Category: CNN Regional

By Jenna DeAngelis

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    NEW YORK (WCBS) — A Long Island travel agent is accused of defrauding people out of tens of thousands of dollars.

Tavia Thomas, who police say operated as the sole travel agent of Destiny Travel, was recently charged with grand larceny and scheme to defraud.

Investigators say in three different instances, Thomas is accused of collecting money but never booking trips and not giving refunds, allegedly defrauding multiple people of a total of $53,448.14.

According to a police report, on July 8, 2024, Thomas allegedly received a total of $35,753.98 from nine people who believed they were purchasing tickets for a Royal Caribbean cruise departing from Bayonne.

Police said when the victims arrived at the port, an employee told them their tickets were fake and that the cruise they booked did not exist. About a week later, on July 16, 2024, Thomas allegedly received a total of $7,660 from several people for a destination wedding, but never booked the venues and did not provide refunds.

Later that year, in September, police said Thomas received $10,034.16 from 51 people who were booking a 75th birthday trip to the Dominican Republic, but she did not pay for the accommodations and did not provide refunds.

In court Tuesday, Thomas pleaded not guilty. Her defense attorney described the 47-year-old as a social worker who has two children, cares for her mother who is blind, and is in the process of adopting a baby. Prosecutors, however, pointed out a criminal history.

Her next court appearance is scheduled for Thursday.

West Babylon resident Rosalind Gross-Hall said her family used Thomas as a travel agent to book flights for about three to four years and never had any issues, but when Gross-Hall tried to plan a cruise for her daughter’s graduation in July 2024, what was supposed to be a dream trip turned into a vacation nightmare.

She said Thomas provided trip confirmation for their party of 34, along with an itinerary via email.

Upon arrival to the port in New Jersey, however, Gross-Hall said the cruise line couldn’t find any of their information.

“The employees of Royal Caribbean was doing the best that they could to help us, to do anything to make this easier because they kind of knew after a while that this was a scam,” Gross-Hall said. “[Thomas] blamed it on everybody else but her, saying that it was their fault.”

The family immediately filed a police report.

“It was just unbelievable. My daughters were so heartbroken,” Gross-Hall said.

She was able to get some of her money back from her credit card company; however, she said her mother-in-law sent her deposit through Zelle.

“So she never saw that money again,” Gross-Hall said.

Gross-Hall said she has since connected with other people who say they had a similar experience with Destiny Travel.

Now, a year and a half later, she said Thomas’ arrest is a relief.

“We just didn’t want her to hurt anybody else,” she said.

Destiny Travel is not accredited by the Better Business Bureau, which says it began receiving complaints about the agency in July 2023. A total of three complaints were filed.

“At that time, if anyone had looked on BBB.org about them, they would have seen it was a D+, which quickly fell to an F in September of 2023,” said Claire Rosenzweig, president and CEO of BBB Metropolitan New York

The BBB stresses doing your research when booking trips.

“What you want to be cautious about is companies without a track record that just came to you through some website that you saw online, or some social media text or ad that you got,” Rosenzweig said.

She added to look out for red flags, like requesting payment through peer-to-peer platforms, cash, gift cards or by wiring money.

“If you choose to work with a company and you’re going to pay, we always say consider using credit cards because credit cards do have the most protection,” she said. “But even with a credit card, you have to be careful, because if you’re getting the runaround from someone, they know that there are time limits on chargebacks.”

Nassau County Police are asking anyone who believes they may be a victim to contact Nassau County Crime Stoppers at 1-800-244-TIPS or call 911.

Please note: This story was provided to CNN Wire by an affiliate and does not contain original CNN reporting. This content carries a strict local market embargo. If you share the same market as the contributor of this article, you may not use it on any platform.

WCBS

By Jenna DeAngelis

Click here for updates on this story

    NEW YORK (WCBS) — A Long Island travel agent is accused of defrauding people out of tens of thousands of dollars.

Tavia Thomas, who police say operated as the sole travel agent of Destiny Travel, was recently charged with grand larceny and scheme to defraud.

