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How Many Wedding Planners Heard about the Wedding Scam and Played Along?

You get the e-mail, from a client, who is looking for a professional wedding planner to handle all the details for his up and coming wedding, He is in the United Kingdom, and tells you what the vision is and ask if you can handle the details for them? They give you all the details by email,and your suppose to email them back with your quote, and tell them how you can provide them with their request. In just a few days, you receive a certified letter and Money Order for your services.

So you think that everything is great...! So you email the client and tell them the check was received and... they say " Could you please send 3000 or so to other vendor, that is waiting on his funds to get his job done! Here is the scam ...Money Order looks good,but it is forged! What they are hoping for is that you will send them the cash back, and your left with owing the bank all this money! I was lucky enough to have just read up on this scam, that was posted on the Association for Wedding Professionals International website. I have enclosed a picture of the fake check. Now I can spot them onsite..and I like to collect them just for kicks and giggles.

Just a little FYI for my wedding professional friends.

Best Regards,
STYLISH AFFAIR'S
Wedding & Social Events
By Mickey Long

Attachments:

FAKE CHECKS.bmp, 11.4 MB

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Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Enchanted Affairs on December 3, 2009 at 11:03am

I have been emailed the same scam 4 times, from different countries. I always tell them that i only work with clients in the USA. Most of these scams come from Craigslist.com.

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Permalink Reply by Dream Wedding Wedding Planning on December 4, 2009 at 7:10am

I do not even bother to reply just delete

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Permalink Reply by Caren Jeanty on December 5, 2009 at 8:45am

I just delete them now

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Permalink Reply by Desert Light Weddings on December 6, 2009 at 4:15pm

I've gotten a few variations of this scam. I delete them!

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Permalink Reply by Everything Angelic on December 8, 2009 at 3:54am

It it typical to plan someone's wedding from another country?

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Permalink Reply by Party Planners Plus on December 8, 2009 at 3:15pm

I always ignor them, alright one time I kept it going to see how far they would go, then let them know what they were doing and that I would turn them into the authorities. Get these all the time

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Permalink Reply by Stacey Porter on December 14, 2009 at 6:08pm

Your first indicator is if both parties are from out of town or state (from separate places ) why would they be coming to "your region" in order to be married. You can look for other non-specifics (for example, "any saturday in April will be fine"), sometimes the date they give is odd (a weekday) and most times the date is in only a few months time. The initial contact correspondence tends to have a tone of "YOU ARE TO DO THIS" as opposed to "Can you help me?". Another tipoff for me is an unusually large budget for the amount of "guests attending". I'm here in central IL so to spend 30-40K on a wedding for 50 people is not typical. Individually these things are not a big deal and COULD still be legitimate, but put them together and major red flags. I ALMOST fell for this when I was just starting out. Tried contacting the person via phone only to get a constantly busy line - they even had the guts to call me and chat about the wedding. It was a tip off when I recieved cashier's checks, (but hadn't sent a contract) for WAY more than my deposit would be. Good thing I didn't get pulled in any further - these days I just laugh at them.