Doran (pictured outside Carlisle Crown court today) stole money from 30 of her fiance’s friends that was meant for his stag do
A ‘callous’ bride-to-be stole £11,000 in stag party cash from her fiance and his 30 closest friends who only realised she’d faked flight documents when they got to the airport.
Chris Mahone, 29, only exposed 32-year-old Rachel Doran’s deceit when he and his friends turned up for their flight at Leeds Bradford airport.
The panicked party-goers called ahead to the Ibiza Rocks hotel on the island and found that no bookings had been made.
The stag, a nuclear process worker, discovered that while they had been planning their wedding, his fiance had secretly been spending the stag do cash on herself.
When he rang her to ask her where his cash was, she claimed she was pregnant – but her internet history revealed she had searched: ‘fake ultrasound picture maker.’
Doran fled their home in Cleator Moor, Cumbria, when Mr Mahone told her the wedding was off and he never wanted to see her again.
Doran avoided jail at Carlisle Crown Court after she admitted stealing £11,160 for the stag party and forging Jet2.com documents.
She and Mr Mahone were childhood friends who had met at school and went on to begin a relationship later.
Chris Mahone (pictured with Doran, when they were engaged) shared his pain on social media after he realised what she’d done
Mr Mahone apologised to his friends in an emotional Facebook post when he realised what his fiance had done
He proposed to her in September 2015 and they began planning their wedding for December 2017, scheduling his three-day stag party for September 7th 2017.
Doran was made the ‘treasurer’ for the stag do and helped organise it along with two of Mr Mahone’s best friends.
She collected £360 from each of the stags and was supposed to bank it to pay for their flights and hotels.
But she frittered it away on herself and, although it could not be established exactly what she spent it on, she was a regular online gambler.
Gerard Rogerson, prosecuting, told the court the stag party met at Cleator Moor Celtic Football Club on September 7th 2017 and first realised something was wrong when the bus failed to turn up to take them to the airport.
They persuaded the company there had been a mistake and a driver came out to take them.
Some of the group were unwilling to let Doran wreck their holiday and went away on an impromptu trip to Magaluf
Mr Rogerson said: ‘A member of the group had got there before the bus and said there was a problem, his documents had not been recognised and this cast doubt on the entire booking arrangement. He rang the Ibiza Rocks Hotel and discovered that no bookings had been made.
‘It became clear the Jet2 booking confirmation form was a fake document and it was then that Mr Mahone tried to ring Miss Doran on her mobile phone but she did not answer initially.
‘Later in the day Miss Doran phoned him wanting to talk and he told her to leave him alone as he wanted nothing to do with her. She texted him later and told him, erroneously, that she was pregnant.’
A victim impact statement from Mr Mahone was read out in court in which he described his devastation at discovering his fiance’s dishonesty.
Mr Mahone said: ‘I felt so let down. I trusted her and was getting ready to settle down and spend the rest of my life with her.
‘I loved her at the time and I have not been able to move on because I cannot trust anyone else in the way I trusted Rachel.
‘I am trying to move on but I find it difficult to talk to women because I am scared of getting hurt.
‘My friends are gutted, they don’t want the money back, they just want justice done. My friends could have turned on me but they didn’t.
Nine of the friends decided to go away anyway and booked themselves on a flight to Magaluf to make the best of a bad situation
‘I don’t want to see Rachel again I just want some closure. Maybe when she has been sentenced I will regain some of my confidence and kickstart my life again. I want Rachel to learn from what she has done.’
Doran was unable to tell police what she had done with the money but said she had been getting ‘deeper and deeper’ into debt.
Kim Whittlestone, mitigating, said Doran was of previous good character although she had received cautions for shoplifting in 2003.
She said: ‘This was a relationship which was extremely positive in the beginning in which they were both striving to have a stable family life.
‘Unfortunately during the course of that relationship in the short period of time of 14 months she suffered a number of miscarriages and the impact on her mental health was significant. During that time she was seeking to please others to bolster her own self worth.’
She said that Doran’s family had disowned her, that her relationship had been destroyed by her offending and she ended up in a hostel where she had made a ‘serious attempt’ to take her own life.
Ms Whittlestone told the court that she had in fact been pregnant as she told Mr Mahone but had terminated the pregnancy.
Judge Nicholas Barker told Doran: ‘You have acted in a deceitful and callous way. You must have known this would be found out and would come crashing down around you.
‘It cannot be said this was spur of the moment offending because it happened in a drip drip fashion, furthermore you produced the false tickets, a deceitful act designed to hide what you had done.’
He continued: ‘You did all of this at a time you were preparing for your marriage. The real victim was your fiance, Mr Mahone, who now bears the memory that the woman he was to commit himself to in marriage had lied to him, to his best friends and to his family.
‘This has caused him to question his judgement and describes his confidence has been knocked and he has difficulties with trust as the result of what you did.’
He spared Doran jail, suspending her 15 month sentence for two years, imposed 20 rehabilitation activity days and 240 hours of unpaid work.
Judge Barker also ordered that she repay £3,600 in compensation to be split equally by the stag party from her wages of £316 per month at a factory near her new home in Egremont, Cumbria, which she hares with a new partner.
Nine of Mr Mahone’s friends spent £400 each on a spontaneous trip in a bid to ‘make the best out of a bad situation’ when they realised they’d been cheated.
But Mr Mahone himself was not in the mood to join his friends and instead returned home to Cumbria.
One of the revellers on the trip told MailOnline: ‘After we found out about the holiday we went inside the airport, went to the desk and asked if there were any flights to Benidorm or Magaluf.
‘They offered us £150 return so we said “f*** it, we’re off to Magaluf”. To be honest we haven’t even booked a flight back.
‘We’re just drinking loads all day today. Chris is the nicest person in the world, I just can’t believe it’s happened to him.
‘People back home are absolutely devastated. We’re just trying to make the best out of a bad situation. We’re devastated like.’