Investigators say in three different instances, Thomas is accused of collecting money but never booking trips and not giving refunds, allegedly defrauding multiple people of a total of $53,448.14.

According to a police report, on July 8, 2024, Thomas allegedly received a total of $35,753.98 from nine people who believed they were purchasing tickets for a Royal Caribbean cruise departing from Bayonne.

Police said when the victims arrived at the port, an employee told them their tickets were fake and that the cruise they booked did not exist. About a week later, on July 16, 2024, Thomas allegedly received a total of $7,660 from several people for a destination wedding, but never booked the venues and did not provide refunds.

Later that year, in September, police said Thomas received $10,034.16 from 51 people who were booking a 75th birthday trip to the Dominican Republic, but she did not pay for the accommodations and did not provide refunds.

In court Tuesday, Thomas pleaded not guilty. Her defense attorney described the 47-year-old as a social worker who has two children, cares for her mother who is blind, and is in the process of adopting a baby. Prosecutors, however, pointed out a criminal history.

Her next court appearance is scheduled for Thursday.

West Babylon resident Rosalind Gross-Hall said her family used Thomas as a travel agent to book flights for about three to four years and never had any issues, but when Gross-Hall tried to plan a cruise for her daughter’s graduation in July 2024, what was supposed to be a dream trip turned into a vacation nightmare.

She said Thomas provided trip confirmation for their party of 34, along with an itinerary via email.

Upon arrival to the port in New Jersey, however, Gross-Hall said the cruise line couldn’t find any of their information.

“The employees of Royal Caribbean was doing the best that they could to help us, to do anything to make this easier because they kind of knew after a while that this was a scam,” Gross-Hall said. “[Thomas] blamed it on everybody else but her, saying that it was their fault.”

The family immediately filed a police report.

“It was just unbelievable. My daughters were so heartbroken,” Gross-Hall said.

She was able to get some of her money back from her credit card company; however, she said her mother-in-law sent her deposit through Zelle.

“So she never saw that money again,” Gross-Hall said.

Gross-Hall said she has since connected with other people who say they had a similar experience with Destiny Travel.

Now, a year and a half later, she said Thomas’ arrest is a relief.

“We just didn’t want her to hurt anybody else,” she said.

Destiny Travel is not accredited by the Better Business Bureau, which says it began receiving complaints about the agency in July 2023. A total of three complaints were filed.

“At that time, if anyone had looked on BBB.org about them, they would have seen it was a D+, which quickly fell to an F in September of 2023,” said Claire Rosenzweig, president and CEO of BBB Metropolitan New York

The BBB stresses doing your research when booking trips.

“What you want to be cautious about is companies without a track record that just came to you through some website that you saw online, or some social media text or ad that you got,” Rosenzweig said.

She added to look out for red flags, like requesting payment through peer-to-peer platforms, cash, gift cards or by wiring money.

“If you choose to work with a company and you’re going to pay, we always say consider using credit cards because credit cards do have the most protection,” she said. “But even with a credit card, you have to be careful, because if you’re getting the runaround from someone, they know that there are time limits on chargebacks.”

Nassau County Police are asking anyone who believes they may be a victim to contact Nassau County Crime Stoppers at 1-800-244-TIPS or call 911.

Please note: This story was provided to CNN Wire by an affiliate and does not contain original CNN reporting. This content carries a strict local market embargo. If you share the same market as the contributor of this article, you may not use it on any platform.

By Marybel Rodriguez

Click here for updates on this story

    MIAMI (WFOR) — A Venezuelan artist is expressing himself through art. Soon after Nicolas Maduro was captured, he grabbed his spray paint and left his mark in Wynwood.

Pedro Martin, better known as Marthi, proudly stands before his most recent work of art in Wynwood. The mural features the famous picture of Nicolas Maduro after he was captured.

“This mural is for all the Venezuelan people,” said Pedro “Marthi” Martin.

Martin, who was born in Caracas, has been living in Miami for the past four years and is now doing what he loves freely — something he says would never be possible in his homeland of Venezuela.

He says that right now, he would be in danger for doing so, and that what he misses most about his country is the freedom of expression.

