Original subtitles

[Nicky] I never really thought that I'd meet somebody and get married.

When I met Jason, things were different

and I knew that he was the right person for me.

[Sam] The wedding that I wanted

was the princess... Big, white wedding.

It upsets me and makes me mad

that wonderful wedding that I had

will always be tinged with a bit of sadness and anger.

This woman had taken people's dreams away.

[Nicky] I never really thought about a wedding planner before.

That she's made one of our happiest days of my life,

when I should have been celebrating

with my family and my children,

to something that I can't look back on.

Why would somebody that wants to make your day,

the most special day in the world,

be as cruel as she was?

[Dr. Sohom] She is faining this emotional connection

because she saw them as victims.

[Sam] My mum was dying with cancer

and she saw pound signs.

[Carl] To see all these people,

they were absolutely heartbroken, horrified.

They'd lost all their savings.

[Dr. Sohom] This isn't some sort of fraud

against a faceless corporation,

these are real people.

[Alex] This was a lot far reaching than just one or two people.

Countless, dozens had been scammed.

[interviewer] Thank you for agreeing to tell us your story.

You aren't nervous? Wanna drink water, a cup of tea?

-No, okay. Thanks. -No.

[Jason] We live in Harrogate, which is sort of Nort Yorkshire, cross country.

I really love that, yeah. Really nice place to live.

Really proud of where we live.

He worked at the Army Foundation College with my uncle,

who was also his best friend.

And he went to say goodbye and punched me by accident.

She didn't speak to me for couple of weeks after that.

The amount of times I have apologized.

And then in December we got together.

Yeah.

I never really thought that I'd meet somebody and get married.

When I met Jason, things were different.

I knew that he was the right person for me.

She begged me for months. [chuckles]

-He's not even joking. -For years.

"We're gonna get married. We're gonna get married." So yes.

[Nicky] After he had asked me, obviously I accepted.

We turned around and we all ended up in this massive hope together.

My daughter was crying.

It was just lovely. It was just so special.

[Jason] Weddings are massive,

especially if you found somebody that you're in love with.

I couldn't wait to get married.

We were lucky enough to be able to put some money aside,

to be able to pay, and put some money towards the wedding.

[Jason] We planned for a really, really nice wedding.

For whatever the figure was, we were ensuring

that we were gonna pay for that prior to us getting married.

So our future then would be so much better.

I wanted to be debt free.

We certainly didn't wanna go above £5,000 for the wedding itself.

I was super excited.

I was looking on Facebook,

and there was quite a lot of selling cites on there

and quite lot of it.

I never thought about a wedding planner before.

I saw Dana's post on Facebook

and it really drew me to want to get married sooner.

The things that she was offering was everything that we wanted.

Had a look on her page and everything looked really nice.

[Jason] She had gone through all the reviews. I mean' she was very polite.

And then Nicky and her mum,

decided to take a trip over before they're making any commitments.

All the way over to Hull to go and visit her.

[interviewer] Thank you for telling us your story.

Do you wanna have a glass of water before we start?

I wanna have a coffee.

About in 2016, Dana messaged me,

asking about some catering for weddings.

Dana explained that she was a wedding planner

and she was looking for somebody to catering for several weddings.

First I went to her house so she can show us photos of what she has done,

discuss what we needed to do,

and I can show them many options and stuff like that.

Dana came across as a very genuine person.

Seemed to have a real passion for what she was doing.

She showed me lots of pictures.

Stuff on the website,

jobs and recommendations and good reviews that she had had.

It did look really good.

Made good sense

to hook up and push both businesses.

We agreed to supply wedding buffets and hot food.

Dana gave us couple of booking straightaway, which we fulfilled.

Dana used to bring it all together.

You see, you got photographers, car drivers.

There's like photo booth, special stands which were there, catering,

everything seemed to go really well.

When you involved with somebody like that,

it's important that you make sure that everything goes legit

and she really did,

because it's your reputation on the line as well.

They're advertising your food.

Dana was using our catering name on the websites

as well as the food.

I had no problem with them using pictures at the time

because it was generating income for us,

and everything seemed to go really well.

[Sam] My name is Sam Leech.

Me and Phil got engaged on 13th March, 2019.

We had been together seven years before we got engaged.

