Shortchanged travelers chase troubled Chelsea agency

Missing tickets, credit card fraud alleged after death of its owner

Chelsea Police Chief Brian Kyes says Oasis Travel is being investigated after customers complained of missing tickets. (Robert Spencer for the Boston Globe/File)

Isabel Perez arrived at the airport with her three young sons for a trip to El Salvador in July, only to be told by the airline that just three tickets were reserved for her family.

Yet there she was with four itineraries. Although Perez purchased four tickets in cash a month earlier from Oasis Travel in Chelsea, the attendant told her that her ticket had been purchased by credit card the day before, and those for two of her sons at 4 a.m. on the day of the flight.

Confused, but with no other options, Perez charged about $1,300 to her credit card for a fourth round-trip ticket for her 6-year-old son.

Two months later, Carlos Fuentes and his family were being told a different version of the same story at the airport. Of the four tickets to El Salvador he purchased from Oasis Travel in August, none were reserved for him. With no credit card, and his family's luggage already on its way to the plane, Fuentes said, he paid the airline about $2,800 in cash he was bringing with him to El Salvador to fix up his home there.

"To save $2,800 in the economic climate we're living in today, it's hard to do," Fuentes said. "And then to have someone come and take advantage of you, and you show up to the airport with a bunch of luggage only to find out that you have no tickets, imagine how that feels?"

Perez, of Chelsea, and Fuentes, of Cambridge, are among at least 22 people alleging they were scammed out of as much as $35,000 by Oasis Travel between May and September. Others, including Salvador Edgardo Melara, allege other people's tickets were charged to their credit cards by Oasis Travel. Melara said the agency charged four tickets to Canada to his credit card, which he had to cancel. He said he's never been to Canada, though he'd used Oasis to purchase other tickets.

Although Perez and an Everett resident were the only two alleged victims to file small-claims lawsuits against Oasis, as of last week about 20 others have solicited the assistance of the Chelsea Collaborative, a social services organization that is pursuing the possibility of a class-action lawsuit. In her small-claims suit, Perez is asking $1,373.72 from Oasis, while Maurizio Pasquale of Everett is asking for $1,626.

At Perez's hearing in Chelsea District Court last week, Oasis lawyer Louis Birenbaum asked the court for relief from judgment because the travel agency is no longer in business due to the death of owner Marco Quintanilla on May 19 from pancreatic cancer.

"It is our position that the entity that owes this debt is the estate of Marco Quintanilla, because Oasis Travel is not a legal entity," Birenbaum told court clerk Bruce Glazer last week in a hearing room filled with alleged Oasis victims showing support for Perez. "There are family members of Mr. Quintanilla, unrelated to this business, who are trying to put together some money to make payments."

Birenbaum said he also represents Quintanilla's estate. Perez's case was continued to Dec. 3.

Other alleged victims have filed complaints with the Chelsea Police Department. Police Chief Brian Kyes confirmed that as much as $35,000 in plane ticket money may have been defrauded by Oasis Travel, and that he expects more potential victims to come forward.

"We are pursuing this as a criminal investigation," he said. "We did get a warrant for one individual's arrest, a female party."

As of Monday, no arrest had been made. Kyes said Oasis Travel, at 793 Broadway, shut its doors between six and eight weeks ago. An investigation into the business indicated that problems with the agency began after Quintanilla's death, when his daughters Claudia and Luisa Quintanilla took over operations, Kyes said. According to court documents, Luisa Quintanilla is the administrator of Marco Quintanilla's estate.

Perez said that after she came back from El Salvador in August, she demanded that Claudia Quintanilla, who was reportedly still running the front desk at Oasis, pay her back. After several visits and phone calls by Perez and her husband, Claudia Quintanilla wrote Perez a check for $1,303 dated Aug. 22.

"I told her, 'There'd better be enough funds to cover this check or I'm taking you to court,' " Perez said in an interview. "I deposited the check into my account and the check bounced. When I asked her about it, she would lie to me, saying it was the bank's fault, and that she had enough funds in her account. I called her back the next day to see what the bank had said, and she never returned my call."

Oasis Travel came highly recommended to Perez and Fuentes by members of their families who had used its services when Marco Quintanilla was still alive. Both said this was the first time they'd booked tickets with the Oasis agency.

Birenbaum told the court that it is not a question of whether the money is owed to Perez, but of who owes the money.

"I can only represent to the court that family members are trying to put together some money to pay this debt as well as others of the estate," Birenbaum said in court. "It is not a done deal yet because there are other creditors out there, including the Commonwealth of Massachusetts that has an $84,000 Medicaid lien against the estate for medical services provided to Mr. Quintanilla during his last illness.

"They're trying to get some money, but the bottom line is for us that there is no Oasis and there can be no judgment against an entity that doesn't exist."

Katheleen Conti can be reached at kconti@globe.com.