Businesswoman sentenced to six years for holiday fraud. Deprived clients of 6.5 million
The Regional Court in Ostrava has sentenced businesswoman Renata Jelínková to six years in prison with supervision. The woman defrauded clients of the travel agency Ambiera, offering them holidays, accepting payments, but never arranging the services.
Businesswoman sentenced to six years for holiday fraud. Deprived clients of 6.5 million
The Regional Court in Ostrava on Monday sentenced businesswoman Renata Jelínková to six years in prison with supervision. The court also imposed a seven-year ban on her working in the travel industry. According to the verdict, the woman defrauded approximately eighty clients of the travel agency Ambiera, who paid her for holidays that never took place. The total damage amounts to 6.5 million crowns. The verdict is not yet final, and the defendant appealed against it immediately.
Jelínková offered clients brokerage of holidays through partner travel agencies, collected deposits from them, but in most cases did not arrange the services at all. When she did make a booking, she subsequently cancelled it, or failed to secure flights, transfers or accommodation for clients. According to state prosecutor Barbora Zajícová, the woman acted under a false identity as a representative of the Ambiera agency. She worked at the company under the assumed surname Kopecká.
The defendant claimed in court that she was innocent. She argued that she worked at Ambiera only as an operator and that responsibility lay with the company director. She also claimed that competitors wanted to eliminate her. The court, however, dismissed these arguments as false defence and established that the woman stood at the head of the entire fraudulent scheme. The crimes are said to have taken place between 2018 and 2020.
The convicted woman's name also appears in the case of the collapsed travel agency Diamond Travel, which is being handled by the Municipal Court in Prague. As a result of the fraud, insolvency proceedings were initiated and the travel agency Ambiera collapsed.
Source: Novinky.cz
Source: Novinky.cz