The plans changed because my mum was diagnosed with terminal cancer

in the May of 2019.

She had said to me and my brother, because we were both engaged,

"I think you might have to bring your wedding forward."

Me and Phil decided

to plan the day for May, 2020.

Because my dad had passed away three years previous,

I asked my mum to give me away and walk me down the aisle.

I wanted a big, wide wedding,

and I wanted all my family there

and all our friends.

I was scrolling through Facebook,

looking for people who come and dress places.

We decided to have a marquee

and I found a special offer that Dana had put on.

So I messaged her and asked what was included in the price.

Then explained to her my circumstances,

and she offered her services.

[Phil] We actually thought nothing was wrong, you know?

We just thought it was straightforward.

[Sam] So the special price.

I told Dana the reason why I was asking so many questions

was because I'd had to bring my wedding forward

because my mum had terminal cancer.

She told me that her day job was a funeral director.

She told me that she had lost her dad

and it was important to have my mum there

and she promised me that she'd make it all look beautiful

so that the photos look beautiful,

so my mum could be part of my wedding.

[Alex] Time was of the essence, really, for them.

A lot of time with weddings,

stuff's planned months, sometimes years in advance.

They needed something a lot faster.

It is where Dana came in and was able to offer them something

that met their expectations.

[Sam] In one of my messages to her

I called her an angel.

She was really understanding of it.

Took a lot of weight off your shoulders because your mum was poorly.

-Yeah. -And that's the reason that you did it.

And I just said,

"Just, let's go with it."

It let Sam be with her mum.

After my first messages with Dana,

she quoted me £1,500.

We had agreed on a marquee, that she had got a favor from her friend,

and the dressing of the marquee,

a photo booth, love letters,

a doughnut wall

and then just extra bits, table center pieces and things like that.

She was very lovely. She offered us a drink.

She was very welcoming.

She showed me everything that she had done.

She has books full of stuff.

She told me quite a lot about her family life

and her son.

I actually felt like I had known her for ages.

[Jason] She showed loads of photographs, loads of books,

loads of comments.

You could see that the house was busy

with all the wedding stuff that she's got.

By the time we had finished,

she said, "Yeah, we can do that.

We can do the glasses, we can do the water jugs,

the knives, the forks, the cutleries, everything. Yeah, we can do that."

In Nicky and Jason's case,

Dana went the extra mile.

She met Nicky and Jason in person.

So, from their perspective,

it probably feels less likely

that she's going to do something dodgy

or that she's a fraudster

because most people would assume

that fraud is committed by a distant faceless corporation.

When you have that personal interaction and that personal touch,

you feel more comfortable,

and the person you're speaking to comes across as more credible.

Once we had been there we got almost persuaded to get more and more stuff,

while we were there,

which was brilliant for us because it was stuff

that we didn't have to think about.

I really thought that it was a really, really good deal,

and we could get married sooner

and it was something that, you know, was in our budget.

She was so nice that I thought

I would want anyone else to not do it.

I wanted her to be there,

but I've never looked back

and think that was the happiest time of my life.

I look back and remember what she did.

And I will never forgive her for that.

Dana was very polite.

She was very, you, "This is what we do. This is how we do it."

So we thought it's a lot of money.

But the good thing is, she turned around and said to Nicky,

"You could pay off on a monthly basis."

So it wasn't the fact we have that paid up straight away.

It was done over a period of time.

They agreed to a figure, which was just over £2,000

and the agreement was as of October

we were gonna pay £227 per month to her account

up until the wedding,

and it was for the marquee and stuff like that.

Everything that I went to her with

she was more than willing to help me.

It was really nice. I felt really supportive,

so I'd message her and she'd always message me back.

[Jason] All the way through, she was always there. She'd answer the phone.

We always thought that she was like a friend

rather than somebody who'd organize the things.

I've never met Dana before. I had only messaged her.

After my first messages, she quoted me £1,500.

I thought that that price was too good to be true.

So I arranged to meet Dana in person.

and take by best friend with me,

because she was also going through personally what I was going through.

And I thought she would give me the truth

on what she thought of Dana,

if she thought this lady is honest.

I met Dana in July, 2019.

She was setting up a christening at a club.

And while I was there, she went over to the manager and said,

"Oh, I'm gonna arrange that wedding fair."