After hearing the news of Maduro’s capture, Martin expressed himself the best way he knows how: through art. Next to Maduro is Martin’s trademark angel painted in the colors of Venezuela, along with the anthem of freedom, “abajo cadenas,” which means “down with the chains.”

Hours later, someone painted over the mural. But Martin, who came to this country in search of a better life, repainted the slogan of freedom for all Venezuelans — including his family, who still live there.

“My mother, my father, my brother live there. I miss him very much,” said Martin.

Through his art, Martin says he is hopeful that change will soon come and he will be reunited with his family. He says he will come back as many times as needed if his mural needs to be fixed.

Please note: This story was provided to CNN Wire by an affiliate and does not contain original CNN reporting. This content carries a strict local market embargo. If you share the same market as the contributor of this article, you may not use it on any platform.

WFOR

By Marybel Rodriguez

Click here for updates on this story

    MIAMI (WFOR) — A Venezuelan artist is expressing himself through art. Soon after Nicolas Maduro was captured, he grabbed his spray paint and left his mark in Wynwood.

Pedro Martin, better known as Marthi, proudly stands before his most recent work of art in Wynwood. The mural features the famous picture of Nicolas Maduro after he was captured.

“This mural is for all the Venezuelan people,” said Pedro “Marthi” Martin.

Martin, who was born in Caracas, has been living in Miami for the past four years and is now doing what he loves freely — something he says would never be possible in his homeland of Venezuela.

He says that right now, he would be in danger for doing so, and that what he misses most about his country is the freedom of expression.

After hearing the news of Maduro’s capture, Martin expressed himself the best way he knows how: through art. Next to Maduro is Martin’s trademark angel painted in the colors of Venezuela, along with the anthem of freedom, “abajo cadenas,” which means “down with the chains.”

Hours later, someone painted over the mural. But Martin, who came to this country in search of a better life, repainted the slogan of freedom for all Venezuelans — including his family, who still live there.

“My mother, my father, my brother live there. I miss him very much,” said Martin.

Through his art, Martin says he is hopeful that change will soon come and he will be reunited with his family. He says he will come back as many times as needed if his mural needs to be fixed.

Please note: This story was provided to CNN Wire by an affiliate and does not contain original CNN reporting. This content carries a strict local market embargo. If you share the same market as the contributor of this article, you may not use it on any platform.

By Leondra Head

Click here for updates on this story

    HIRAM, GEORGIA (WUPA) — A Hiram City Council member who rushed into a burning home to save her neighbors was sworn in for a second term Tuesday night — just days after the dramatic rescue.

Councilwoman Melissa Bayardelle says she was leaving her neighborhood shortly after midnight on New Year’s Day when she noticed flames shooting from the second story of her neighbor’s home. Without hesitation, she pulled into the driveway and started banging on the door.

“There was fire on the second level. I pulled into their driveway and banged as hard as I could,” Bayardelle said.

When no one answered, she noticed the lights were still on inside. The door, she said, was unlocked — so she ran in.

“Fortunately, the door was unlocked, so I allowed myself in,” she said.

“I was screaming and yelling, ‘Hey! There’s a fire. Your house is on fire!'”

Upstairs, Isaiah Richardson and his girlfriend Dalasia Mitchell were just getting ready for bed. Richardson says at first, he didn’t understand what was happening.

“I said, ‘Whose house?'” he recalled.

“She said, ‘Sir, it’s your house. Get out.'”

The couple escaped as flames quickly engulfed the roof. Richardson says they had no warning. “The fire started on the roof. There was no smoke or anything through the house, so we had no clue,” he said.

The home is now uninhabitable, and investigators are still working to determine the cause. Richardson believes fireworks may have sparked the blaze.

“There was a lot of fireworks going on in the neighborhood,” he said. “We have some tall pine trees in the back. So we’re thinking a firework caught something in our gutter on fire.”

During Tuesday night’s council meeting, the couple hugged Bayardelle and thanked her publicly for saving their lives.

“The roof collapsed on the second floor. That could have been us laying up there dead asleep,” Richardson said. “She saved our lives that day.”

