A tour operator who cheated 232 Arkansas highschool students out of “once in a lifetime” Hawaiian vacations was fined $3.9 million on Thursday and ordered to repay them and their families the $407,004 they spent to book the trips last year.
Now authorities will have to find him and try to collect the money.
The fine, representing $10,000 per victim, was the maximum available to Pulaski County Circuit Judge Collins Kilgore, who also barred Calliope “Ope” Saaga from doing travel-related businessin the state until the monies are paid. Saaga, whose last known address was in Utah, did not attend the proceedings.
Kilgore was acting at the behest of Arkansas Attorney General Dustin McDaniel’s office, which sued Saaga and his Performing Hawaii Tours Inc. in July, claiming his promises to the Fort Smith Southside High School and Spirit of Arkansas marching bands and failure to follow through with them after receiving payment constituted violations of the Arkansas Deceptive Trade Practices Act.
The law allows the judge to impose a civil penalty of up to $10,000 per victim, which will go into a special consumer-protection fund. The judge’s ruling also requires Saaga to repay the attorney general the cost of the case, which has not yet been determined.
“Band members worked hard to raise enough money to pay for a trip to Hawaii, and this travel agent left them without the promised trip and without their money,” McDaniel said in a news release. “I am grateful to the court for awarding restitution to these families, and my office will do everything it can to make sure the defendant fulfills his obligations under the order.”
Saaga was served with the lawsuit in Saratoga Springs, Utah, in August, but he never responded or came to court to contest the accusations, Senior Assistant Attorney General Eric Estes told the judge. Saaga was declared in default in January.
“We never heard from him,” Estes said.
Saaga’s exact whereabouts are unknown, Estes said, although authorities know he has also been in Hawaii andAmerican Samoa, a U.S. territory in the South Pacific Ocean.
Authorities in Missouri also are looking for him as they try to collect on $360,000 in court-ordered restitution in November on Saaga and his Utah-based company, Present America Tours LLC, for duping a high-school band in Willard, Mo., in a similar scheme for a Hawaiian trip. Saaga was also a no-show in that case in which he was also fined $38,000 and ordered to reimburse the Missouri attorney general’s office $1,065 in expenses.
In exchange for payment, Saaga had promised the Arkansas bands that he would provide travel, lodging, fulltime guides, island tours, snorkeling, dinner cruises and catamaran rides and scenic hikes, with the bands performing at the Pearl Harbor Visitors Center and in the Pan-Pacific Parade, according to the lawsuit. He also promised to provide travel insurance.
The 265-member Fort Smith group - 149 students and 116 adult chaperons - paid $257,000, $970 each, while the 121-member Spirit band group of 83 students and 38 adults paid $150,004, ranging from $468 to $2,377 per person, court filings show.
Asked at Thursday’s hearing - which lasted about nine minutes - to sum up for the judge what the bands had received, state investigator Stephen Digiovanna was succinct.
“Absolutely nothing,” he said.
With Saaga in default for not answering the suit, the hearing was for state attorneys to present proof of damages to the judge.
Band directors Sean Carrier of Fort Smith and Cathy Williams of West Memphis signed their respective groups up with Saaga in August 2011, but they had a hard time contacting him when they tried to finalize arrangements in March 2012, according to the lawsuit.
In April 2012, he emailed Carrier claiming that “legal matters” with “partners” had barred him from any contact with clients, but the situation was close to resolution, according to the lawsuit. About 10 days later in an e-mail to both band directors, he wrote he had made “terrible” and “bad decisions” with the groups’ money related to “personal relationships,” particularly with his wife, that would keep him from fulfilling his obligations to them but he promised to repay “every penny I owe you guys.”
“I write this letter with aheavy heart and deep deep sorrow for letting you and the group down. I … am now in the midst of trying to sell every asset I have in Samoa to pay the group back. It will be a slow process so I beg of your patience as my number one priority [is] to get every cent I owe the group,” Saaga wrote. “I have betrayed both your trust and the groups’ in me and made some bad decisions in trying to recover the funds for the groups’ trip.”
A final e-mail came 10 days later.
“Once again I apologize as there is no money at this point as I made some bad investments, thus [I am] trying to sell overseas assets to recover all the lost money,” he wrote. “It will take me several months for me to sell some of these properties. I’m trying my best to right all the wrong that I did.”
According to the Utah secretary of state records,Present America Tours LLC operated out of a residence at 1248 S. Parkside Drive in Saratoga Springs, and its business registration there expired two days ago.
Performing Hawaii Tours Inc. LLC, managed by Saaga, had a post office box address in Hauula, state records show. It was incorporated in July 2008 and its registration terminated last November.
Northwest Arkansas, Pages 7 on 05/31/2013