And because she was setting up, I thought this is what she does.

Her husband was with her

and he was telling me how wonderful

and how beautiful these weddings was

that he'd help her with.

So it was all believable.

We sat outside with Dana and her husband

and had a drink with them.

They spoke about personal things to us as well.

My friend said to me,

"She is genuinely a nice person who wants to help you."

Meeting somebody like Dana at an event that she has organized,

this christening, that seems to be going well

would have added an extra layer

to her credibility and her legitimacy.

It might have let the guard down

of the people that are there speaking to her

because it's a family atmosphere,

it's very different from a business or formal or corporate kind of setting.

[Sam] After I met Dana in July,

she then sent me an invoice to my email address

with the full amount of the £1,500

and then asked for a deposit of £600.

She sent me a receipt through email

when I had paid the deposit of £600 into her bank.

When I paid Dana,

it was around nine months to the day of wedding.

I felt brilliant that it had been sorted.

But I did feel a bit lost

and I remember texting Dana and asking her,

"Is there anything I should be doing?"

I felt like, although she had taken all the weight off my shoulders,

I should have been doing more.

And she replied and said, "No.

All brides feel like this,

and everything's in order and you got nothing to worry about."

[Jason] It was three days before the wedding.

It was a Thursday, in the morning.

Nicky was still getting text messages from her.

[Nicky] There was a gentleman called Gav,

he was providing a marquee for us,

who had messaged me

to say that Dana had actually cancelled the marquee.

But she was getting it from somebody else instead.

And she'd asked Gav to transfer the money into somebody else's account.

I then phoned Dana and said "What's going on?"

She said, "Don't worry about it.

I just had to get it from someone else."

She said that she'd organize it and it's absolutely fine.

So I carried on with my mum and my aunty

and my daughter and we all got our nails done.

We all went to the venue together,

so my mum, my aunty, myself, Jason, my children.

We were hoping that Dana would already be there with her van,

and her putting the marquee up,

and the chairs and the tables.

When we arrived at the venue,

um, there was no van, there was no marquee,

no nothing.

There was a car parked with a couple sitting in

that we had never seen before.

We assumed that one of them was Dana.

They were the people that she had hired

to come and fill the marquee

to make it really, really special for us.

And they were still none the wiser.

So they assumed that she was gonna turn up as well.

[Nicky] This is the worst bit.

Dana had messaged me saying,

"We're running late. Don't worry.

We'll be there."

And that was the last message I received from her.

By lunchtime she hadn't turned up.

We kept ringing and it just ringed through.

Then we thought it might be a problem with phone, so I rang

and then somebody else rang.

The couple that were there to put the marquee together,

they rang. There was just no answer.

It was surreal

because there was somebody from Hull that had turned up

um, and they were there to put all the decorations together.

It was about 2:00 o'clock,

we had to go to the church,

to then do our rehearsals.

"When we get back, she'd be setting up everything."

We didn't know what had happened.

We didn't know there was something wrong with her.

We then left.

We went to do the rehearsal.

So it's in your mind. "What's going on?"

Tried again to ring her,

still no answer.

Gav, who were gonna get the marquee from,

had put a up a post on Facebook,

talking about Dana, saying, you know,

"You can't do this to them.

"It's going to be the wedding day. You've not turned up.

You can't leave them like this."

It was the morning of the 26 July, 2019.

I was scrolling through Facebook

and it pops up.

A man who told Dana never to book a marquee with him again

and he would never do business with her.

I initially panicked, thinking, "I've booked a marquee.

Is this the same person."

When I went on his Facebook,

the photos of the marquee that she had sent me

were of his Facebook.

So I panicked, thinking, "I have got a marquee booked and he's now said

that he'd never do business with her again."

When I rang him,

I explained to him who I was and the day of my wedding.

And he said he had never heard of me

and he has never said to Dana that he would do a favor for somebody

whose mum was terminal.

I was just panic stricken.

I didn't really know what to do.

I rang my best friend who met Dana with me

and told her, and what she had said to me

was just try and get in touch with Dana.

It might just be a misunderstanding.

I made an excuse to message her

and asked her, "Do you know a videographer?

'Cause it was one thing that I hadn't booked.

And the message is still never being delivered.

