Arizona Pair Say Utah Wedding Planner Scammed Them Of $30,000.
Marya Piani, CBS 5 News – http://www.kpho.com/news/25053227/detail.htm
POSTED: 10:48 am MST September 17, 2010

PARK CITY, Utah — Wedding Day is supposed to be one of the most memorable days of a couple’s life. But a Phoenix area couple’s wedding dreams almost crashed because of a wedding planner they claim ran off with nearly $30,000 of their money.

For the past year while living in Arizona, Tina and Nate Herd planned their dream wedding at a Park City, Utah, Ski Resort. They said they got close to 37-year-old Tania Clark the wedding planner from nearby Heber City, Utah They checked her references, started working with her, and even became friends, they said. “We went to her house and met her family, her kids,” Nate said. Summit County Sheriff’s Office Detective Ron Bridge said Clark used a stolen credit card instead of the money given to her by the Herds to secure rooms at the Canyons Resort, a popular wedding destination. The Herds didn’t know there was a problem until they arrived in Utah just days before the wedding. “We got a call from the vice president of the Canyons, his attorney, and the wedding coordinator from there,” Nate said. “They sat us down and said we’d been scammed and that nothing had been paid for, and we had guests arriving the next day.” The Herds did get married last week in front of 200 guests. But they had to pay the Canyons Resort again, this time at cost, which was $15,000.

This isn’t Clark’s first run-in with the law. She was arrested five years ago and served one month in jail for defrauding friends out of thousands of dollars, after she told them she was fighting cancer. Clark has been charged in two separate fraud cases, according to the Park Record in Park City. She is charged with four felonies for unlawful use of a financial transaction card, theft by deception, forgery and communications fraud, according to the Summit County Sheriff’s Office. Resort officials reported the crimes to the authorities.