Victims speak out as holiday dreams shattered after Malaga travel agency owners and staff arrested

Tamara Navarro's family had been waiting for months for this day to arrive. Today she was supposed to board a plane at Malaga Airport to enjoy a trip to Disneyland Paris, but this trip, which her daughter and her two little nieces were so excited about, has been cancelled at the last minute."We have been struggling for four years with my brother's illness and after he got better, we finally decided to go, as we had promised the girls," she explained. She is one of the victims of the alleged scam of the Florín travel agency in Malaga, in front of which she stood yesterday along with other affected people.

Like hers, there are at least twenty other families who entrusted their savings to this company, which they have denounced for fraud. In Tamara's case, she says, they finished paying the costs of the trip in August. The tickets were supposed to arrive in two weeks, but they never did. In total they paid about 5,500 euros, she says.

National Police officers have arrested five people, including the owners and staff of the agency, which has premises in Malaga city and another in Alhaurín de la Torre. The investigators of the case estimate that the suspects have illegally taken around 40,000 euros, although they believe that the amount could be higher, as they assume that there will be victims who are not yet aware of the alleged scam.

Tamara learned from her brother that the agency had closed its doors a fortnight ago, although she never imagined what it would mean for them. "I thought something had happened, but I didn't think the worst," she said. According to him, it was the wholesaler itself that confirmed to him a few days ago that absolutely nothing had been paid for. Not the tickets, not the hotel, not the insurance, nothing.

"We found out last Thursday out of the blue and it has been a real blow," she said. Above all, she stressed, because of the disappointment that the girls have felt. "My daughter, the poor thing, cried when I told her; she even blamed me for having given the money to bad people... she is too young to understand what has happened," she explained.

Jorge and his wife had also promised their eight-year-old daughter that, if she got good grades, they would go to Disney, which was her dream. They were supposed to take a flight on 7 September, but they discovered that the reservation had been cancelled. They found out on 15 August, just two days after they had finished paying for the entire trip, which amounted to 3,395 euros.

Faced with this situation, and having received no response from the owner of the agency, Jorge went to the police to file a complaint, which was one of many that they have received recently. "We still don't know why they have acted like this," he said. The hardest thing for him was also giving the bad news to his eight-year-old daughter. "She spent two days crying," he added.

Sergio Rosas is also in this situation: he explained that he and his wife had planned to enjoy an idyllic Mediterranean cruise with his brother and his wife. "We had the illusion of going on holiday, even if it was only for a week, but this has ruined it," he explained. According to him, they made a first payment of 400 euros in May and in August they called him from the agency to settle what was left to be paid.

"I was surprised because there was still quite a lot left, but they told me it was to get things moving," he said. So they paid out the remaining 5,080 euros. "On 18 September, my brother told me that the travel agency had closed; I tried to call all the phones, but they were all switched off," he said. That same afternoon, he filed a complaint with the police.

In the case of Juan Carlos Fernández, as he tells it, he and his wife arranged a trip to see northern Italy for which they first gave a deposit of 900 euros and, later, another 1,500. "The departure was on 4 October, and when my wife went to pay the balance, she found that the agency office was closed." Surprised, they returned to the area to ask around the nearby shops and, in the absence of explanations, they turned to social media, again in search of answers. "We found that there were more people with the same problem," he said.