A little while back, I found myself on the receiving end of a very elaborate scam. Here’s how it unfolded.

The DM That Started It All

Running a business account on Instagram means I get a lot of direct messages, many of them genuine questions about herbs. So, when a woman reached out introducing herself as an “artist” who worked with women recently released from prison, I didn’t immediately suspect anything.

She said she helped these women build confidence and income by practicing the art skills they’d learned inside. She wondered if they could design labels for my teas as a way to gain digital design experience.

I checked her out. She had an active Instagram page, a personal account, a podcast with well-known guests, and a charity focused on women’s prison reform in the UK. She even claimed to be setting up a branch of the charity here in Ireland. On top of that, she had a quarterly magazine filled with interviews from high-profile advocates.

Everything looked legitimate. And honestly, who wouldn’t want to support women trying to create a better life? So, I said yes.

The Work (and the Guilt)

A few days later, she sent me some label designs. They weren’t terrible, but they didn’t fit my brand. Still, instead of saying no, I felt guilty that these women had put in time and effort. So, I gave polite feedback and she promised they’d go back and revise them.

That’s when the scam deepened.

The “Magazine Feature”

While the women were “working” on new designs, the woman messaged me again,this time offering me an interview in her quarterly magazine. My story, she said, could inspire women in prison to learn another way to heal themselves.

She sent me links to past issues, and I recognized some of the names. It looked credible. Thrilled by the opportunity, I wrote and submitted the interview.

Then the ask came. She suggested that since her women had given their time on my tea labels, perhaps I could pay them for their work. And how could I say no, especially after she had just featured me in her magazine? We agreed on €350. Not a fortune, but still a big loss for me.

A short while later, she tried to sell me a portrait of myself for €400. That one was easier to refuse (I definitely don’t need a giant painting of me on the wall!).

Cracks in the Story

Eventually, she sent me a link to my feature: a three-page spread in the magazine. I should have been over the moon,but something kept nagging at me.

After some digging (and a friend even meeting her in person, where she tried to pretend to be someone else), it all came undone. The whole thing was a massive web of scams, all orchestrated by one woman.

The Bigger Picture

We reported her to the guards. They already knew about her,she had a UK arrest warrant and had fled to Ireland two years earlier. She’d scammed millions over the years, though her high-end con days were behind her.

This time, she picked the wrong target. Because this community herbalist also happens to love a good detective drama. Tracking her down helped lead to her arrest and extradition back to the UK.

Lessons Learned

The whole experience was eye-opening. I learned just how many loopholes exist in the justice system, and just how slow things can move. When I tracked her to a house in Galway, I thought it would take one phone call and ten minutes. In reality, it took ten calls and two days before she was finally arrested.

I may be €350 down, but I did get an interview to keep so here it is, in all its strange, scammy glory.

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Can you tell us a bit about you and how you started on this natural journey into using flowers and plants for cleansing and healing?

So healing has been in my family for generations. My great grandmother Ellen,locally would have been known to have “The Cure” to many ailments. Unfortunately things were never written down so some of that knowledge was forgotten. For me I feel like it is less about learning this plant knowledge & more about remembering what is in my DNA. 

Bottles of strange creams & cures were part of my childhood. We would dread being sick & going down to my gran’s house as she would pull some bottles out & make you drink something that was never going to taste great or rub a very smelly ointment on your cuts, bruises. But every time it worked it healed. 

It was over 20 year later when I was living in Alice spring Australia that I started to reconnect back to the spiritual side of me after many years of just going through the motions drinking & partying ignoring the parts of me that knew there was something deeper to connect too.  I met amazing people & one in particular who introduced me to energy healing, which now when i look back was the start of my journey back to the plants. 

When I came home many years later I just no longer fitted back into my life as it was before, everything from friendships to work just felt off, like this way of life is no longer part of what I need or want. I met an amazing woman in my home town Carlow who just this year suddenly passed away. She gave me the tools of meditation & trained me in Reiki healing & was an amazing support to me, she cracked open the door for me to start filling in all those missing connections that were to bring me back to the true me. 

From there I went on to study massage therapy, which led to me studying aromatherapy which is where my love for the plants really awoke again. 

While working with essential oils I kept feeling like if all this amazing healing can come from a little bottle, there has to be hundreds of plants out there that may not have any scent but are just as healing. 

I made an aromatherapy oil blend for my father who was having some pain in his arm & when I gave it to me, he said to me you know you’re just like your great grandmother working with all the plants & magic. That was the light bulb moment for me, that was the piece of the puzzle I needed, if it was already in my family I was going to be the one to pick back up pieces & continue on the plant journey.  

After asking around & doing some research I found an amazing herbal teacher Nikki Darrell whom i studied under for 2 years & then continue my studies for another 2 years with another powerful herbalist Gina McGarry who really thought me that we can read all the books we want on plants but if we are not willing to get down on the ground, sit with them, talk & sing to them we are losing a major part of the healing process. Gina was also a very big advocate for using local weeds that are part of our own environment, A lesson I try to bring to all my classes & work with clients. 

None of this by any means makes me special. We are all healers, we are all herbalists, it is in all our DNA, our ancestors used plants to heal as there was no other choice. So I am on a mission to help anyone who is interested in relearning & unearthing this skill that is deeply embedded in us all.

Why do you think women feel such an affinity to flowers?

