Wedding Planning Scam: $6,500 stolen

In 2018, we hired Gillian as a partial wedding planner to help us organize the events outside of the wedding. As part of that, we asked Gillian to organize our shuttle transportation for the weekend. As we worked with her, she asked to manage our payments to make it “easy for us”.

As we got closer to the wedding, Gillian started becoming increasingly pushy about transferring her the money, saying we might not have transportation if we don’t transfer the money. A week before the wedding, we definitely did not want to jeopardize our transportation and so we transferred her the amount due.

Shockingly, a month after the wedding, we discovered that Gillian did not transfer even a deposit to the transportation vendor. She wrote a check to the vendor that bounced. We ended up paying the vendor ourselves.

We’ve communicated with Gillian and gave her many opportunities to return the money but each time she made commitments and never met them. We published a review of her on TheKnot that she deleted, and then she finally sent us a check for the money we are owed.

Given her history, we asked her to confirm that there are enough funds before depositing the check. Initially, she said she’s really sorry but there are not enough funds and that she’s trying to get more contracts signed with other people to be able to return the money to us. Then finally she confirmed we should deposit the check. We deposited it, and it bounced.

To date, Gillian took $6,500 from us.

Barbara and Gil Raichshtien

Final court judgment against Gillian Shenon of approx. $20,000

1. In or about January 2014, Plaintiff Thomas Everson and his wife Ellen Everson, engaged defendant Gillian Shenon to perform certain interior design services, including the purchase of certain pieces of furniture for the home in San Francisco.

2. In or about January 2014, Plaintiff Thomas Everson made payments to Shenon totaling $13,146.00. The parties had agreed verbally that this sum would cover in full Shenon’s design fee and all of the various items of furniture picked out by Shenon and Plaintiff’s wife, Ms.Ellen Everson.

3. For the next eight months, Ms. Everson, repeatedly requested information from Shenon as to when the items of furniture would be delivered. Shenon would state that the furniture would be delivered within four weeks, and then repeatedly deflected these questions and inquiries with excuses ranging from lack of time due to her travels, her personal and business financial problems, to health concerns relating to her family members and obligations to other clients, among other excuses.

4. Shenon implied through communications with Ms. Everson that she had used Ms. Everson’s funds to pay for her own personal expenses, such as car repair and moving expenses. She also told Ms. Everson that she had made a gift of money to her brother. Shenon further told Ms. Everson that she placed the orders, but could not complete them due to lack of funds, and could not complete the orders for Ms. Everson’s furniture until payments from other clients’ projects came in. This was despite Ms. Everson already having had paid Shenon.

5. Plaintiff and his wife have suffered tremendous stress and emotional harm from Shenon’s misappropriation of their funds compounded by Shenon continually failing to follow up with them regarding the orders and continual excuses, all the while refusing to return the funds.

6. Shenon acknowledges that she should return the funds to Plaintiff, but states she no longer has the funds to return. This in turn has forced Plaintiff to bring this action. On information and belief, plaintiff alleges that Shenon engaged him and his wife for the purpose of using their funds for personal use and on prior clients’ orders, and knew she would not be using plaintiff’s funds for plaintiff’s orders, or have any way to pay for plaintiff’s orders. The Eversons have repeatedly requested from Shenon the names of the vendors with whom she purportedly placed their orders, and requested documentation of those orders, but Shenon has refused to provide the same. The Eversons contracted the lamp vendor in July 2014 and was told that there was no record of such order.

Tom Everson

https://www.plainsite.org/dockets/2n4qsc21m/superior-court-of-california-county-of-san-francisco/thomas-everson-v-gillian-shenon-et-al/

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This website refers to Gillian Shenon, a resident of Marin County, CA, who has been defrauding a myriad of clients for the past decade. Gillian operates:

Gillian Shenon Events: http://www.gillianshenonevents.com

Gillian Shenon Interiors: http://www.gillianshenoninteriors.com

Our goal is to alert the public that Gillian Shenon steals money from her clients. Below are stories of actual clients turned victims.

Interior Design Scam: $6,328.22 stolen

To whom it may concern:
I met Gillian Shenon during the school year of 1992/93. She was employed as an assistant at the local preschool. After knowing her for a few months she began to babysit for our boys and eventually came to live at our home and worked as a nanny. 
She travelled with us as a nanny too. We remained close for many years until the following incident in 2015.

In 2014 I was diagnosed with breast cancer. I had just purchased a home in Calistoga and was making plans to remodel it. Due to my diminished physical health I asked Gillian to help me with the project. We had several meetings and jointly selected items to order for the Calistoga home. When asked, I wrote checks to Gillian to cover the costs of the home items.

As the project progressed I continually asked Gillian when certain things would be delivered. She most often blamed the vendors and never told me that she had not actually placed the orders. I found this out by calling a vendor myself and was told that the order had never moved from “proposal” to “order”. This should have been done by Gillian and instead she cashed the checks and kept the money. This happened with several vendors as you see below.

Attached is an email with itemization written by Gillian acknowledging her debt, still unpaid.

Pam Roberts

Interior Design Scam: $23,000 stolen

In December 2014, my son, Alex and I engaged Gillian Shenon as an interior designer for Alex’s home in San Francisco. Between January 2015 and October 2015, we wired Gillian $28,260.94 for design services, of which, approximately $23,000.00 was to be used to purchase a Restoration Hardware sectional couch, coffee table, floor lamps, a hall table, lighting and custom mirrors for bookshelves for Alex’s home.

Gillian took our money but never purchased the furniture.  Gillian admitted that she had used our funds for other projects and personal expenses. While she promised to return our money, she never did, always citing some personal tragedy.  Unfortunately, Gillian’s insolvency and the costs of legal action did not make it practical for us to sue her in Civil Court.  This was an extremely hurtful experience that we want to prevent from happening to other of Gillian’s potential victims.

— Ms. Barbara Roux