A travel agent who put one over on customers wanting to tour the Land Down Under was sentenced October 17 to three years and six months in prison, three years probation, and a restitution payment for making unauthorized credit card transactions.
Barbara Blackwell operated “Experience Australia Tours, Inc.,” a wholesaler of Aussie tour packages, out of her home in Charlottesville. From roughly April 2000 to August 2001, Blackwell kept personal check payments from customers, double-booked many clients and made unauthorized transactions using their credit cards, according to a press release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Virginia. Though her court-ordered restitution payment tops $250,000, the monetary loss to her clients is more than $400,000.
The process went something like this: Customers contacted Experience Australia for package tours and paid Blackwell in full by check. Blackwell pocketed the checks and charged airline tickets and hotel reservations to the credit cards of other Experience Australia customers. When faced with credit card authorization forms, Blackwell simply forged the signatures of clients.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office notes that her 2006 sentence is not her first: “During the course of the scheme…Blackwell was on probation, following a felony conviction for embezzlement in Albemarle County Circuit Court.” The ordered restitution from her first conviction—nearly $100,000—remains unpaid at present, bringing her restitution total to nearly $350,000.
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