I also tried to ring Dana's phone...

and it just kept going to voicemail.

[Phil] I was trying to calm her down.

Just tried to reassure that whatever happens, we'll get married,

and your mum will be there.

Phil said to me that I needed to ring the police

and ring my bank.

The day that I found out was my mum's birthday.

I was busy ringing the police

and looking through Facebook

rather than spending time with my mum.

[Carl] We worked in the same building

and the wedding supplier who makes cakes.

The bride-to-be contacted the cakemaker

expecting a wedding cake

for a wedding which was the following day.

But she didn't know anything about this

and not had any payment for it.

She was unable to get in touch with Dana 'cause her phone was switched off.

So I tried phoning her and had the same response.

So I tried Messenger and her Facebook page disappeared.

It was a massive shock.

I was literally the next when the wedding is.

Eventually I put on Dana's profile page

asking what's going on

and if anybody else is having problems could you contact us

and try and get it resolved.

And then we got contacted by a few more people.

And that's when we realized there's a problem.

Lots of people came forward

saying that they had paid for the weddings

and she disappeared.

So I set up a group on Facebook

to try and help these people, to get them supplies

and what have you.

The amount of people that came forward,

it was mind-blowing.

[Alex] My name is Alex Grove and I'm a journalist.

I got a message from Carl Simpson

who was a local contact of mine.

He made me aware of woman who had been scammed

on the eve of her wedding.

Initially, it was just one person.

Then we discovered that another had also been scammed.

We realized it was potentially a lot bigger story

than just one person being scammed,

and actually it turned out that there were dozens.

When I started the group, I was expecting about six members

We ended up with nearly a thousand members.

It wasn't just couples getting married but were losing money.

People that were supplying goods and stuff like that,

also lost their money.

We lost about a £1,000 worth of cutlery and plates.

All the people had bookings which were not fulfilled.

And there was just panic.

There's weddings the next day, there were weddings in three days,

then wedding is on the following weekend.

There was so many

here there and everywhere, wasn't just in Hull.

There's places booked where we could never have got catering

because we weren't able to transfer food that far.

It was just mass hysteria, that's all.

So I was totally shocked.

We just did whatever we could to try and help.

To see all these people,

they were absolutely heartbroken, horrified.

They had lost all the savings.

So I was totally shocked.

Didn't know which way to turn.

Dana's customers would have felt

that they had some kind of intimate relationship with her.

After all, they're letting her into one of the most important

and personal parts of their lives,

their weddings.

Dana was fanning intimacy.

She was fanning this emotional connection.

And I think she did this so they'd keep their guard down.

And it's quite disturbing to think that this whole time

she was pretending to be personable,

but really she was seeing them as cash cows.

Some of Dana's personality traits and characteristics

are similar to those of psychopaths.

So not only is there this massive lack of empathy,

but psychopaths generally are quite charming and manipulative.

In fact, I would say that most psychopaths lie to some degree.

they use their personalities

so that they can manipulate people around them.

[Sam] The Facebook group became sort of a, bit like, support group, really.

The people asking if anybody knew who could do the flowers,

who could do the car or their cake.

Then that's when the volume of how many people she ripped off

came through.

I was mad. I was angry. I was upset.

I can't even explain how mad and upset I was.

Nobody had heard from Dana,

and that's when I knew,

she disappeared with my money.

[Alex] Dana was nowhere to be seen.

She disappeared off the face of the earth.

People were frustrated and they wanted answers.

There were dozens of people that claimed that they had been scammed by Dana.

All of these people wanted justice.

[Nicky] I had a lot of people message me

who had seen quite a lot of negative stuff about Dana on Facebook as well.

They had booked a wedding with her,

and the most important thing for me was obviously getting married to Jason.

[Jason] It was shocking.

We've got a wedding in two days.

We've got a hundred people turning up for the wedding

but we don't have a venue as yet.

Dana would have seen her victims as prey all along.

The people who were getting married would have been quite stressed

and quite excited about their wedding day.

So they would have been distracted.

This would have allowed Dana

to continue extracting money from them

and give her the opportunity to escape

without them even really paying her attention.

[Nicky] I can only describe like the next

couple of hours of all days. It was just being like a blur.

Numb.

I didn't know where to go, what to do,

where to go next,

who to speak to.

