BELLINGHAM, Wash. — E-mail orders from out of town come in all the time at Our Kitchen is Your Kitchen, a two-year-old bakery at 3111 Newmarket St. in the Barkley area.
So when "Steven Nicole" sent the company an e-mail ordering a $1,500 five-piece wedding cake, to be billed to his credit card, co-owners Miykal Gates and Terri Zweber and staff went to work and got the elaborate cakes ready for pickup. They modeled the cakes after a photo that their customer e-mailed to them, complete with silk floral arrays on top.
The customer authorized the bakery to charge his credit card an extra $1,000 for shipping to Canada, and he asked the local bakers to wire the money to his shipper.
Gates said that seemed a bit odd to her. She Googled "Steven Nicole" as a precaution and found no red flags. They went ahead and wired the money. The shipper was supposed to pick up the cake on Saturday, April 10.
But Saturday came and went and nobody showed up. On Sunday, Gates said, they got another contact from Nicole asking them to wire additional funds.
Gates said she and her business partner got that sinking feeling.
Read the complete story at bellingham.com