tags: Scams
Ameri-scam.
May 23rd, 2005, by Rich.
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Two months ago I wrote a short article about a telemarketing call that I received from AmeriVacation. It has very quickly become one of the most viewed pages on this site, and also the most commented upon, by many people who are worried that they have been conned.
With just a little digging I’ve started to unearth some more information on AmeriVacation, and some “companies” that appear to be related.
It appears that AmeriVacation is only the latest front. They set up a website, to appear legitimate and then cold call people, anyone whose number they can get using an automated calling mechanism (which is very simple to do with a computer). They then sell a package that is not what it appears to be and then make it very difficult to obtain a refund.
Sadly the people that get scammed are often the most vulnerable people who can least afford to lose such a large amount of money.
Through my digging I discovered a little about the history of the scams, and a little about how they’re all related. What follows is a brief review of the links so that others may pick up the trail more easily.
The currently active websites (which can be linked through identical wording, identical phone numbers, IP addresses that resolve to the same physical machines, etc) are:
- www.amerivacation.com
- www.expertholidays.com
- www.yourvipholiday.com (bad press) (more)
- www.flbahamastravelhome.com
- www.mydiscountholiday.com (bad press)
- www.doublevacations.com
- www.affiliatedtravelnetwork.com
- www.brilliantholiday.com (bad popup press)
- www.destinationcenter.net
- www.myffc.com (bad press)
- www.mydiscountholiday.com
- www.floridaholidayusa.com - discovered July 2005
- www.holidayfloridausa.com - discovered July 2005
- www.sunrisetravels.us - discovered August 2005
- www.imperialvacation.com - discovered August 2005
- www.5starholidays.net - discovered August 2005
- www.floridatouristbureau.com - discovered August 2005
Now, anybody that sells a holiday from Florida, or sells a holiday to Florida must be registered. The last entry in the above list , “mydiscountholiday.com” claims a Florida Seller Of Travel License Number of ST35170. In fact, this next list of sites all claim to have that same license number.
- www.mydiscountholiday.com (bad press)
- www.usafamilygetaway.com (bad press)
- www.sandyvacationsllc.com (bad press)
- www.floridabureauoftourism.com
- http://www.destinationsforyou.com
- http://www.celebrationpromotions.com
Another useful thing for linking companies is the address, several of these companies have used “600 North Highway 1792, Suite 120, Longwood Fl 32750″ including:
- www.yourvipholiday.com
- www.usafamilygetaway.com addres link also mentioned here
That link is important because without it these appear to be two separate groups of companies, when in fact, it’s one big cloud.
The next link in the chain is the phone number, all the sites below are connected because they use the same UK freephone number 0800-917-7462. What’s especially nice is that three of them have also decided to share testimonials too!
- www.windsorvacations.com
- www.myvacationschoice.com
- www.vacations-paradise.com (bad press)
- www.sohovacations.com -bullshit testimonial (bad press)
- www.centuryvacations.com - bullshit testimonial
- www.firstclicktravel.net - bullshit testimonial
- www.usafamilygetaway.com
The other address in use is “7632 Southland Blvd, Orlando, FL 32809″ and this is used by:
- www.myffc.com
- www.mydiscountholiday.com
- www.brilliantholiday.com (bad press)
- www.destinationcenter.com
Currently www.destinationcenter.com looks like a bit of a sales force advertisement. However, by looking at the caches on google and web.archive.org, it’s apparent that it was also used as travel sales site (hence I got the address match above), selling these same packages - i.e. not just a coincidence, this was the same outfit.
So, who’s behind it? Well, according to this story, it all comes back to to a Altef Hemani (aka Alex Hemani), who has a history of such scams.
His name is as good as mud on the internet, so he’s tried to combat this by buying a few websites and and writing eulogies about himself.
Each of those sites, incidentally, is owned by the same company: Travel Express Investments 385 Center Point Cir, Altamont Springs, FL 32701.
What’s especially interesting is that the administrative contact for the domains is Arif Rajan who may be the same business man whos only newsworthy moment until now was that in 2002 he was was questioned and released without charge regarding money laundering for terrorist organisations.