I was angry. I was hurt. I was upset.

Usually when people suffer an acute and unexpected trauma,

there's a whole range of emotions.

Initially, there's this state of disbelief or being overwhelmed.

And once that's passed,

there can be lots of different emotions,

from anxiety, depression,

anger, frustration.

Sometimes, people isolate themselves a little bit

and they could be quite withdrawn.

[Jason] The realism, when it kicked in was, "No. It can't be.

She wouldn't do that to us."

Especially two days before your wedding.

That was the hard bit.

Hoping the following day we're gonna get a phone call

saying, "Oh, we turned up. We did our work through the night.

Everything is great."

Nicky was still understandably concerned

three days before this marquee wasn't there,

and Dana still wasn't picking up her phone.

She wasn't answering phone-calls.

Until the day before, I still thought she'd turn up,

and I think that's just my good nature.

I think I was just being naive to realize

that how someone could do that to somebody,

and how I fell for it.

[Phil] Felt a fool of myself. I'd been suckered

by somebody who was very clever.

A lot of these women were left feeling embarrassed and humiliated

by what had happened,

and that they got sucked in and duped in by this lie.

[Jason] One of our friends...

had informed Stray FM.

And Stray FM rang us and said,

"We wanna put this out to everybody

to get you some support and some help."

There were so many people that came forward,

who volunteered to help us.

It was just unreal.

The Church then offered us their room.

As I said to Nicky, "Do you know what, we've got the church,

we've got all these people turning up.

If we have to get married, we will still get married,

and if I have to sit in the middle of the church yard

and have pizza,

I don't care. That's how we're gonna get married."

We then had to repurchase,

re-get another venue for the daytime.

Nighttime, we got the venue for free

but we still had to pay for the food and set ups and everything.

In total, it was about £6,700.

What she did prior to our wedding

was unquestionably despicable.

There's no words that we can say.

However she didn't ruin my wedding day.

We made the best of the situation.

We were having a laugh and a joke at the front of the alter with everybody,

just trynna keep the spirits high.

[Nicky] There was a lot of marquee jokes in the speeches.

You know, and everyone is brilliant.

And the day couldn't have gone any better.

We know that Dana was a good wedding planner.

Initially, she actually provided a good service to her customers,

but at some point she made the decision to start scamming them.

Was it premeditated?

Or perhaps, it was opportunistic.

Perhaps, at some point she saw

that there was a way that she could extract this money

without actually doing any of the work.

[Nicky] I was annoyed at myself.

You just feel stupid for trusting somebody.

And in all honesty, I really thought that she would turn up

if I just waited.

She wouldn't do it.

She wouldn't let me down.

[Dr. Sohom] Dana is an established actor

and an establish liar.

We see this by the way she's able to gain trust

in her victims.

She shows them affection, she uses kisses and emojis in her messages.

So to them,

there's a personal connection.

She's not just some separate businesswoman.

[Carl] At one point I felt guilty for what had happened

because I felt like we had helped her get away with this.

'Cause she was using our pictures and all of that lot.

When you find out that she's used you

to scam people.

It's so easy that people can get sucked into this.

[Sam] When I called the police and explained to them,

they said to me

it hadn't been past my wedding day

so I couldn't prove that actually

she disappeared with my money.

Dana's name was being battered about

and everyone who had the Twidale surname

was being associated with what she was doing.

Carl was technically her husband

but they had been estranged for a long time.

However, that didn't stop people from targeting him

and assuming that he was in on all the scams.

I wanted to help Carl

to make sure everyone knew that he had nothing to do

with what Dana was doing.

He was getting sent death threats

and he claims that actually she'd also scammed him out of money.

They were living in separate houses

and he was in the process of trying to divorce her.

He was mortified by what had happened.

He felt incredibly remorseful.

A line he actually he used to me was, "She should be thrown to the wolves."

Which kinda gets across just how strongly he felt about her.

[Dr. Sohom] After their marriage breaks down,

carl tries to end it formally by sending her divorce papers.

And what's interesting is that Dana seems to completely ignore this.

She is indifferent.

To me this shows a massive irresponsibility.

And that's interesting because that's another criteria

for being clinical psychopath.

