'Heartless' scammer vowed to repay victims but still hasn't a year on

Victims of a "heartless" fraudster, who faked her own wedding to con relatives and friends out of more than £12,000, are questioning why they have only received a fraction of what she was ordered to pay back.

Charlotte Blackwell, 32, from Bridgend, was handed a suspended prison sentence and ordered to pay £13,750 in compensation to the four victims by a judge in March 2025.

When she realised she would be avoiding jail Blackwell sobbed in relief and agreed to the judge's demand that she pay at a rate of £400 a month.

But her victims say she has only paid a total of £163.

The Ministry of Justice (MOJ) said it could not give specific details on enforcement but added: "These were heartless crimes."

In October 2025, the victims had only received £25.45 each since the order was imposed seven months earlier.

Since that time Blackwell, a mother of two, has paid an additional £15.30 to each of the victims - with no payments made in the last four months.

When the victims asked for updates from the MoJ they said they were told: "It's being dealt with."

Helen Morse is owed almost £3,500.

"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."

Blackwell, who was previously spared jail for fraud against a children's cancer charity, made bogus 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 Thomas' friends - including Morse, who paid £3,311, Sue Chapman, who paid £3,272, and Tracey Roberts, who paid £2,803.

Blackwell was ordered to pay £3,500 in compensation each to Thomas, Chapman, and Morse, and £3,250 to Roberts to "reflect the additional aggravation and distress" she had caused them.

She was also handed a suspended 12-month jail term, 120 hours of unpaid work and five days of rehabilitation activity.

Her barrister Alice Sykes said her client would be able to pay the compensation, as she was working full-time as an estate agent on £1,700 a month, as well as receiving universal credit.

Blackwell was back in court in October 2025 after being fined for breaching her community service order.

Morse, an admin worker at a GP surgery, previously said: "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."

Morse went into the travel agency Blackwell had supposedly used, Tui, and asked staff for the details of the holiday.

She said the staff were trying to "ring a wedding coordinator who didn't exist" and spent an hour trying to help her, but came back to tell her nothing had 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."

Morse, who had taken a second job as a cleaner to help pay for the bogus holiday, said: "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."

The fraud 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.

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."

Blackwell avoided jail in August 2024, and was instead handed a suspended 10-month prison sentence, 180 hours of unpaid work, 10 days of rehabilitation activity, and a four-month curfew preventing her from leaving home at night after defrauding children's charity, Morgan's Army of £4,000.

Morgan's Army was set up by the parents of Morgan Ridler, who died of cancer aged three. It supports south Wales families affected by childhood cancer.

Months after Morgan's death in June 2023, Blackwell lied to the charity saying her daughter needed costly treatment in Germany, when in reality she was in remission from cancer.

After the deception was discovered the money was frozen and recovered.

The MoJ said it could not give specific details on enforcement due to data protection laws but 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.

"We can take money directly from an offender's benefits or salaries or issue a warrant to seize offender's possessions if needed."

The MoJ said people can be sent to prison if they fail to pay a penalty and the court has no means of recovering the amount owed.

Blackwell was approached for comment.