Cake Scams

I m sure a few of you reading this may know about a cake scam or probably you were one if there victims. Cake scams apparently have started back in 2008 through out the U.S. and could be going on in other countries as well. Recently I had an e-mail from Cathy J Labella, using a Yahoo account requesting to place an order serving about 350 guests. The request seemed a bit odd due to the fact that there wedding date was only a week away. Really, what kind of bride places an order for a huge party a week before her wedding? Okay, there are maybe less than a few due to the fact that maybe they had a baker drop out last minute for God knows what before there event. So in this case I thought maybe that was Cathy J Labella's case. I gave an estimate and in return I got this:

Hello , thanks for the reply to my order request, and for your concern as well, I want you to know that am very grateful, and am really inspired ever since the first time I tasted your cake, that is why I will prefer you bake for me..or i rather not have cake for my wedding.... :D

They should be ready for pick up by 3 O'clock PM on the 15th of yadayada ...and a private shipper will be coming to pick them up...to delivery to my wedding reception in Canada and i dont want you to be worried about the safety delivery of the cake. Regarding the shipping ,I have a private shipping agent that will take good care of pick up and the delivery consignments. The Shipper will come for the pickup arrangement of the Cake at your place, at the pick up date and time.

And as I have told you previously, you don’t have anything to be worry about on the shipping of the cake it will be well secure and in a good condition on arriving the location of my wedding reception in Toronto Canada, the shipper will be coming with there refrigerator Van for the pick up and it will be ship under the fragile shipping insurance scheme, a friend of mine has use them before for a shipping consignment of this such and they are well reliable, dependable and secure…..

So I want you to calculate for me what will be the total cost of the cake order including the decoration plus tax if included, and also I want you to add $980 for the cost of the pick up and the shipping, so once I have your reply for the total I will remit my credit card for you to charge for the total cost…so that you can have the order book right away. And once you have the order secured, I will have the shipper contact you for the pick up schedule arrangement, also i will instruct you further on how you will pay the shipping fee to the shipper as to confirm the pickup arrangement of the cake. Willingly Am also offering you an extra $100 for taking care of my order properly and for any less stress you will go through for completing the transaction for me due to my absence.

So please do calculate altogether the total cost of the cake + decoration and tax + $980 for shipping charges, including the $100 am offering you, then get back to me with the total for all, so once i have your reply for the total cost i will remit my credit card for you to run for the charges, also let me know is you accept Visa or Master card.
I will be waiting to have your reply for the total cost then we can proceed from there, hope to hear from you soonest.
Thanks and God bless.
Cathy Labella.

SERIOUSLY?! Are you kidding me?? First off this is way too confusing, how is this person making it easy for me, having to pay me money to deliver the cake to some one else who I have to then pay $980 to ship it off to Canada? It only took me the first half to read through and think it was some scam. I mean who gives that much money to start off, order a cake to be delivered to their "private shipper" who will then ship it to Canada OVERSEAS" and then expect it to get to them within a week in a half before there wedding FRESH. All the areas I marked bold in the e-mail above is what stood out to me the most and said "SCAM". I even asked my hubby to take a look at it and he decided to Google the name. Sure enough there was a whole listing of this so called Cathy J Labella. It's sad to see that some people were actually coned into it and loosing out thousand of dollars to complete a huge order that didn't exsist and wire $980 to some one they didn't completely know and also not realizing that the credit card the person used was stolen so the $980 was technically out of there (the bakers) own pocket. There are even lawsuits with this Cathy J Labella. The strange thing that strikes me is that till this day the person behind the name is still using it and hasn't yet changed there name after how many reviews pops up online. My suggestion to all bakers (especially with small businesses) think twice when there e-mail ends with "God Bless".

Bellingham Bakery is a bakery who unfortunately lost out a lot due to a scam. Check out the article here.