Firm Cancels Tours for 650; Inquiry Launched

San Bernardino County authorities are investigating a Rancho Cucamonga tour company that declared bankruptcy and failed to deliver trips to Mazatlan, Mexico, it had sold to about 650 graduating high school seniors.

Many of the students, from more than 20 high schools scattered across Southern California from the San Fernando Valley to Big Bear, have complained they were left waiting in the middle of the night earlier this month for buses that never arrived to pick them up for the weeklong trips arranged by Groups Unlimited.

San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Lt. Bruce Zeiner confirmed that an investigation into possible fraud is under way. “It’s not easy; there are hundreds of victims,” he said. “ . . . We’re constantly doing interviews. Every day, there is new information. . . . We are trying to determine whether there was criminal action there.”

He said that many students have told investigators they are out $300 or $400. Others have said that on the one trip that did take place, which began June 23, 450 other students failed to receive all the services promised. Also, chaperons for that trip dropped out of sight, they said.

Calls to the Groups Unlimited office were answered Friday only by a tape recording that declared:

“The July 3 and 13 trips have been cancelled due to extraordinary expenses imposed by the Mexican hotels and people. The agency is in bankruptcy. You will receive notification from bankruptcy court in the near future and claims forms to submit for pro rata shares of monies paid on behalf of Groups Unlimited.”

The tour company’s attorney, Ralph Pagter of Santa Ana, did not return calls. His secretary said, “He’s filing bankruptcy for them. He doesn’t want to say anything.”

According to young people who signed up for the trips, which frequently were marketed through student government officers or school newspaper editors at schools sometimes bypassed by big student tour companies, trouble surfaced on the first day of the first trip.

“Seventeen of us from San Bernardino High School paid $249 each,” said Nita Weaver, 18. “They lost two busloads of kids by the time we reached Mexicali. We waited at the train station for as long as we could. We finally left on our train, and the other kids (from the overdue buses) had to hire buses from Mexicali to Mazatlan.

On the train and later at the hotels in Mazatlan, she said, supervision by chaperons was virtually nonexistent, and so many youngsters were packed into berths or hotel rooms that some had to sleep on the floor. Prices in the Mexican resort were so high that many ran out of spending money, she said.

“There was only one chaperon on the trip going home,” said Colleen Overcast, 18, of San Bernardino. “We were supposed to have a room on the train. We never got it. We weren’t listed. Finally, we were put in a room with three girls and one boy.”

The owner of the special train hired by Groups Unlimited, Bill Wallace, said he had done the best he could when the chaperons failed to show up on the way home and he found himself the lone adult supervisor with hundreds of young people.

“They just abandoned these kids on the way home,” he said. “No one had any places assigned on the train. We didn’t know who went where.”

Wallace, whose Bananafish Tours runs frequent trips to Mexico, said he does not think that Groups Unlimited was overcharged by the Mexicans or that it had collected insufficient funds to pay for all three trips.

“I calculated the amounts we charged, the other transportation expenses and the hotel charges,” he said. “They had to make money.”

Nonetheless, he said, the bank would not honor a check the tour company gave to him, and he had to insist on a money order.

John Reynen, a Big Bear real estate agent whose two daughters had signed up for the second trip and paid $500, said his daughters along with other Big Bear graduates waited at a pickup point from 1:30 a.m. to 5:30 a.m. July 3 for buses to arrive to take them to Mexicali.

“No one showed up, and there was no notice of cancellation,” he said.