Sources
Naturally the information I’ve been able to gather and present here is all freely available to the public. Please feel free to check, corroborate, dispute, disprove or otherwise extended it through your own investigation.
I have found the following resources most useful:
- http://whois.net/ which provides information about the owners of domain names.
- http://sunbiz.org/ which provides information from the Florida Department of State regarding companies, and the persons legally responsible for those companies.
- http://www.doacs.state.fl.us/ the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, which regulates travel in Florida.
February 26th, 2006 at 4:23 pm
I am writing to warn any potential travelers against dealing with Sunkissed Travel. They stole $600 from me last May 2005. I contacted the company 2 weeks ago to claim my trip for this July 2006. I had arranged with a Ms. Andi who sent me an e-mail from Mr. RJ Randall, who by the way apparently no longer works for Sunkissed, to delete the Orlando, Bahamas, and Cancun in favor of only going to the Dominican Republic. This was okayed. For the past 2 weeks I have sent an unnamed amount of e-mails as well as several expensive phone calls at my expense to no avail. Ms. Michele Taylor portrayed herself as a victim of IP address technological problems and admitted she has dozens or more people at her throat as well trying to claim their trips. My experience with Mr. Paul Gutske, who by the way was rude and uncooperative as well as sarcastic when I spoke to him just days ago. He very gallantly posted his contact info and defended Sunkissed. That is all well and good, I am not arguing that this is not a real company. However, I think that there are scamlike qualities to it. In my correspondence with these people I attached my info with my order and other numbers, the e-mail which states I have been approved to travel to Punta Cana only, as well as the official reservation forms. Mr. Gutske responded by one brief e-mail only and stated I was trying to get a free trip and that I need to pay for Punta Cana. I would like to warn pople against this company. There may be people who have traveled and things went okay, but I believe there are more people like me as well who have been taken for a ride. I have contacted the Better Business Bureau in Florida. I am contacting the Radisson Hotels they deal with. I am also in negotiations with my bank and have reported this companu as fraudulent and am putting in claims to get my money back. i hope this letter serves some good.
February 27th, 2006 at 7:03 pm
Hi there. Thank god for vigilance! I was called just 10 minutes ago and the above story was put to me aswel; lucky winner, please spell name and sirname, do i have passport bla bla and then….do i prefer Visa or Mastercard…and what was the date it was valid through. I gave the lady nothing and told her i was being very causious. She gave me some juicy details on the prize but i said no thanks. The number i could dial was 0800 811 9088 or 213 537 1057. http://www.royaltyholidays.com. Thank you for doing this research? Keep up the good work. I live in the netherlands and I will put this forward to my creditcard company. Heads have to roll people!!!
March 2nd, 2006 at 11:15 am
I got a call from Florida. Their website calls them celebrationpromotions.com. They sold me a package of a 9 night trip to Florida for USD 698. Being in Australia it did not strike me to ask the currency and all I asked was if that was the full price that would be deducted from my account. They assured me it would. When I realised that it was infact AUD 956 I called them back to check. They then said due to our misundertanding they would refund USD 198 to bring it back to AUD 698. On asking my wife about this we realised that we could not afford a trip to Florida due to other committments. Now we were told that we had 30 days to decide and could cancel the package within that time. When we called up to cancel, they said we couldn’t as they had already refunded us USD198 and we were only allowed one refund. This was the first we were hearing of this. Anyway, we have since been on the phone to them five times and have emailed their Company Director who seems to be giving us no hope of us getting our money back even though we are within our 30 day cooling off period. I would not visit their resort in Florida ever and if anybody who reads this site ever gets a call from them, please be careful and I would strongly recommend that you do not go through them. They took 15 minutes to take my money but its been 7 days and there’s no sign of any of my refund, not even the USD 198 I was told was coming. Its all a scam and I have just lost myself USD 698.
March 2nd, 2006 at 1:30 pm
TO: ROLF SKOGSTRAND
We’d love to hear of your experience with your Sunkissed Travel package! Let’s hope it was all you hoped it would be and more.
