DA Opens Hotline for Victims of Sunlight Travel

To handle the surge of complaints, the Santa Clara County District Attorney’s Office set up a fraud hotline in Vietnamese and English for customers bilked by a San Jose travel agency.

Sunlight Travel, founded in 1996 by Diane Ho, suddenly closed up shop June 5, leaving customers in a lurch. Many of them stand to lose thousands of dollars for flights bought but never booked. Sunlight Travel catered to a lot of Vietnamese clients from its now-closed strip mall storefront on South King Road.

Customers who want to report a complaint can call the “Sunlight Travel Fraud Hotline” at 408.792.2675 and leave their names and contact information. Investigators will call back to file a report. The DA’s office will work with the San Jose Police Department to investigate each complaint received.

“Suspected financial crimes require investigators to review thousands of business and bank records, so we ask that the victims be patient with us as we conduct a thorough investigation,” says Supervising Deputy District Attorney Christine Garcia-Sen.

The company website, still live, promotes trips to Vietnam, a popular destination for a lot of South Bay families of Vietnamese heritage. The Mercury News reports that some families paid thousands of dollars to book flights and saw the checks cashed, but never got the tickets to show for it.

“Rest assured that our office will do everything possible to seek justice for all of the victims,” DA Jeff Rosen says in a prepared statement.

Jennifer Wadsworth is the former news editor for San Jose Inside and Metro Silicon Valley. Follow her on Twitter at @jennwadsworth.

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