[Angela Ayliffe] When I initially heard about Dana Twidale,

she'd been working as a wedding planner

and allegedly organized weddings,

but not carried out the services that she promised.

As more and more reports came in,

it was obvious that she deliberately offered services

that she was never ever gonna fulfill.

So then, it is a fraud.

It transpired that she had organized weddings in Wales,

down south, all over the country,

and she was promising to be in two places at once.

It was decided that Homicide would take any jobs

in relation to Dana Twidale.

And we would put 'em all as one case

to submit to the CPS.

When I got Dana's financial records,

I could see that there was money coming in from the victim

and I could see money going out,

but it wasn't going to where she said it was going,

and it wasn't paying for things in respect to the wedding.

I screenshotted her profile photo

and put it on my Facebook page asking if anybody knew where she was.

Because I met her husband on the day she was dressing the christening,

I knew where he worked so I went to go and see him,

to ask him if he knew anything about her whereabouts.

And he hadn't seen her.

He just said that he didn't know where she was.

That day, originally, I thought

I've met her with her husband who was singing her praises

of how wonderful she'd been at other people's weddings

and he was helping her with the christening.

I originally thought that both pulled the world over my eyes.

So that's why I went to go and see him as well.

And I could see straightaway by his face

that he had no idea what was going on.

After leaving Nicky and Jason in the lurch,

Danna then decides to run away.

It shows that she was impulsive and irresponsible.

Again, these are typical features of a psychopath.

[Angela] By July, 2019,

Dana's life was coming crashing down around her shoulders.

She had got numerous weddings booked,

none of the services had been booked.

Some of the weddings were booked on the same day.

She was reported as missing by her ex-husband

and a photo circulated

on Facebook of Dana on the beach, abroad.

[Alex] Weeks were passing, Dana was nowhere to be seen.

There were dozens of people that claimed that they had been scammed by Dana

and all of these people wanted justice.

There was very little the police could do

'cause just no one knew where she was.

Things suddenly changed when a picture of her appeared.

A photo circulated from somebody

who was on holiday in Benidorm.

They had seen the pictures on the Facebook,

and said, "She's staying in this hotel."

[Alex] She has a very distinctive tattoo on her back

which gave her away.

And immediately signified that it was her.

Her ex-husband got a photo sent of her sitting by the pool.

You could see that it was her with all her tattoos.

How did she rip people off like that

and then go and swan off and sit by a pool drinking cocktails?

On everybody else's money.

My feelings was that she's a disgusting human.

[Jason] Even while she was texting us,

she was in Benidorm

having a holiday, spending our money and everybody else's money.

[Nicky] We almost felt embarrassed

that we're working overtime to pay back the money that we owe to people

and she's in Benidorm by the poolside.

And we're stuck here, dealing with the mess that she's left behind.

We couldn't even afford to go on a honeymoon.

We knew she was abroad and the inquiries were made

to see when she'll be coming back into the country.

Police believed that Dana was gonna return to the UK

because she was staying in a hotel.

It was put on the national computer that if she landed anywhere

and the airports were aware.

So that we knew as soon as she entered the country,

she would be detained.

Dana was subsequently detained at the airport

and she was brought into custody, into Hull.

[Alex] She was arrested shortly after her arrival.

They interviewed her.

Wanted to speak to her about the allegations she was facing.

She didn't admit

that she had taken the money with no intention of fulfilling the services.

Initially, she was saying that," I intended to do the weddings."

I think I was even more mad when I found out that she denied everything.

Then, when I found out...

She was being caught red-handed.

I had all the proofs on the scale that she had done it.

So then try and lie again?

[Alex] She was then released on police bail.

During that time, it's thought that she managed to pick up some more jobs in Hull,

and there were reported sightings of her in takeaways

in and around the city.

People couldn't understand how she was still free

and able to collect money and work

when she was accused of all these horrific crimes against people.

[Dr. Sohom] When Dana came back from Spain,

she continued to work in Hull,

and she did this quite openly.

People saw her working there and some people were angry at her presence.

She seemed completely indifferent to this.

I think this really speaks to her personality.

People from all across the country had been duped in by Dana.

A lot of these women were left feeling embarrassed and humiliated.

She managed o fleece at least 20 couples

out of over £15,000.

That's what we know about.

But there's the potential that she may have allegedly scammed even more.

