Travel Agent Vanishes; $300,000 From Clients Also Missing

At least one honeymoon, dozens of vacations and a golden wedding anniversary cruise to Alaska had to be canceled when the owner of a well-known Rancho Palos Verdes travel agency disappeared with as much as $300,000 in customers’ funds unaccounted for, law enforcement officials report.

No one knows quite what to make of the disappearance of Apollo Travel agency owner Karen Sue Reindl, a Rancho Palos Verdes resident who had successfully run the business for nearly two decades before locking the doors last week, officials said.

Also missing is Reindl’s business associate, Bud Felando of San Pedro, investigators say.

Reindl left behind a note on the office door at 23135 S. Western Ave., saying “Apollo Travel Closed, Filing Bankruptcy. All Clients Will Be Contacted.”

Los Angeles County sheriff’s fraud investigators and scores of disgruntled clients said they have been unable to locate Reindl for an explanation.

More than 100 Apollo customers have filed complaints since the business closed its doors July 3. Most of them had paid cash advances ranging from $2,000 to $3,000 for their trips, Sheriff’s Sgt. Ralph Wolf reported.

Newly married Deb Whipple, 33, of Lawndale learned Monday that her honeymoon had been canceled when she went to Apollo’s office to find out why she and her husband, Larry, had not received tickets for their Caribbean cruise.

“I found the door locked,” Whipple said.

The couple had paid $2,000 in advance and thought they were booked for the cruise, starting July 14 from Miami, Fla. But Apollo failed to send the money to Carnival Cruise Lines and they lost the booking, Whipple said.

“We’ll still have a honeymoon, some way,” she added gamely.

Fraud investigators said they are trying to sort out the facts to determine whether they have a criminal case on their hands or just a business that was in financial trouble and went bankrupt.

“If (Apollo owners) haven’t filed (for bankruptcy), it could be a straight scam,” Wolf said.

It will take at least a week to confirm whether the company has filed bankruptcy papers because federal bankruptcy court clerks are so far behind in recording recent filings, Wolf said.

“All we can do is wait and see,” he added.

Felando, Reindl’s business associate, is a cousin of state Assemblyman Gerald Felando (R-Torrance).

In a telephone interview, the legislator said he was embarrassed because his cousin had “shamed the family name.” He said Bud Felando had been Reindl’s partner in the travel center for about one year.

Among the hardest-hit customers are 50 people from across the country who were to join Lomita residents Manny and Nel Fernandez on their golden wedding anniversary cruise. The group of family and friends was to board a cruise ship leaving Vancouver, Canada, for Alaska on July 20.

The group had paid Apollo about $75,000 for the trip, but cruise line officials reported that the bookings were canceled because the agency had not forwarded the advance payments.

“I am thoroughly sick about all of this,” said Nel Fernandez. “We’d been planning the trip for a long time . . . there were couples coming from Monterey, from Arizona and Oregon. It makes me sick to think this could happen.”

The Lomita couple said they booked through Apollo Travel because they had received good service there in the past.

Mrs. Fernandez said she last spoke with Reindl on July 2 and was told that her tickets and other paperwork would be ready within a week. The next day, the agency locked its doors.

Apollo had been a member of the American Society of Travel Agents, a national trade association, from 1974 until last year, when Reindl let her membership lapse, an ASTA spokesman said.

The association had received no complaints on Apollo, which was considered to have a good reputation in the trade, according to Stan Basco, ASTA manager of consumer affairs. He called the circumstances around Apollo’s demise unusual, saying that when an agency is in financial trouble, it usually stops booking clients and simply “fades away.”

Basco advised anyone who is using a travel agent to first check on the agency’s professional reputation, make advance payments by credit card rather than cash and always take out trip cancellation insurance.

Credit card companies and the insurance offer travelers some protection if an airline, cruise line or travel service goes out of business, he said.

Most of those precautions would not have protected Apollo’s customers, however, because Reindl refused to take credit cards and her business reputation was sound, Basco said.

“There is no real protection in a case like this,” he concluded.