A now-defunct student-run travel company may have cheated dozens of Duke students out of over $25,000 through various trip schemes in the past year.
Three freshmen filed complaints with the Duke University Police Department Friday after their repeated attempts to recoup funds from a botched spring break trip were unsuccessful. The three had purchased spring break trips from DukeTravels, a student-operated organization, but the trips never materialized and their reimbursement checks from the company bounced.
"There's little reason or confidence to believe we're getting our money back," said freshman David Cardenas, one of the victims. "At least, by doing this, we prevent [the organizer] from doing a future crime."
Cardenas and two friends, who each paid $799 for their all-expenses paid trip to Cancun, Mexico, originally saw a flyer promoting the travel company and its trips on East Campus in September 2003. The flyer--proclaiming "the way Duke travels!!"--promoted the spring break trip to Cancun as well as "Spring Break Miami," "Ski Weekend 2004," 'DukeCruise 2004," "Myrtle 2004" and "Mardi Gras 2004."
"We basically thought since they were using the school's name they were a legitimate company," Cardenas said. But shortly after signing up on the company's website, www.duketravels.com, and paying a $100 deposit, the students became concerned when they could not obtain any information about their trip from the company.
It was not until the day before spring break began, March 5, when Cardenas and his friends were notified by Cyril Broderick, who also uses the name Joe, that their trips were nonexistent.
"It [was upsetting], especially psychologically and emotionally--here we are anxiously awaiting a trip from October," Cardenas said. "We were still trying to make the best of it, but no matter how much we tried to forget about it, the whole week we were thinking about Cancun."
The 12 students whose trips to Cancun never materialized were not the only purported victims of DukeTravels.
First-year graduate student Jennifer Miller and three of her friends paid DukeTravels $187 per person for a weekend of skiing at Sugar Mountain, after the company's fliers blanketed the Pratt School of Engineering. But there were problems from the start for Miller and her friends. Broderick was supposed to drive the group to the mountain, but failed to show and instead asked them to drive themselves, Miller said.
"We drove all the way out to this place, Sugar Mountain, and there was no reservation," Miller said. "We couldn't get a place and we had to drive all the way back that night."
After threatening legal action, Miller and her friends received refunds, but the checks were post-dated two months later.
The company also reportedly cheated some 40 Duke undergraduates out of an estimated $16,000 by failing to produce their spring break trips to Miami, Fla. The company sold all-expenses paid spring break trips to the South Florida city for $400 per person, but the bus scheduled to drive the students never came. After the students drove themselves, they found they had no hotel reservations.
DukeTravels is affiliated with Travel and Tourism Club, a student organization that was chartered by Duke Student Government earlier this year. Kristin Jackson, chair of the Student Organization Finance Committee, said the Office of Student Activities and Facilities notified her over spring break that "the student group no longer exists."
Broderick is affiliated with two other local companies--Intellitravels and CyBroducts. After the DukeTravels website was removed from the Internet, the address redirected users to the Intellitravels website, which is also now defunct. CyBroducts, a local website company that produced Duke's Interfraternity Council and Panhellenic Council websites, lists Broderick as its principal contact.
Broderick, a member of the Duke Class of 2003, was president of Kappa Alpha Psi fraternity last year. He could not be reached for comment.
Freshman Ryan Strasser, one of the students who filed a crime report after his refund check bounced, said Broderick claimed the trip had fallen through because he had overbooked hotel rooms and transportation.
"Delta [Airlines] is suing him and the Hyatt is suing him," Strasser alleged. He added that Broderick claimed Duke had sent him a cease and desist letter to stop using the Duke name shortly before he announced that the trips had fallen through. "He showed us his bank account when we met with him and he hasn't paid his rent in six months."
Officials from Duke, Delta and Hyatt could not be reached for comment over the holiday weekend.
Other students formerly affiliated with the DukeTravels company declined to comment on the situation or claimed they had severed ties with the organization.
Duke sophomore Olivia Fu is listed on a Fall 2003 flyer as a contact for students who want to make cash deposits for DukeTravels trips. But when contacted Sunday night about the company, she said she had no current affiliation to the group.
"Honestly, I don't know what happened," Fu said. "I was initially in it in the fall but I never really understood that much about it. I really broke off relations with it because I wasn't interested in it or had the time."
Similarly, sophomore Brandon Hudson said he had no current relationship with any of the companies, although his biography on a Duke-affiliated website currently states he is "vice president for IntelliTravels, which is a student operated travel company."
When contacted Friday, Vice President for Student Affairs Larry Moneta said he had "no comment" about DukeTravels. Some of the students who purchased Cancun trips, however, said they feel the administration should bear some responsibility for what became of their spring break dreams.
"When you see something like [the DukeTravels flyer], your suspicions are lessened because you see Duke University and that's a name with a lot of credibility," said Matthew Hoekstra, a freshman who also paid for a Cancun trip. "You don't expect to get gypped like that."
Similarly, Miller questioned how DukeTravels was able to use the Duke name without a response from the administration.
"To be honest, I am kind of surprised that Duke isn't cracking down on them to be using their name in their business," she said. "At first I thought they were somewhat legitimate because they were using the school's name."
Some of that legitimacy may have also stemmed from Broderick's claims, victims claim. Sophomore Liza McClellan, who purchased a Myrtle Beach 2003 trip through DukeTravels, reported that Broderick said he originally had the University's permission to operate.
"He said DukeTravels was in conjunction with Duke," she said. "He told us he had the approval of Duke."
For Cardenas and Strasser, who each paid over $600 to make alternate spring break plans at the last minute, reimbursement by DukeTravels seems unlikely at this point. Instead, they hope to get answers about where their money went and help prevent other students from facing a similar predicament.
"I have learned my lesson," Cardenas said. "In fact next year I am going to make my own reservations."
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