Authorities probe alleged travel scams

SYCAMORE - At least two Sycamore area families believed they were getting a travel package at an unbelievable price, but all now suspect they were getting scammed. On Dec. 7 and 9, Dyer, Ind.-based American Travel and Management held two presentations at a local banquet hall about a travel club they were offering. The company is well known to Attorney General Lisa Madigan's office. It has 33 complaints filed about the company and in November, the office filed suit in Cook County Circuit Court against company manager Kevin B. Raines of Crown Point, Ind., and Francine M. Bauer of McHenry for allegedly luring customers with their club sales presentation and misleading them with false claims about free trips and features of a travel membership club. Bauer, one of the defendants, reportedly gave the presentation. Officials from American Travel and Management did not return calls for comment. Sycamore resident Jean Evans was at the presentation on Dec. 9. She got a call at home that morning and told she had won a pair of airline tickets and should attend the presentation to claim them. Evans said the woman who called her said the presentation later that night was not a timeshare sales pitch, but was for a travel club. A timeshare is a club where people purchase travel accommodations, such as a condominium, and share them over the year with other members. "She kept implying it was a local company," she said. "I thought maybe a new travel agency had opened." Evans and her husband were enticed to purchase a membership for $2,995. It would entitle them to trips, cruises and weekend stays at condominiums in addition to discounts on vacation packages, they were told. "We had been to a similar timeshare presentation. It was persuasive. We know someone who had bought it and couldn't think of this as not being real," she said. "But I was being a little naive." She and her husband wrote the check for $2,995. Later that evening Evans was talking to her friend about her purchase when her friend said she had an acquaintance who bought into a bogus travel club. This prompted Evans to look up the company online and found a press release announcing the suit Madigan's office had brought against the company. Another Sycamore couple, who requested that their names not be used, said they went to a presentation on Dec. 7. "They tell you, you have 72 hours to make up your mind," the woman said. "But they had cashed my check." The couple and another signed up for the club looking forward to taking discounted trips, but when they went home they went online to check out the company and read about its shady past. They decided to cancel the check the next day, which had already been submitted to the bank. They immediately canceled it and then went back to speak to Bauer and confronted her. They said Bauer told them it had nothing to do with her or her company, and gave them a password to look online for trips. They looked and found there was no availability. They called Bauer again and said she'd call them back. Bauer never called back. Evans and the other couple is out the $25 for a stop payment, but it could have been a lot worse. Some people haven't been as lucky and have yet to see a trip or their money. Gail O'Connor, a press assistant in Madigan's office, said 10 complaints against the company have been made since Nov. 24, when the suit was filed. Two complaints are from the Sycamore area. People in Cook, Jo Daviess, Kane, Lake, McHenry and Winnebago counties and Dubuque County, Iowa have made complaints. They allege they didn't find out the free trips they had signed up for would actually cost them hundreds or thousands of dollars. O'Connor said people who want to file a complaint should call the Illinois Attorney General's Consumer Fraud Hotline at (800) 386-5438. Local police said no reports were filed. "We haven't received a local complaint as far as about anybody being scammed," Syc-amore Police Lt. Darryl Johnson said. But he said the company is no longer welcome in town. He said the warning signs that their company was not legitimate included the fact that they wanted the money up front. But the bigger warning sign was that the offer was almost too good. "If it sounds to good to be true, it usually isn't (true)," he said. Aracely Hernandez can be reached at ahernandez@ pulitzer.net.