The proof of the pudding will only be fully appreciated upon your return from your dream vacation. Bon voyage and we hope to hear from you soon!
March 4th, 2006 at 5:26 pm
I have been well & truly scammed out of £592.00 by http://www.royaltyholidays.com - the money was taken from my account by global destination (www.globaldestination.com) - at present I have reported this as fraud to my bank and also to the police here in UK. I have learnt a lesson the hard way - I fell for the scam hook, line and sinker.
Veronica (UK)
March 5th, 2006 at 4:09 pm
hello all,
i am currently doing research on celebrationworldresorts aka destinationsforyou etc. it has taken a few days worth of searching and i have found another web site highlighting the ‘plus’ points of using the aforementioned company!!
thanks again.
all information makes my case stronger!
sheridan
March 7th, 2006 at 3:47 am
To whom it may concern,
I am writing to add to this growing pile of letters that aim to deter suspicious victims of this disgraceful and completely disgusting scam.
I hope that justice will come to them eventually.
To those who are wondering whether or not to take up the deal or not- listen to this-
I was in the middle of giving my credit card details on the phone when i suddenly had the thought of doubt. what if this company was not true?
so- then i made up the last few digits of my credit card and, the expiry date and the last few no on the back of the card and told them that it was my name that appeared on the card.
They had told me they had just tried to process it and suddenly there was an angry interruption on another line with an appearance of another ’supervisor’ that there was a problem with my bank. He was very abrupt and curt.I asked if it had gone through and he said that it hadn’ t and was very irate. He then asked if i had another one and just to pretend, i said yes. he then said he would call me back in two days.
i then called the toll free no straight away and they said that they were closed for the day. When he first spoke to me, he had a heavy indian accent, but then afterwards, when i asked him which part of Orlando did he come from, he immediately put on a thick American accent which was so different to the original indian accent that he first had. This raised a huge warning bell in my system :)
There are huge ? on the end of their webpages where there is supposed to be a copyright statement.
Also, they also operate under the name-”miracle trips”.
Don tbe scammed, give them a taste of their own medicine. Try to expose them.
March 7th, 2006 at 9:48 am
Just from doing the most basic of searches, it doesn’t appear that there is any direct link between miracletrips.com and any of the other sites previously mentioned (other than the obvious one that they appear to sell Florida Travel Vouchers).
Their whois information appears valid and not anonymised, and they’re apparently based in Canada (whereas most of the previous companies have been Florida or Texas based).
The obvious negative that I can see is that they have not mentioned their Florida Seller of Travel License number, so it could be “applied for”, or, it’s possible they’re doing the front marketing for the vouchers of another company.
March 7th, 2006 at 12:59 pm
Hello to those who bought Sunkissed Travel packages. I write to confirm that I have to date not received the copies of the voice recordings on which I purportedly gave my permission for the money to be deducted from my credit card. I tried to take the company on by means of of their authorisation form. This they e-mailed to be a day after my first telecon with them. I was told to sign the form and return by way of facsimile in order to confirm that I give them the authority to take my money.
I never signed nor returned the authorisation form, but they still took my money on the same day.
I have now just been contacted by a fellow South African who just fell for their illicit (and bull) pop-up spam advising you are visitor number 100 000…
This is what my fellow Capetonean said:
“I had the same experience whereby they said that they’d deduct the monies once I’d signed the Certificate that they were about to fax to me. I didn’t receive the Certificate and I noticed that the money was deducted from my account.”
Why bother with the authorisation form/certificate when you just take our money anyway, Michele Taylor??
March 7th, 2006 at 8:24 pm
i booked a hol threw http://www.celebrationpromotions.com in april2005 and was told i could pay over the 18 months if i couldn,t afford to pay out right. so i paid a deposit of two hundred pounds and gave them my bank details. since then they have took twenty pound a month out. i have not been able to contact them since. i,ve tried to cancel the direct debit but was informed by the bank that i can,t do that. so these con artist,s keep on taking my money and i,ve no way of stopping them. HELP.