 each – from a single payment made in early July. Blackwell was back in Cardiff Crown Court last week, landing financial penalties of £200 after failing to turn up for many of her unpaid work appointments. For her victims, it added further insult as they waited for their overdue compensation. Ms Morse, who works at a GP surgery, told WalesOnline: "I was absolutely shocked to see she'd been in court again. You think, 'How much can she do before she is properly penalised?' "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. "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.'" "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." Ms Morse went into the travel agency Blackwell had supposedly used, TUI, and asked staff for the details of her holiday. "The girls in TUI were fantastic," said Ms Morse. "They were trying to ring a wedding coordinator who didn't exist. They spent an hour trying to help me but eventually they came back and said, 'Nothing's been booked.' "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." Last week Ms Morse called the Ministry of Justice for an update on the compensation. She says they told her they would "look into the income" of Blackwell and that "these things can take time". Ms Morse, an admin worker at a GP surgery, took a second job as a cleaner to help pay for the "holiday" concocted by Blackwell. "It's quite frustrating for us all, how she seems to be getting away with it," said Ms Morse. "We just think that we're the victims and we're not getting anything. Even if they dropped it to £25 a month each, then so be it, but to not be getting anything is not fair on us as the victims." The fraud had included fake flight confirmations, fake emails from travel agents, and fake bank transactions. Blackwell even created fake email accounts to make it seem like she had been communicating with agents. Blackwell, of Ffordd Y Draen in Coity, pleaded guilty to four counts of fraud over the wedding con. In the March sentencing her barrister Alice Sykes said: "She was going through a difficult time after her daughter had been diagnosed with brain cancer. "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. "She has two children aged 10 and three. She works full-time as an estate agent earning £1,700 a month and receives Universal Credit." Blackwell had avoided jail the previous August after another fraud in which she tried to con the children's cancer charity Morgan's Army out of £4,000. As we reported at the time , Blackwell received a suspended 10-month sentence after lying to the charity that her daughter needed costly treatment in Germany when in reality she was in remission from cancer. For the charity fraud Blackwell was handed a suspended 10-month prison sentence, 180 hours of unpaid work, 10 days of rehabilitation activity and a four-month curfew preventing her leaving home at night. And for the wedding scam – which was happening at the same time as she defrauded the charity – she was given a suspended 12-month jail term, 120 hours of unpaid work and five days of rehabilitation activity. Morgan's Army, the charity she defrauded, was set up by the parents of Morgan Ridler, who died of cancer aged three. Blackwell targeted the charity — which supports south Wales families affected by childhood cancer — just months after Morgan's death in June 2023. She was provided with £4,000 for treatment her daughter supposedly needed. But Morgan's mother Natalie Ridler, from Swansea , said: "It transpired that some years ago, a child of the individual had suffered with cancer and was treated at Noah's Ark [children's hospital] which was why they slipped through our initial checks. "However, they had been in remission for some time with no active treatment, no terminal prognosis, and were in layman's terms 'all clear'." She added that the fraudster had "preyed on us at one of our most vulnerable periods". After the deception was discovered the £4,000 was frozen and recovered. A Ministry of Justice spokeswoman said: “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. “We can take money directly from an offender’s benefits or salaries or issue a warrant to seize offenders' possessions if needed.” Blackwell declined to comment.
