I'm sure this has been talked about on the forums before, but it just hit me this past weekend. A certain "Cathy Labella" from Toronto Canada that wanted to place an order for 350 cupcakes to be picked up this Friday at 3pm. Having seen enough Craigslist scam emails, I knew better. The next thing I know, last night at 1:20 am I receive a call from an AT&T relayer telling me a Cathy is on the phone for her cupcake order! I was IRATE and told the kind operator to tell "Cathy" she needs to contact me during daytime hours. Today I get a lengthy email telling me the shipper will pick up her cupcakes for an extra $980 and as soon as I give her a total she'll give me the credit card number to charge (which I've since found out are stolen cc numbers thanks to the internet). I knew from the beginning it was a scam, but after reading a few things on the internet, it sounds as though people have fallen for this! I just wanted to give everyone a head's up if you haven't heard of this before!

I'll never understand what is wrong with people in this world today!

Happy Baking!!

I am sorry for you, but thank you so much a for posting this.

OMG! I got the same one off of Wedding wire but she said she wanted a five tiered cake with roses and packed up. She also contacted a friend of mine also. I had her removed from the system. As soon as I saw the way she worded it and how she wanted it for Wednesday,I knew it was a scam.

Forgive me, maybe I'm too tired to figure this out, but I don't get why anyone would want to run this kind of scam. How does it work? Can someone explain it to me?

its all money related, i had a posting on craigs list once for my portable dishwasher and this man answered it and said he would send a cashiers check and movers to come and pick it up. than wrote me and told me that his bookkeeper had the cashiers check made out for to much and that she had give me the money to pay the moving people. would i be kind enough to cash it and pay the movers with the extra and that i could keep an extra 50 for my trouble.
i am a very suspicious person so i thought scam, so i planned it so i could get the check and turn in it in to the proper authority when it came. they must have felt something was up on my end because i never got the check. it was a bad cashiers check.

I have had several try to scam me with wanting a tiered cake each tier boxed up with roses. I knew instantly it was a scam and told them so. The funny thing is they emailed me a couple weeks later trying the same thing with different names and I told them they might want to remember which bakeries they have already tried to scam.

Well she hit again! Thanks for the warning! The same scam same name through wedding wire. a 5 tier cake for 300 people for this weekend. Is there any way to notify authorities to catch her since it is in the beginning stages and maybe I can string her along?

Unfortunately there is probably not much they can do since one, it is hard to catch email scams and two, they are probably in a different country. I get scams through my personal email all the time and I am so sick of them. There are so many shady people out there.

I dont know. I alerted wedding wire and they said they were deleting her from their system.
The scam works as follows: She emails a bakery saying she wants this huge cake for a ton of people on short notice. She wants it packaged up for shipping and that she will have her shipper pick up the cake. She will either ask for you to pay for the shipper and that she will wire the money to an account to include it (which probably never happens) or like the other person said, over paid and wants money back. So either way she is getting money out of you not to mention a huge cake which who knows what happens to that. It only takes one person to not realize its a scam and they've made money. If you give them an account number to wire it to then they must have a way of hacking or something to that effect.
There are several scams out there besides this. When I worked in an office I had a person saying they needed to update their files and needed the model number of our copier. Not knowing I gave it to them. So then they said that we were due for ink or something and would send it and bill it. Ofcourse this isnt as devious as the cake scam but its just another way to deceive the average joe.
I must get emails almost daily from someone claiming that they need my help in getting their son or daughter to the country and want to pay me a million dollars wired to an account or something like that. I got one last week claiming I won the lottery in Nigeria and that they were from the FBI saying it was legit. Oh, ok!
The only thing we can do to these scammer is try to not give them what they want. Look for clues. If something doesnt sound right, and a red light goes off to you, then question it! One thing that keyed me off that it was a scam was she asked me for a cake for 350 in less than a weeks time, for a wedding. She then wanted it boxed up for pick up. And the way she worded it "pick up of said boxes". Now I dont know about you, but I dont know anyone in the US that talks that way. And the outrageous request. She doesnt give you an address or a phone number. The lead was a direct lead so no other company is allowed to respond. Clues. I didnt even have to think twice. I just knew in my gut it was a scam and reported her to wedding wire.
Dreamcakesmom, I dont think the authorities can track her since she doesnt leave any info. The other thing they would probably say is that she hasnt done anything wrong (unless you can actually get her to go threw with the whole pick up thing.) Im not sure if anyone has actually got to that step or if the whole wiring thing is the actual scam. Who knows!

Thanks for posting.

I think it's good to keep these warnings going...it seems they "tweak" it ever so slightly every time to make it seem a little more believable. It gets even better when they actually call you!

I can see how people could fall for this. I hope no one ever hesitates to ask if they think something "just isn't right".

I just did a topic on this very thing before i read this thread I got the email today too!! That's why I'm glad I am a member of CC!!!!!

My husband brought up a point. I was trying to figure out how they could actually make money off of doing this and he said the following. "They are collecting addresses and names". I said "Why? Would they want bakery addresses?" He said that maybe they are getting contracts for lets say bakery product sales and a way to compile a list is by doing this scam". I think its a little too much trouble just to get names when they can flip threw yellow pages or google. But there has to be something to it.

Did you get it threw Wedding wire?

I just had the same scam Cathy Lebella, she wanted a 5 tier cake for oct 26. I thought it sounded fishey too. I then sent a email bake see how she would pay. I then got the long email about having a shipper pick it up, charging a additional 980 dollars. I remember reading on here about a similar email. Mine was from Wedding Wire too. I responded back with a not interested in your scam!

Im going to contact Wedding Wire again and actually give them this thread so that they can see it. They were suppose to delete her account. So dont know if she renewed it somehow or what.

Im also asking Jackie if she can post something on here to alert as many people as possible. If we stick together maybe we can take a bite out of crime!!! (lol)

Cathy Lebella contacted me too for a cake on October the 26th and saying she was hearing impaired. I guess I asked her too many questions so she never contacted me back. Especially when I brought up Paypal.

Yep, Cathy contacted me through Wedding Wire this weekend too. I emailed her back to take her scam a shove it up her.....

Too funny Cathy probably isn't even a lady. A guy contacted me about his wedding. Guess he got a clue that mostly women order cakes for weddings and not men. Not to mention the Bozzo could not even write a decent email. I told him "nice try!" Never heard from him again. Maybe it will be Cathy next time. >/

These same con artists are hitting the "relay call" circuit pretty hard and heavy too. They pretend to be deaf and use the relay call system purposely, so it is difficult to have a regular conversation. They need a large order fast, and pretend not to understand your simple questions. It's a major waste of our time, because the calls take forever, and the relay operators will not trace the call when you tell them it's a scam. Some of them seem amused, but I get a general "that's not my job" response when we ask for help in catching the bad guys/reporting the scam. Meanwhile, my real customers are getting a busy signal.... grrr.

"Cathy" contacted me through wedding wire. I knew right away it was a scam but I decided to play along. I told her if she paid in cash I would except the order. I get a long email back and of course nothing is mentioned about cash but about paying by credit card. I email back "I only accept cash. Besides, your email is plastered all over the internet as a scam. All scam emails sound the same, get a new format."

So yesterday I get an text message from "Cathy" claiming to be someone else wanting to order 550 cupcakes for the upcoming Tuesday. I respond saying cash only. Then I get a text saying she is in the hospital and can give me a credit card or her Chase Bank Manager's name and number.

People must fall for these or they wouldn't keep trying.