Richardson and Mitchell say they lost everything in the fire and are now raising money as they work to rebuild.

Please note: This story was provided to CNN Wire by an affiliate and does not contain original CNN reporting. This content carries a strict local market embargo. If you share the same market as the contributor of this article, you may not use it on any platform.

By Madeline Montgomery

Click here for updates on this story

    ATLANTA (WUPA) — Some young adults in Atlanta who are coming out of foster care are starting the new year with a new home.

Wellroot Family Services is almost done renovating an apartment building in East Lake that will house 20 people aging out of the foster care system. They’ll live there rent-free.

Anwar Hogan lives in Wellroot Family Services’ young adult transitional housing in Atlanta.

“I grew up in Atlanta. Born and raised. My father passed away when I was 13, and three months later my brother passed away. It took a toll on me,” Hogan said. That heavy toll is one of the reasons he ended up in foster care.

“A lot of financial struggle. My mom at the time, she didn’t have a job,” he said. “We had a 30-day eviction notice on our door. We were trying to figure out where to go and anything to keep a roof over our head. So I ended up in foster care,”

After he aged out of the foster care system, Hogan wasn’t sure about his future.

“I just wanted to have a home. It was overwhelming,” he said.

That’s until the DeKalb County School District connected him with Wellroot. Every year, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 700 young adults in Georgia age out of foster care. One in six ends up homeless.

“Being 18, you kind of are spreading your wings to fly, but you also need support. You need to be able to go back home to be able to check in with your parents, and young people that we work with don’t necessarily have that,” Wellroot Family Services President Allison Ashe said.

The faith-centered organization is deeply rooted in the United Methodist Church. Wellroot was founded in 1871 as an orphanage for children orphaned because of the Civil War. It has since expanded to help young adults — men and women 18 to 21 — aging out of foster care.

“These people impacted my life, telling me I could do it. It felt good,” Hogan.

Right now, 11 young adults live on the campus for free, and that number is about to double.

This transitional housing campus is getting more apartments — and a larger community center.

“It’s not just a place they do their laundry, but they actually learn to do their own laundry,” Ashe said. “It’ll be a great place to prepare food for the holidays and things of that nature, but it’s also a place where they can learn to cook.”

They also help with tutoring.

“My first three weeks here, I got my GED. I locked in. The next week, I got a job working at the airport. I was grinding. I’m in grind mode,” Hogan said.

And with room to house 30 people, more young adults, like Hogan, can feel confident about their future.

“I feel passionate about what I’m doing. I feel supported,” Hogan said.

A type of support hundreds of young adults leaving Georgia’s foster care system need every year.

The new apartments will be ready on Jan. 28.

Please note: This story was provided to CNN Wire by an affiliate and does not contain original CNN reporting. This content carries a strict local market embargo. If you share the same market as the contributor of this article, you may not use it on any platform.

WBZ

By Juli McDonald

Click here for updates on this story

    BOSTON (WBZ) — Investigators revealed the man who opened fire at Brown University and killed an MIT professor days later, recorded a series of videos confessing to the shootings before he took his own life. Claudio Manuel Neves Valente said he had planned the attack for six semesters.

Survivor Jacob Spears, who is recovering at his home in Georgia, spoke with WBZ-TV after reading the transcripts from the videos.

“I’m like six semesters? That’s a long time. That’s before I even was there,” Spears said. “This was my first semester. I’m a freshman. So this was like, before I was even there you were planning this.”

Spears was shot in the back in a Brown engineering building in Providence, Rhode Island on Dec. 13. Students Ella Cook and Mukhammad Aziz Umurzokov were killed and nine others were wounded.

“Mukhammad, he was my friend,” Spears said. “That was my friend, so reading it I tried to keep him out of my mind because I knew that would make it even harder. But I couldn’t.”

Transcripts of the chilling reflections by Neves Valente were released by the U.S. Department of Justice on Tuesday.

“I am not going to apologize, because during my lifetime no one sincerely apologized to me,” Neves Valente said in the video discovered in the Salem, New Hampshire storage unit where his body was found.