We can all connect with plants & Nature but it seem that womenfolk have a stronger connection to work with the plant world, maybe that is because 100’s of year ago we were the healer of the community , the caregivers, the mothers, the grandmothers, we were the witches, Maybe it because as women our energies comes in  cycle’s we have menstrual cycle we have a life cycle of maiden, mother, crone, we cycle just as the moon does. We follow nature in our cycle & so it makes sense to me that women have a very strong connection to nature & all she has to offer.Working with plants is just one way to reconnect to the cycle.

It can be hard to step into a community among women in our current world  & find your own personal space, your little bit of Joy & this is where we can invite the plants in to your life, look closely at their cycle within each seed lie the whole plant the roots, the leaves, each petal each colour, the scent. A seed can lay dormant for 5,10, 20 year just waiting for the right conditions to make its present known & even if no one ever sees that plant it still fulfils its cycle of birth ,death & rebirth.  We are those seeds we can wait for many years to feel safe to bloom into our own true space . I encourage you to release some of those seeds in your own life, be it through writing, painting, singing, sowing, gardening, story telling, whatever brings you a moment of joy. Plant the seed. 

What is basic herbalism and how can your average human make the best of what’s around us?

Herbalism is many things to many people, I have many amazing herbalist friends & we all work with the plants a little differently. There is no right or wrong way, it is just how we connect to the  plants & the healing they offer. Some are into the more scientific end of what actions the plant has, some only work with Chinese herbal medicine, some love the blending of tonics, some don’t work with tea blends. For me being a herbalist is about getting people to reframe the idea of garden weeds into a picture of a free medicine cabinet on your doorstep. The most simple form of working with the plants is to make a herbal tea from the fresh plant so maybe pick some daisies & place them in a cup of boiling water to get the healing benefits. Simple!

I love to give people the knowledge of what plants can help with what health issues they or their family might be dealing with. Then all the things they thought were pesky annoying weeds & want to get rid of suddenly become their friends & they start to invite a little bit of the wild back into their garden & life. 

Each person has the ability to connect to nature & using herbs in your daily life be it with herbal tea blends that you get from your local herbalist or that you forage for yourself are a great way to start the journey. Some people say to me “I live in a city or I don’t have access to a garden”. That’s no problem while we won’t forage from a place with loads of traffic or a public park that may have been sprayed, we can just start by noticing them, maybe that dandelion that has broken through the pavement that to me show resilience & strength, it says you may cut me down but my roots are strong & i’ll just keep growing. When it comes to dandelions you are fighting a battle that she is just not willing to back down from & sometimes we all need that strength in our lives so we work with dandelions in any form we can, maybe just drawing them, taking a photo & make it your screen saver, or working in person with her to make teas, infused oils, infused vinegars. However the plants call to you is how best you can benefit from the healing they offer.

 The best part about been a herbalist is seeing that moment when some gets it & no longer aims for the perfect looking garden & even allows a small patch back to to wild

What are some simple ways you can suggest that women can look after themselves using natural plants? Do you have any simple tips or advice?

When you are starting to work with the plants some of the best ones to work with are the common weeds as they are easy to ID & are plentiful you won’t have to look too hard to find them. A few of my favourites are Nettles, Cleavers,Dandelion, Yarrow, Blackberry bramble. 

As I said, the best way to start is to make a tea with the fresh plant. Always use a small amount at first as the taste can be strong for some of them, so 1 to 3 leaves or flower heads is perfect.

So let’s look at Nettle. If you are feeling a bit run down or low on energy a cup of nettle tea a day can help. They are highly nutritious, rich in Vit A & C, Minerals like iron, calcium, silica & potassium. So no need to go buy a multivitamin , nettle has you covered for free. They are helpful for High blood pressure & to regulate breast milk.  It can also help with issues like fluid retention, gout, arthritis, it helps with easing hay fever. It is an amazing healing plant. 

Dandelion is a great liver tonic. It supports the liver as a major detoxifying organ. Some of the things that you are experiencing with a sluggish liver are tiredness, irritability,headache, skin problems like spots, acne, boils. You can use the Flowers, leaves & roots. I would add the leaves to your food either fresh or cooked & the flower & roots you can use in a tea as it has Vitamins A,C & minerals.

Blackberry Bramble is so abundant & we can not only eat the blackberries but we can use the leaves year round. You can chewed on a fresh leave to help ease a headache. A tea with a few fresh leave can be helpful for diarrhoea, also for mouth ulcers or gum disease. If you let the tea cool down it makes a great skin lotion.

What about plants that are traditionally considered to be ‘weeds’ how can we integrate their offerings and special attributes into our daily lives?

The plants want to work with all of us, I know this because even as you read this we humans who should be acting as their caretakers,are  instead tearing up some piece of their land, where we will put up another building or carpark, shopping centre adding in more grey & less & less green.We are spraying them with chemicals not because they will do harm but because they don’t fit in to the traditional idea of beauty & only a few a willing to see there value. 

 But instead of giving up, these healing weeds find the tiniest spaces in our gardens, in the cracks on pavement & roads, hanging from the side of walls to grow from. They get right back into spaces where we can see them , where they scream at us if you just ask ,we will help. 

So from the beautiful weeds I am here to ask you on their behalf to work with them instead of against them, Give them the chance to show you how they can be part of your healing journey. How they can help connect us back to nature & our ancestors. 

Green Blessing 

Laura