Charlotte Blackwell’s five-star summer wedding was meticulously planned and promised to be unforgettable, according to her friends.

As they enjoyed sparkling wine together one evening in late 2022, the bride-to-be expressed her excitement, “I can’t wait to become Mrs. Thomas.”

“Having all of you at my wedding means the world to me,” she added, her enthusiasm obvious.

The sentiment was shared by her friends, especially Paula Thomas, who was not only a guest but also the groom’s mother.

Charlotte appeared to have every detail under control for her special day.

She personally handled flight bookings for her four guests and their partners, ensuring everything was set for their stay at an upscale resort in Turkey, arranged through TUI. All that was left for her friends was to transfer the funds to her.

The friends also happily took up Blackwell’s suggestion that they all upgrade their accommodation for premium poolside rooms for an extra £120.

They were similarly pleased when she offered them the option to pre-book a resort-based hairdresser to get them ceremony ready, for another, small, advance payment.

There was, however, one small, but not insignificant flaw in the plan.

Blackwell’s wedding extravaganza was, as the Daily Mail revealed last week, a tissue of lies.

The flight confirmations, the emails from the travel agent, were all fake.

Whether Blackwell, a 31-year-old estate agent and mother of two, who had been in a relationship with Daniel Thomas for five years, ever intended to actually tie the knot overseas is unclear.

What is clear is that she fabricated elaborate travel arrangements to hoodwink her own fiancé’s mother – and three of her closest friends – into handing over thousands of pounds, which she promptly used to settle spiralling online gambling debts.

As the Daily Mail learned last week, she strung them along until just two months before the big day when she said that proceedings would have to be postponed because she had been diagnosed with a heart condition.

Blackwell’s deception was only uncovered when one of the guests decided to proceed with the holiday anyway and discovered the booking reference was fake. Though given that even her own fiancé thought they were getting married, it’s unclear how Blackwell thought she was ever going to get away with it.

Yet that was not the full scale of her deception. For unknown to the friends from Bridgend, South Wales, Blackwell was a repeat offender.

She was juggling the wedding scam with another fraud: trying to con a children’s cancer charity of £4,000, after lying that her ten-year-old daughter was desperately ill and needed specialist treatment abroad.

Her shockingly callous attempt to deceive the cancer charity brought her before Cardiff Crown Court in August 2024, where she was given a suspended ten-month jail sentence for attempted fraud. Luckily she never got hold of the cash.

Yet her friends – and future mother-in-law – knew nothing of this as they continued making their wedding payments from November 2022 to May 2024.

Earlier this year Blackwell pleaded guilty to four counts of fraud against her friends totalling £12,682, but this deception was thrown back into the spotlight last week when she appeared at the same court for a third time for failing to comply with the conditions of her sentence – a suspended prison term that hinged upon her completing 120 hours unpaid work and participate in a rehabilitation programme.

It was revealed she had attended only 21 out of 34 appointments and still had 55 hours and 25 minutes of community service hours outstanding.

The penalty for her failure to comply? A £50 fine, with an order to pay £150 costs and an order to – once and for all – comply.

Over in Bridgend, her victims are furious. Nor do they think they’ll ever see their money again.

As Helen Morse, 51, one of those four friends, told the Daily Mail last week: ‘This girl needs to be stopped. I am absolutely astonished and disgusted that she has had two suspended sentences and now just a £200 fine for defaulting on paying back the money she stole from us.

‘She should be in jail as far as I’m concerned. I’ve seen her out and about and she is carrying on with her life like she’s done nothing wrong at all.’

She adds: ‘We are owed £3,500 each and so far, we’ve had £25.45. It’s pathetic. But there is no deterrent. Charlotte is not even embarrassed by the looks of it.

‘That girl went out and spent our money and we are still having to work.

‘I took on two jobs after she stole the money, but it was too much and I had to give one of them up.

‘My partner and I couldn’t afford to have a holiday last year after she’d stolen all that money from us.’

It was all so very different when the women – Paula, Sue Chapman, Tracey Roberts and Helen – began making plans, not long after Blackwell and Daniel, who had a baby together, got engaged in February 2022.

‘We were touched that she wanted us all there on her big day,’ says Helen.

She offered to book everything herself, and then work the costs out later,

For Helen, there was the additional excitement that the summer wedding would coincide with her own 50th birthday, making it a double celebration.

Blackwell encouraged the women to pay her via bank transfer, in instalments and they didn’t find it at all unusual that there always seemed to be something extra – the hairdresser who need paying upfront, the room upgrade – to add on to the bill.