No motive revealed for shootings He did not reveal a motive for the campus shooting, or the murder of MIT professor Nuno Loureiro two days later in Brookline, Massachusetts. Neves Valente attended school in Portugal decades ago with Loureiro.

Neves Valente did mention his interaction with a witness, which ultimately led to police identifying him.

“I was almost confronted by a guy there that day… Not almost, I actually was confronted and he knew my… my… my license plate, I honestly never thought it would take them so long to find me,” Neves Valente said.

In an interview with WBZ-TV, security expert Todd McGhee stressed the importance of reporting suspicious behavior.

“Brown University was the target, and so that just indicates to me, that all the phrasing of ‘see something say something,’ that’s what we need to do,” McGhee said. “We don’t need to look for people conducting criminal actions, we need to look for people that are acting suspicious.”

McGhee, who had a career in law enforcement and now specializes in security analysis, says even without a clear motive, the videos provide an opportunity for police to tap into his mindset and could lead to former colleagues or friends coming forward with key information.

As Brown University continues efforts to transform security across campus, Spears says it’s only there that he’ll be able to find some healing.

“I love the community. I love my friends,” Spears said. “I want to go back, and I want see them and I just want to like try and get back to something kind of normal even though I know for a long time nothing, nothing there will be normal.”

Please note: This story was provided to CNN Wire by an affiliate and does not contain original CNN reporting. This content carries a strict local market embargo. If you share the same market as the contributor of this article, you may not use it on any platform.

By Juli McDonald

Click here for updates on this story

    BOSTON (WBZ) — Investigators revealed the man who opened fire at Brown University and killed an MIT professor days later, recorded a series of videos confessing to the shootings before he took his own life. Claudio Manuel Neves Valente said he had planned the attack for six semesters.

Survivor Jacob Spears, who is recovering at his home in Georgia, spoke with WBZ-TV after reading the transcripts from the videos.

“I’m like six semesters? That’s a long time. That’s before I even was there,” Spears said. “This was my first semester. I’m a freshman. So this was like, before I was even there you were planning this.”

Spears was shot in the back in a Brown engineering building in Providence, Rhode Island on Dec. 13. Students Ella Cook and Mukhammad Aziz Umurzokov were killed and nine others were wounded.

“Mukhammad, he was my friend,” Spears said. “That was my friend, so reading it I tried to keep him out of my mind because I knew that would make it even harder. But I couldn’t.”

Transcripts of the chilling reflections by Neves Valente were released by the U.S. Department of Justice on Tuesday.

“I am not going to apologize, because during my lifetime no one sincerely apologized to me,” Neves Valente said in the video discovered in the Salem, New Hampshire storage unit where his body was found.

No motive revealed for shootings He did not reveal a motive for the campus shooting, or the murder of MIT professor Nuno Loureiro two days later in Brookline, Massachusetts. Neves Valente attended school in Portugal decades ago with Loureiro.

Neves Valente did mention his interaction with a witness, which ultimately led to police identifying him.

“I was almost confronted by a guy there that day… Not almost, I actually was confronted and he knew my… my… my license plate, I honestly never thought it would take them so long to find me,” Neves Valente said.

In an interview with WBZ-TV, security expert Todd McGhee stressed the importance of reporting suspicious behavior.

“Brown University was the target, and so that just indicates to me, that all the phrasing of ‘see something say something,’ that’s what we need to do,” McGhee said. “We don’t need to look for people conducting criminal actions, we need to look for people that are acting suspicious.”

McGhee, who had a career in law enforcement and now specializes in security analysis, says even without a clear motive, the videos provide an opportunity for police to tap into his mindset and could lead to former colleagues or friends coming forward with key information.

As Brown University continues efforts to transform security across campus, Spears says it’s only there that he’ll be able to find some healing.

“I love the community. I love my friends,” Spears said. “I want to go back, and I want see them and I just want to like try and get back to something kind of normal even though I know for a long time nothing, nothing there will be normal.”

Please note: This story was provided to CNN Wire by an affiliate and does not contain original CNN reporting. This content carries a strict local market embargo. If you share the same market as the contributor of this article, you may not use it on any platform.