Warning to brides after woman conned out of thousands in catering scam

A catering company owner has rebuked claims their account was hacked, after a bride-to-be was conned out of £4,000.

Danielle Kemal, 31, was making the final preparations for her big day, when she paid out £4,290 for catering.

She believed she was making the payment to an account belonging to Souffle To You, after receiving details over email.

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But just three days before Danielle was due to tie the knot with husband Kai, the caterers informed her they hadn’t received the money.

It was then that the mum-of-two realised she’d made the payment to a fraudulent account

Danielle said: “Someone had hacked the caterer’s email account.

“I was devastated - running around crying my eyes out.”

However, the owner of Souffle To You , who did not wish to be named, claims the email Danielle received had no mention of the company, her name or even catering.

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The owner said: “Danielle had an email from a random person.

“They were not using my name, or even our company name.

“There was no mention of catering.”

The owner said Souffle to You had received three other payments that week and there had been no problem.

She said: “I am very upset about it, as it’s not necessarily our account that was hacked.”

She said the company had since carried out an internal investigation and nothing untoward had been found with its computer system or email account.

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Furthermore, no other clients had received suspect emails from her company.

The owner stressed she did not want to start a “slanging match” between the company and Danielle.

She said: “We worked with Danielle for 18 months.

“We were very upset for Danielle, but we did her catering at cost price.

“We made no profit from that wedding.”

The owner confirmed the incident had been reported to Action Aid and her company were also carrying out an internal investigation.

Danielle made the payment through a Lloyds Bank branch.

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A spokesperson from Lloyds said: “Lloyds Banking Group takes its commitment to fraud prevention seriously.

“We are looking into this situation, but due to customer confidentiality we cannot provide any further information at this stage.

“If we are contacted by the relevant authorities regarding this matter, we will of course co-operate fully with any investigation.”

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