Two travel agents scam people out of $210K

An Eastern District of Texas federal court found two McKinney travel agents guilty for scamming hundreds of thousands of dollars out of customers across the nation in exchange for a cruise that never happened.

A jury found Carol Ribaudo, 52, and Sonja Ritz, 28, both currently residents of Clearwater, Fla., guilty Tuesday on one count of conspiracy, six counts of mail fraud and nine counts of wire fraud committed between Aug. 23, 2003, and Jan. 19, 2004, according to documents filed in federal court.

Shamoil Shipchandler, of Plano, one of the two assistant U.S. attorneys who prosecuted the case, said Ribaudo and Ritz operated Elite Travel, a travel agency based out of a Green Meadow Drive home in McKinney.

They advertised their cruise through Market America, a global product brokerage and Internet marketing company, and claimed customers would arrive in Miami, Fla., go on a three- to four-day cruise to various destinations and return to Miami, Fla., where they would stay overnight on the ship during a leadership conference, Shipchandler said.

Jill Hess, a cook who works for Penn State University and lives in Waynesboro, Pa., said she heard about the trip through her daughter, Heidi Beidel, who had friends associated with Market America. She gave Elite Travel a check for $1,380 in December 2003 for a trip for the both of them in February 2004, but she never got anything in return.

“They were supposed to have gotten us a cruise,” Hess said. “We we’re supposed to fly into Miami and catch a cruise ship out of Miami and go to some of the ports, I guess in the Carribbean, but we never even got an itinerary.”

Shipchandler said just before the scheduled trip, Elite Travel sent a notice to its customers explaining the trip had been canceled.

“What we argued in court was that the e-mail was designed to conceal the fact that it was a scam,” Shipchandler said. “They were saying it was canceled through no fault of their own.”

Hess said she never even got a notice about the cancellation. She said her daughter learned about the cancellation on the Internet.

“All I can say is my daughter called me and said somebody was scanning the Internet and I don’t know exactly how they found out or if or when or whatever the people had done, but there was no actual trip even planned,” Hess said. “So we would have been standing at the shores of Miami waiving to a ship that wasn’t even booked.”

Hess said she was upset.

“I was pretty [expletive deleted],” she said. “I’m just an ordinary middle class working stiff who got stiffed.”

Shipchandler said investigators believe Ribaudo and Ritz scammed about 50 people out of at least $210,000. Victims who paid with personal checks lost their money, but those who paid with credit cards were told to dispute the charges.

“The folks who paid with credit cards did dispute the charges, leaving the credit card companies as the victim,” Shipchandler said.

A date for their sentencing trial had not been set as of Wednesday. Shipchandler said both are looking at a maximum federal prison sentence of up to 20 years and a $250,000 for the mail and wire fraud charges, and up to five years in prison and an additional $250,000 fine for the conspiracy charges. The prison sentences would run concurrently, meaning the most prison time they would serve would be 20 years. Ribaudo and Ritz may also have to pay restitution to their victims.

Contact Danny Gallagher at dgallagher@acnpapers.com. To post comments online, access this story at www.scntx.com.

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