A travel agent who stole more than $9,000 from her clients has been sentenced to 22 months in prison.
Irene Villanueva Garcia, 46, of the Philippines, was charged with four counts of obtaining property by deception to which she pleaded guilty.
According to court documents, between April and May 2021 Garcia, who was at the time employed as a travel agent, accepted money from four people in Cayman as payment for airline tickets. Three of the people were paying for trips for others travelling from the Philippines to Cayman and the fourth for a person flying from Dubai to Cayman.
“Upon receiving payment Garcia reserved the tickets and printed off a travel itinerary,” stated the court document. “However, once the clients left, she then went into the system and cancelled the trips without informing her clients.”
Upon discovering that “Garcia was operating a scam”, the clients returned to the travel agency and demanded a refund, according to the court document.
“Garcia wrote promissory notes to the victims to refund them their monies,” said the documents, in which it was noted that she failed to make good on those promises.
She was immediately incarcerated in Fairbanks Prison after being sentenced in January.
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