Scam: wedding organizer left twenty couples from Antioquia with the crespos made

A supposed wedding planner would have ripped off a dozen couples in eastern Antioquia. Through false documents and a solid facade on social networks, citizen Yessid Mauricio Ramírez Macías would have convinced them to entrust him with his special day, but they ended up losing a cumulative amount of more than 100 million pesos.

Last February, the local media outlet Diarioriente had replied to the complaint of a woman who had stolen more than ten million pesos that she had earmarked for her marriage. In September 2021, after her partner asked for her hand, the woman found out places in Medellin to advance her reception.

When he found one he liked, he went to visit him and the owner of the place introduced him — and recommended — Ramirez. After they had established trust and until they had received a contract from them, they handed Ramirez the huge sum of money, corresponding to 80% of the total value of the wedding, according to the initial quote.

Suddenly, her wedding planner disappeared from the map along with her social networks. Surprised to hear nothing about Ramirez, they called directly the place that was supposed to be reserved for the reception of their marriage. They discovered that there was no such reservation and that at least ten couples had called under the same circumstances.

When the scammed couple approached to talk to the woman who recommended Mauricio Ramírez, she assured that this person did organize weddings, but that she began to incur debts with her suppliers and decided to stop working with him.

The Blu Radio station heard an even sadder case: a victim started managing her marriage with this wedding planner since May 2021 so that it would take place on September 9. In addition to relying on the beautiful photos on social media, he fell for one of his classic tricks to establish trust: take them to taste the menu they were supposed to serve at the wedding.

When their wedding date came and the worried bride and groom arrived at the venue, “we realized that there were no chairs, tables, or anyone to organize. That's when we realized it was really a scam. A wedding in which we had initially invested twelve million. By the time we wrote to him to find out what had happened, he had already blocked us.”

On the other hand, one of the suppliers assured Diarioriente that the wedding planner had several ways of sustaining its fraudulent activity: it presented photos of others, showed false documents and the payments of new customers were spent on late events or on subscriptions for future events.

The supplier also narrated that, on one occasion, Yessid Mauricio Ramírez called the fiancés at four in the morning of the wedding day to tell them that he would not be able to do the event and “that, if they were going to sue him before the Prosecutor, they should do it, in the most shameless way”.

At the moment he has been sued for fraud and breach of trust before the Attorney General's Office, but it seems that the proceedings are stalled and that the wedding planner would already be looking for new unsuspecting individuals with a Venezuelan identification document. Apart from the 100 million that he took from couples, he owes his suppliers some 300 million pesos in services provided.

With false documents, he would be presenting the already defrauded suppliers as current, so it is these entrepreneurs who must put their faces and break the illusions of couples: “This is how he is, robbing people, making false documents and involving companies that have nothing to do with him”.

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