"Boston woman gets jail for cheating her clients" by Melissa Hanson | Globe Correspondent, November 05, 2013
A 41-year-old Boston woman was sentenced to jail and ordered to pay restitution after pleading guilty to stealing more than $95,000 from clients of her travel business and from Chinese immigrants seeking to apply for citizenship, prosecutors said.
May Woo Lei was sentenced Tuesday in Suffolk Superior Court to 18 months in jail and 10 years of probation. If Woo violates her probation, she will have to serve an additional year in prison. She pleaded guilty to 21 counts of larceny over $250 and six counts of larceny over $250 of a person 60 or older, Attorney General Martha Coakley’s office said.
Woo used her business, Sky Energy Travel Inc., to steal money from clients.
In other words, she operated like a bank.
She charged clients a fee for filing citizenship applications on their behalf, but she never did. Between November 2009 and February 2012, Woo defrauded 16 clients of more than $53,000, Coakley’s office said.
Woo also stole money from clients by falsely claiming she would buy plane tickets for them. Between February and July 2012 and in 2010, Woo fraudulently collected $42,000, Coakley’s office said.
While on probation, Woo is prohibited from operating a travel business or accepting money for tickets or reservations, and from advising people on immigration or citizenship issues, the statement said. Woo was also ordered to pay $88,555 in restitution.
Woo is scheduled to report to court next week to begin her sentence, Coakley’s office said.
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"Travel agent pleads not guilty to charge of stealing from clients" by John R. Ellement | Globe Staff, October 10, 2013
A Chinatown travel agent was accused Thursday of bilking 14 people, nine older than 60, out of $16,000 they had paid for airfare to China — and may have victimized seven more people, according to Suffolk District Attorney Daniel F. Conley’s office.
Linda Do, 57, was arraigned Thursday in Boston Municipal Court on 14 counts of larceny over $250 and nine counts of larceny over $250 from a person over 60. She pleaded not guilty before Judge Raymond Dougan, who released her on personal recognizance, ordering her to surrender her passport and wear a GPS ankle bracelet monitoring device.
After Do’s court-appointed defense attorney, Stephen Gomes, told Dougan his client was broke, the judge ordered her to appear in court by noon Friday with paperwork documenting her financial difficulties.
According to Gomes, Do and her husband are both unemployed, and she filed for bankruptcy Thursday. The disagreement between Do and her clients was a business matter, he said, not a criminal issue.
“It’s a situation, basically, of a business going under,’’ said Gomes, who added that Do has no criminal record, is a mother and an American citizen who moved to the United States 23 years ago.
He said Do had been running a travel agency on Harrison Avenue in Chinatown called Olympic Travel.
Suffolk Assistant District Attorney Neil Flynn told Dougan that Do persuaded the 14 alleged victims to pay her in cash for the flights to China between May and September. Do then either made no travel plans or canceled flights after she collected the money.
“Many of these victims were older and needed a translator to speak with investigators,” Conley said in a statement. “As outrageous as it sounds, they might have been considered easy targets. Fortunately, they came forward and told Boston police what happened.’’
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