SureShot? Not Likely As Dozens Report Wedding Video Scam

MILLBURY, Mass. – June is supposed to be the time for graduations and brides, but for many of those tying the knot, this season has been a disaster. That's because, police say, SureShot Videography has scammed them out of the videos they were paid to shoot.

The company, owned by Jesse Clark,  shot wedding videos for brides all over Connecticut and Massachusetts, and most of them say he did not deliver on their contracts. And unfortunately for the couples, he frequently didn't deliver any video at all.

After television stations in Connecticut virtually hounded him into running away from his Millbury studio when they tracked him down, he then knocked over a camera man outside the Millbury Police Department when trying to dodge more video cameramen.

Clark, the Massachusetts Attorney General's office said, has changed the name of his business often as he runs from couples who've paid up to $1,000 for wedding videos. If anything, couples in Connecticut received a poor quality, unedited video.

In Millbury, things quickly turned sour as well. The Massachusetts Attorney General's office has received over 36 complaints about Clark and his business practices.

Millbury Police Detective Nick Fortunato described Clark as "untruthful, deceitful and a very poor business owner." After complaints began pouring into the Millbury Police, Clark shut down SureShot Videography at the Shoppes at Blackstone Valley.

He has also failed to pay sub-contractor videographers who filmed weddings, police said.

Perhaps the only good part of this story is that after Fortunato and the Millbury Police got involved, Clark agreed to turn over some hard drives from his office to the department. That's when he ran into a Connecticut cameraman and knocked him to the ground. Those and also some of the videos from sub-contractors are being placed on DVDs and they are slowly but surely finding their way to the owners.

"We're trying to at least put the raw videos on DVDs and trying to get them to the people who paid for them," Millbury Police Chief Mark Moore said. "It's a slow process but we're getting it done."

Now Clark has moved on again and Fortunato said he is operating under different names and different titles. Because Clark showed up at the weddings to film, police say its a civil matter. Had he not showed up at all, it would become a criminal one.

Police suggest that couples not pay anyone in full up-front for wedding video services to make it an incentive for the videographer to come through with the finished product.

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