(Long Island, NY) Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman announced an agreement today with a Staten Island based travel agency and its owners to pay $25,000 in restitution and civil penalties and costs for violating New York’s consumer laws. Cuka Tours, Corp. preyed on vulnerable customers who were seeking to visit family in their native countries located in the Balkans such as Albania, Macedonia, Kosovo and Montenegro. The customers believed they were making a legitimate purchase of airline travel tickets, and paid upfront cash payments to Cuka Tours for roundtrip tickets. But Cuka Tours would book the reservations and only pay for one-way tickets, leaving customers stranded and unable to return home. In some instances, Cuka Tours failed to pay for any tickets, leaving some customers without any tickets at all.
“The actions taken by this company to manipulate and exploit New Yorkers are shameless,” said Attorney General Schneiderman. “These families, who only wanted to return home to visit their loved ones, were left stranded in airports halfway across the world and duped out of thousands of dollars. We will not tolerate those who attempt to manipulate and take advantage of vulnerable New Yorkers for profit.”
The Attorney General’s investigation found that Cuka Tours, Corp. and its operators, Qerem Cukoviq and Suzana Cukoviq engaged in deceptive, fraudulent and illegal business practices and false advertising that included accepting full payment for round-trip airfares from its customers, making reservations with airline carriers for round-trip airfares and using the airlines’ computer reservation system to generate travel itineraries that they used to fool customers to believe that roundtrip airline tickets had been purchased when instead they had not. Cuka Tours and its operators arranged payment for only one-way tickets, thereby leaving its customers stranded overseas on their return trip home and forcing them to make new travel arrangements and pay yet again, sometimes thousands of dollars, for new tickets. Cuka Tours, Corp. and its operators failed to arrange alternative travel plans or arrange refunds on behalf of customers whom they knew, or should have known, had their airline ticket reservations cancelled due to Cuka Tours Corp.’s nonpayment.
In addition to the payment of money, the settlement permanently bans Qerem Cukoviq and Suzana Cukoviq from engaging in business in New York State as a travel agency and/or air transportation business unless a $200,000 performance bond is filed with the Attorney General’s Office.
The case was handled by Assistant Attorney General Sandra Giorno-Tocco in the Westchester Regional Office, which is led by Gary Brown, Assistant Attorney General-In-Charge. The Westchester Regional Office is a part of the Division of Regional Offices that is led by Martin J. Mack, Executive Deputy Attorney General for Regional Offices.
