Queens Travel Agent Charged With Stealing More Than $80K From Customers: DA

A Queens travel agency owner has been indicted on charges of stealing more than $80,000 in payments for trips that were never booked and using customers’ credit card information to pay for other customers’ trips, prosecutors say.

Adriana Olivar-Munoz, who owns Expertravel Travel Agency in Jackson Heights, is named in a 20-count indictment that includes charges of grand larceny, identity theft, falsifying business records, scheming to defraud and petit larceny, according to the Queens district attorney’s office. It was not immediately known if she had an attorney.

Prosecutors say the 46-year-old business owner would print out itinerary confirmations and give them to customers who later discovered at the airport that their tickets had not been paid for and canceled. In some cases, victims of Olivar-Munoz’s scheme would fly to their travel destinations before realizing a return ticket had never been purchased, according to prosecutors.

The indictment lists ten or more victims, including two wholesale travel agencies, for the scheme that allegedly took place between December 2012 and December 2014, according to the DA.

Prosecutors say the scam was discovered when Olivar-Munoz was arrested last September for defrauding two customers who had purchased tickets to Colombia and later realized they had been charged $1,311.40 for airline tickets for other passengers. Investigators later received complaints from several more customers who said they had also been defrauded.

Anyone who believes they may have been a victim to this travel agency fraud scheme is asked to call the Queens District Attorney’s Economic Crimes Bureau at 718-286-6673. 

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