My Bridesmaid Ruined My Wedding and Is Now in Prison | This Morning

back in 2017 our first guests were busy preparing for their dream wedding that was until a devastating betrayal by a Kimberly Baker's chief bridesmaid which resulted in her losing 50,000 pounds of force her to cancel her wedding last week's Kimberly's former best friend Helen dove pleaded guilty to two counts of fraud she was sentenced to two years and eight months in prison and as they start to rebuild their lives Kimberly joins us now alongside a fiance Phillip to share the story and welcome welcome I think thank you for coming in today how did you first meet her at the farm where we had horses yeah is she sorry gone Meredith you what she was like as a person she was kind caring a friend that you wouldn't think anything I really just like meeting and quite shy girl your normal everyday girl and and you got friendly very quickly yes and within a month you were talking about maybe thinking about a change of career yes because you were in telecommunications that's right yeah yeah what did you tell her what did you say and at first it was very much just general conversation you have you got children who you where'd you work and then she knew from things that I was doing the background that I was training to do my diploma in counseling children adolescence that's them when the story came that she worked as an adoption work for inter Borough Council and the lot of people show the team with eyes and so what you really wanted to do was move into child safeguarding and you thought well she can help and she was actually offering you all sorts of opportunities so much so of course she's your friend you're gonna trust her you believe her you took voluntary redundancy um you went through these sort of online interview process yeah so you thought yeah all looked very official I imagine yes she'd actually got me an application form which are filled in at the reference on the top for the job role from Warrington Borough Council all filled in sent it to her manager current janitor and email me thanks Kimberly I've received your application we're really looking forward to interviewing you and it went from there didn't it then knows it's unlocked down because I've said a lot of children's services down we can't have you in for the interview so therefore we'd have to do it by email modes and she didn't she daddy children yeah emerged with foster children's that's why I could ten lots of excuses on why you couldn't go in there so a lot of this was done on lines of letters and emails and and you were sent a sort of a job application type questionnaire weren't ya which you filled it out and you were told that you passed with flying colors yeah and so it progressed from there but constant delays now by which time you of course have quit your job and money's becoming a good time in an issue yeah yeah definitely how long was the delay how long did this keep you waiting for as the months rolled on and basically we were challenging Helen because we were getting desperate and would say look was this going we're getting emails here but she was in person backing up the email so to us it was like there's two different people there was obviously the people on the emails and then there was Helen our friend well you only got eight thousand pounds I think we're done to see didn't trying but yeah left so yeah money is now getting extremely tight and you said listen I'm gonna have to take another job because until this comes through you have to take a temporary job she said that and first she was like right okay yeah and on some way you want to take backs off now I've got me own house Phillips got his own house so we've got a separate bills between us and but then it was you can't work there because you risk in your new role through privacy confidentiality if they see that you've got another or somewhere else and it risk the job that you've been given so I go and give up that one so much deception here and almost all of that is going on she's still infiltrating your life personally lately every single day um becoming part of your family are your welcoming her in so much so that this wedding that you've got that you're planning a really exciting time of your life and you asked her to be part of that in fact to take a really important role yes she was last week she fries made I think that was probably yeah she came to all the venues the venues but but when I months in that she'd then become very very close she was with me every day this is a woman who's really close to who you trust I mean um and she's obviously deceiving you yeah but but when I read this morning that she was aware you had said to the kids listen the money's really tight this year don't think that father Christmas is gonna be quite as generous yeah yeah she was aware you'd had that conversation with your shoe sat in the same room she was sat in the same room as us and the kids are asking oh well can we have this can we have like any kid does we're no different than any other family the kids see something on telly they won't take it's the next big thing and both of us a look at each other thinking it's nowhere where's it gonna come from so where does this eventually sort of unravel how do you eventually discover that she's been deceiving you the pressure probably from the family and they were viewing me and because Phil what's this dad every day I saw his dad was saying this is gonna be Kim behind a we're not having around our house yeah she's travelling around doing nothing all day why I were getting bills covered in our overseas me redundancy and lending money off her selling me family members and