By the time she told them – just two months before the wedding that it was going to have to be postponed due to her heart condition – the bill totalled £12,682.

‘It seemed to have come out of nowhere and we were all very concerned,’ says Paula.

It was Helen who uncovered the scam, when she and her partner decided they would like to continue with the holiday. She needed the TUI booking reference, which, of course, Blackwell couldn’t provide, culminating in Sue taking printouts of their supposed itinerary into a local travel agent and discovering that they were fake.

It was Paula who confronted Blackwell, and the police were contacted. It then became apparent that she was already being prosecuted for attempting to defraud the cancer charity.

The friends are all still reeling. ‘She’s caused us so much stress and misery,’ says Helen. ‘A lot of people are very angry with her. She’s a thief and the smiling face of deceit.’

Her anger is compounded by the knowledge they were not alone in falling prey to Blackwall’s scams.

Last week, the Daily Mail spoke to the victims of both extraordinary scams and uncovered a heartbreaking tale of deception that all, perhaps, begins with a truth: Blackwell’s eldest daughter did once have cancer – but had long recovered, and was in remission.

The little girl was 19 months old when she was diagnosed with an aggressive form of brain cancer in 2016, undergoing surgery and chemotherapy at a hospital in Cardiff.

Her plight, including the crowdfunding campaign initiated by her parents, was reported by local media at the time and swiftly raised more than £2,000.

‘My little angel is too young for all this and I would do anything to swap places with her,’ said Blackwell, then 22. ‘She’s such a happy little girl and she’s really strong.’

On a GoFundMe page, still online, there is a photograph of the smiling tot next a total of more than £4,000.

It’s all so painfully ironic now. Not least to Natalie Ridler, a physiotherapist and director of Morgan’s Army, the charity she founded to support families battling childhood cancer, after her own little boy, Morgan, fought a rare liver cancer that would eventually take his life in July 2023.

Natalie, who lives in Swansea, received Blackwell’s bogus request for financial help just a few months after her little boy died.

Blackwell was claiming she and her parents were prepared to sell their homes to get her daughter to Germany for potentially lifesaving treatment, but there was a shortfall of £12,000.

Given her genuine experience of childhood cancer, it’s no surprise her story seemed true.

As Natalie, who has a daughter Rhiannon, four, with solicitor husband Matt, says: ‘She had an in-depth knowledge of the wards, the consultants, the process, chemo, everything. And she was known to the hospital, so she passed our initial checks.’

Over messages – Blackwall never wanted to talk on the phone – Natalie attempted to direct Blackwell to various charities that assist with organising treatment abroad, but curiously she seemed resistant.

‘It went on for two weeks,’ says Natalie, a calm, compassionate woman who is still reeling from the cruelty of the deception.

‘She was back and forth coming to me for support about coping with losing her child.’

While looking back, there were unusual details – she didn’t, for instance, want anything to go on Facebook, at her daughter’s request.

Natalie says: ‘I said our maximum would be £4,000 and she said, “That’s amazing, can you transfer it to my bank account?”‘

Alarm bells began to ring when Natalie learned Blackwell had begun contacting individuals and companies that had previously supported Morgan’s Army asking them to share or donate to her own GoFundMe page.

Natalie began making inquiries and found someone who knew Blackwell and – crucially – knew that her daughter had not relapsed.

She called the police.

Today, Natalie is still dumbfounded by it all.

‘It’s unfathomable,’ she says. ‘We deal with families that relapse all the time, unfortunately it’s part of the world of childhood cancer – it’s cruel and it’s unfair and it’s awful. The fact that she would [do this], I still don’t understand it.’

Hugely compassionate, Natalie doesn’t dwell on her own hurt. She does, however, feel she was emotionally groomed.

‘We [the charity] were less than a year old at that point and were devastated that someone would take Morgan’s memory and be so blasé about it and try and take advantage of the things we were doing in his name.’

She adds that the charity has now raised £750,000.

In court, Blackwell’s defence barrister had claimed she’d spiralled into debt after giving up work to care for her daughter, and had gambled to try and win the money back.

‘The absolute worst thing at the bottom of all this is that we support people struggling with the cost of living and debt as a result of treatment,’ Natalie says. ‘All she had to do was say I’m in debt. I need help.’

Ironically, her first appearance in court was at around the same time her bogus wedding was set to take place.

Not that there’s any chance of that happening now.

Her relationship with her fiancé – who knew nothing about the deception – unsurprisingly did not last.

Now, with the knowledge that she wasn’t the only victim of Blackwell, Natalie can’t help but feel the woman who told such an unfathomable lie has got off lightly.

‘What’s going to stop her doing it again?’ she asks.