SAN FRANCISCO (KCBS RADIO) – A Hawaii travel agent must pay $155,000 to a number of Bay Area residents, or spend a year in county jail, after pleading no contest last week to collecting six figures for trips that she never actually booked.
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Wendy Wong, a former Milpitas resident, pleaded no contest to felony charges last week that she failed to return money for travel services not provided and illegally withdrawing clients’ funds from their trust accounts.
Santa Clara County prosecutors said in a release on Tuesday that Wong was paid more than $200,000 to book flights and travel to Hawaii "for dozens of South Bay residents" while running House of Aloha Hawaii, without ever arranging those trips.
Wong was not registered as a seller of travel with the California Attorney General's Office, and her business closed its doors three years ago amid media and public scrutiny.
"The defendant abused her position of trust and disrupted the lives of many families in our community," Santa Clara County Deputy District Attorney Tamalca Harris said in a statement.
KGO first reported in August 2019 that the Milpitas Police Department received 13 reports from residents who said Wong never booked the trips she was paid to plan, while a Southern California woman who spoke to the station said that Wong owed her and her sister more than $11,000 after the woman re-booked a trip to Walt Disney World that Wong said had been canceled.
A few days after KGO published its initial report and spoke to some of her former clients, Wong said the business was closing after it had "suffered irrecoverable business losses." Last year, Santa Clara County prosecutors charged Wong with nearly four dozen felonies.
Wong will be formally sentenced on Nov. 4. If she doesn't pay restitution, she will spend a year in county jail followed by a year of mandatory supervision. If she does pay the $155,000, she will be on felony probation for two years.
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