A fake retirement cruise and a non-existent honeymoon: a travel agency is on trial for forty scams
A couple and their daughter from Sabadell face up to six years in prison
BarcelonaWhat appeared to be a family-run travel agency ended up accumulating over €160,000 in scams. Dozens of people who hired them to arrange flights, accommodation, transportation, and excursions to their holiday destinations were left high and dry. The trips were either never booked or were canceled as soon as the victims had paid the intermediaries. Sometimes the holidays did exist, but under very different conditions than those agreed upon, as happened to a group of retirees who were expecting a cruise through the Greek islands and found themselves living in squalid conditions in a hostel.
A couple and their daughter from Sabadell face up to six years in prison and a €5,400 fine for this scam, which is being tried this week at the Barcelona Provincial Court. The prosecution accuses them of a total of 44 frauds between February 2016 and December 2019. When the first scams appeared in the media and on social networks, the business changed its name to avoid detection. Thus, Moment Feliç Viatges SL became Viajes World Frank SL, and later Cruceros y Vacaciones SL. They also eventually used the name Nautalia on the sign of the premises, even though this agency was not affiliated.
One of the alleged scams to be tried is the case of a group of fifteen people, all between 60 and 85 years old, who found themselves "surviving for three days, unable to wash or sleep properly" and suffering anxiety attacks after having paid 900 euros, according to the prosecution's indictment. The voyage was supposed to begin in Venice, where they would arrive by plane from Barcelona. At the airport, they discovered that their flight was not the one they had been told about, but one that departed twelve hours later. The delay meant they missed boarding the cruise ship and ended up sleeping in a hostel with bunk beds, without dinner or lunch.
The agency's deception continued, leading them to believe they could rejoin the cruise by traveling on an early morning bus. They paid €1,800 for this journey. The defendants also led them to believe they could catch the ship by flying to Bologna, but the flights were not included in the total expenses they had already incurred. During the trip, the victims spent up to €2,700 more than they had already paid to cover transfers, food, and the return flights to Barcelona, which they had also been led to believe were included.
Non-existent flights
In most of the scams, the promised trip was never booked, even though the victims had already paid the agency. This happened with all sorts of destinations: New York, Thailand, Mallorca, the Maldives, Costa Rica, Egypt, Ecuador, Canada, Greece, Croatia... One couple had handed over around €2,000 for a nonexistent honeymoon trip to the Canary Islands, and another was a group of retirees from Barberà del Valle. Fifty members were supposed to be there for five days. In another case, two women paid €650 each for a flight to Cuba with a layover in Frankfurt, but when it came down to it, the tickets between Frankfurt and their final destination didn't exist, and they had to pay €890 to get home. Another example of these scams is that of a family who discovered after arriving in New York that accommodation for their young children wasn't included in the reservation. In fact, as described in the prosecution's indictment, the agency sometimes promised certain travel conditions and then arranged others "of far inferior quality to those agreed upon or under extremely detrimental conditions" for the victims who had not accepted. In this way, the agency profited from the difference between an all-inclusive trip and one where the victims found themselves, on the fly, having to cover their own accommodation, food, and transportation expenses again.