[Angela] Dana ruined people's lives.

What might not be a huge amount of money to some people,

to those individual people,

it was money that they didn't have.

Generally speaking, psychopaths make excellent con artists.

Not only do they have that core lack of empathy,

but on top of that,

they tend to be very charming, very manipulative,

very deceitful,

which makes them extra dangerous

'cause they're very hard to spot.

At their very core,

al psychopaths lack empathy

and they're very good at manipulating others,

and they see everybody, even their close friends and family

as victims, as people that they can potentially exploit.

[Angela] We've got a good case against Dana.

As well as the wedding planning fraud,

there had been previous allegations earlier on

when she was a lot younger.

I found two incidents back in '98 and '99.

There were allegations that Dana had scammed two males

who she'd been in a relationship with.

She also was involved

in what the press office term is a "Romance fraud."

[Alex] Dana loved to use Tinder

as a way of scamming people.

One of the most high-profile and really sad cases was a vulnerable man

who had just lost his mother.

Dana claimed that she was escaping an abusive relationships

and that she needed money to get away from her violent ex.

He was a very caring man and was happy to give her the money

so that she could get away and start a new life for herself.

She had absolutely no interest in him, romantically,

and she was just there to try and scam him out of as much money as she could.

She manage to steal £40,000 from him,

and it had a huge effect on him.

The way that these people manipulate

is so real

that you couldn't believe that you're in a relationship.

[Dr. Sohom] One of the key things that really stands out to me

is that Dana has a parasitic lifestyle.

She's got this pattern of leaching off vulnerable people.

[Angela] Between the first interview

and a second interview,

we had a total of 27 victims.

She said that she needed the money

'cause she was... In the second interview, because she had been gambling.

She said that she got into a vicious circle.

But I still don't believe that she had any intention at all,

otherwise she wouldn't have been booking them for the same day.

The evidence that we had overwhelming.

We had got multiple people, all saying the same thing.

Dana pleaded guilty on her first appearance at court.

When we finally went to court,

I read out my victim impulse statement.

I said how it made me feel

that Dana would use my mum's illness

to receive gains from me.

And then we heard how sorry Dana was for what she'd done.

She never looked up once.

She looked down at the floor.

And if she was really sorry,

then when she was caught first

she would have admitted it, wouldn't she?

It was really hard to sit there across from somebody

that had done something so bad

and somebody that you thought you could trust.

We just found out more and more stuff that she had just lied about.

[Jason] The hardest thing was the fact

that every time something was mentioned

she was looking across at all of us

and she was smirking

as if it was just a game to her.

And why would somebody that wants to make your day,

the most special day in the world,

actually be as cruel as what she was?

And then to sit there in the courtroom and smile at Nikki

was despicable.

[Alex] When Dana was sentenced,

it came to lights that she managed to scam people

out of a total of £60,000.

She only had £600 in her account.

People were infuriated.

She clearly didn't have the means to be able to repay

what she had scammed out of people.

Dana was given five years

and that was the toughest sentence that the judge could impose.

[Jason] I honestly believe that the five years that she was given

was probably the best outcome that we could ever ask for.

[Sam] I was shocked at how little she got

for the amount of money that she'd swindled out of people.

She has done this sort of thing before,

I think she'll do something else.

[Phil] What made it worse for us

was the fact that Sam's mum was dying.

It played on that Sam was vulnerable.

I was probably at the most vulnerable point

-in my life that I've ever been. -Yeah.

If she was let loose,

and she was allowed to set up another social media website,

she'd be doing it again.

[Sam] My mum passed away on the 30th October, 2019.

And we finally got married

on the 15th October, 2021.

Although the wedding was perfect,

I think it'll always be tinged with a little bit of sadness

and anger towards Dana.

[Angela] If you're operating on Facebook

and you're not delivering the services as promised,

then you are gonna be brought before the courts.

I think I've grown up a little bit since that time.

Maybe a better judge of character.

maybe, not to find somebody on the Facebook.

[Jason] Thankfully to everybody helping us on that day,

we got the venues that we needed.

It was at a cost

but there were so many genuine people out there that helped us.

[Sam] A lot of nice people came forward, didn't they,

when i got my dress formed.

People really pulled together

to show that there's actually nice people out there.