so if the pressure was on was it was really yeah Tom Stipe and me but also trying to help at the same time it's really hard really really hard so we were then pressed not to say right well you actually work there's really proof that you work in there which took a bit of a famous student she told she felt great offense to it because she said I feel like the spotlights on me and I turn round and said it's on you I said because you're the only link we have to this job because she was going in saying well I've seen your desk I've seen your name on the desk and we were asking it's going to get wage slips because she said they were in that desk but they'd backdate those wait yeah yeah holding onto the fact that this money did you end up eventually going to the council yes we'd yes what happened was we'd fronted her over proof that she weren't there at the time we then went to the funeral of Innes yeah holy meets an offset is back there we'd advise there that you'll go in and of course she was like you can't do that you're gonna risk your job I'll get you a copy of a bank statement so she frauded a bank statement to say that she worked there so at this point we knew by locking the balances if yeah I picked it up that the balance is definite she'd forged it we then questioned her why have you done that and she was basically saying I did it you as a friend as my best friends then so you don't lose your job you've got an awful lot of money you've got your wedding coming up you've got all these bills and all this debt that you're in I'm doing take you so you don't lose that so in a way she's had a best yeah yeah understand lap so you went you went to the council you ejected all that yeah the council said there is no job we never heard of her the back dated he went back he said on the system about nine years yeah she's never worked for the council and at this point your whole world starts on me not me just swallow the betrayal your best friend you went to the police well yeah we went to the police when you confronted her what did she say well basically I I said her it was me who confronted her and I said hi Helena said these bank statements that you give us was proof I said how long did it take you to produce these and she went what do you mean yeah and I said the fraud I said you can clearly see that the font was a different colour the the balances didn't add up at the end and it was actually and when I seen them I said that's rubbish there's no way that's true well she admitted two counts of fraud by false representation on the 29th of January 2020 she was sentenced to two years in eight months in prison she was also ordered to pay 1,500 in conversation and handed a 10-year protection from harassment order forbidding her to contacting you Kimberley what all this doesn't explain normally with some case of fraud somebody's making money from something why is she doing what did she get out of this there was that this is how come it went on for so long because she was such a close friend we were saying well what she got to gain from this if she was financially gaining from then anybody had say hang on a minute we're paying now and would not get enough I'm not getting any further but that was the thing that kept fighting our thoughts all the time and we family start why because why and have you ever come to a conclusion as to why she did this to you no she was very controlled and I spent every day with ESA so I think it was a case of she knew what we were doing she was coming to meals with those every Friday when we'd go out she'd come to cost coffees in the morning and amazing the coffee's for she wanted I know it sounds tough but I think she wanted what we had yeah happiness a family you net she wanted to be part of something but you'd expect someone who wanted to be part of something to play an active role not try to destroy you know yeah and the thing is at the end of our conversations with people we have on subjects like there's people who've been scammed or thought it there's always a lesson you know watch out for this watch out for that you had no way of knowing this is your best friend became out of nowhere yeah what effect is it had because I know that you struggled as a couple for a little while cause financially put a lot of pressure on you so so what effect is it long-term had on you massive we've lost the wedding haven't we one of the weather in where do we lost fifty thousand pound and I think that one of the biggest impacts now is this trust yeah it's trust II we can talk only to the use we can talk on me to anyone but the thing is is actually asking us to trust someone now I get an email from somebody yeah is this true you know it's gonna take time the wall goes up and you like on guard what do you think of her don't feel nothing forward to be honest I don't at first it was like grieving for a person that's still alive yeah yeah yeah she was like she was like my sister I was with her every single day we were with her all the time actually when we found out like really it was a massive shock just completely just be so yeah yeah yeah I am yeah I won't deny that well I hope as a family you find a way to move on from this the best way that you can and that that wedding gets back on track its humble but and thank you for coming in today thank you you

Channel: This Morning

Views: 1,448,296

Keywords: this morning, holly willoughby, phillip schofield, this morning funniest, Holly & Phillip funny, best friend, betrayal, bridesmaid, wedding, fraud, prison, disloyal, ruined my life, Kimberley Baker

Id: rSpKd0HPayg

Length: 10min 44sec (644 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 05 2020