Scam alert: Agent swindles honeymooners
2013-02-11 09:17
Cape Town - A former Parklands travel agent, now based in Dubai, is being investigated after conning a number of Capetonian travellers out of their money.
According to the Weekend Argus it was recently discovered that Caryn Boswell had been responsible for dashing the travel dreams of at least five people, allegedly taking money in exchange for fake bookings.
Bridgette Benson-Muller, a Table View resident, told the paper that she had booked tickets for her honeymoon trip to Bali through Boswell, who ran Studio Travel in late August last year. She paid R36 540 for airfare and Boswell delivered her tickets and itinerary.
But in December, she said, she got a call from the operator with whom Boswell made the booking, who told her the funds were never transferred, and asked whether she was still interested in going on the trip.
That's when Benson-Muller learnt that the tickets were fake, and that it was going to be a very difficult job to find Boswell.
Once she started digging deeper, Benson-Muller found that she was not the only one who had been affected and that at least five other people had also been tricked by Boswell.
In November last year, the group of affected people learnt that Boswell had taken a job at a travel agency in Dubai.
A criminal case was filed immediately against her there by Ashley Bahceci, another alleged victim.
Boswell, who is in Dubai, failed to respond to an e-mail request for comment at the time of going to press, but Table View detective Desmon November confirmed that he was investigating two charges against Boswell.
