By now, they were supposed to be well into the first leg of the three-year Life at Sea cruise, sailing from Ushuaia, Argentina to Punta Arenas in Chilean Patagonia.
Instead, more than a month after their cruise was abruptly canceled, a couple is stranded in an Istanbul hotel and on the verge of becoming homeless. Another woman has moved to Ecuador because she can’t afford to pay her mortgage. and a man, recently diagnosed with cancer, delayed his treatment because he could not afford it.
On Tuesday, 78 would-be Life at Sea passengers sent a letter to Markenzy Lapointe, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida, asking him to investigate whether Miray, a Turkish cruise line, defrauded them out of millions of dollars. They claim the company raised about $16 million and used it for a deposit to buy a new ship that it didn’t end up buying. It is not clear whether Mr. Lapointe will take action.
Dozens of passengers quit their jobs, sold their homes and withdrew their savings to pay for what promised to be the adventure of a lifetime: a 382-port cruise over 1,095 days. But in late November, just days before the cruise was scheduled to depart, the trip was canceled because Miray had been unable to obtain a suitable ship.
Most of the passengers paid Miray tens of thousands of dollars to secure their cabins, which ranged from $90,000 to $975,000 for a suite. Some passengers paid the full fare in advance to qualify for a discount. After the cancellation, Miray said it would offer full refunds to all passengers, but two of the repayment deadlines have passed and only four of the more than 100 passengers have received a partial refund.
Had the passengers known how their money was being used, “they could have made informed decisions about parting with their $16 million,” the passengers said in the complaint, adding that they were expressly told by the company that their payments were not being made. . used for advance funding.
Last May, the Miray’s owner, Vedat Ugurlu, sent a WhatsApp message to Mikael Petterson, the former CEO of Life at Sea, telling him he had $5 million for a deposit to buy the AIDAaura, a larger vessel that was more appropriate. for the voyage from the originally proposed MV Gemini. He said they had to pay a total of $10 million due to a bank guarantee and asked Mr Petterson to meet a May 31 deadline to collect passenger payments.
Mr. Petterson, who was in charge of sales and marketing at the time, said he did not feel comfortable raising large sums of money when the company did not have a US bank account or the infrastructure to securely collect payments. Miray refused to set up an escrow account as is customary in the United States and was not required to enter into a bond with the Federal Maritime Commission to protect customer deposits because it was not boarding from US ports.
Miray denied using passengers’ money for the new ship and blamed the refund delay on the high number of credit card chargeback disputes it said had caused banks to block their money. Most passengers said they only started asking for chargebacks last week after the company continued to miss promised repayment deadlines.
“We are working tirelessly to give our banks the documents they need to release our funds and all our passengers can be assured that they will be fully repaid by February 15,” Ethem Bayramoglu, the airline’s chief operating officer, said in an interview. Mirai. on January 12.
Many passengers don’t buy it. “I won’t believe anything until I have my money in hand,” said Kara Yousef, a 36-year-old former aid worker from Ohio who sold her apartments to pay for the cruise and was living in an Istanbul hotel with her husband. for more than two months as he awaits the return of the $80,000. On December 29, she received a bank receipt saying the first installment of her repayment had been sent, but she never received the money.
After several attempts to reach Mr. Bayramoglou (who, at one point, told her he was at a soccer match and could not speak), Ms. Youssef finally spoke with him on January 14. He offered to pay her part of the amount in person, in cash, but a meeting time and place has not yet been set.
The too-good-to-be-true charm of a world cruise
Life at Sea passengers are mostly US citizens. Many of them learned about the cruise on CNN and “Good Morning America.” One of the biggest advantages, they said, was the price, which for many would be less expensive than living in one city for three years. This, combined with the opportunity to explore the world, led them to jump at the chance.
“I always wanted to go on a world cruise, but it was all out of my budget,” said Jenny Phenix, 67, who gave up two small businesses, rented her Florida apartment and paid $70,000 to go on the cruise. .
The sales force, mostly Americans, was very persuasive, he said. Even when an internal dispute among company executives became public, resulting in the sales team resigning in May, passengers were led to believe the cruise would continue.
Now Ms. Phoenix is sharing a house in Ecuador with another passenger because she had to rent out her apartment in Florida to pay the mortgage.
Mrs. Phenix and many other passengers are stranded, struggling to make ends meet. “Some people put in everything they had and now they’re broke or homeless or wandering from cruise to cruise like bums because they have nowhere else to go,” said David Purcell, a 78-year-old retired attorney from St. Louis. who sold his house and car after his wife died and canceled the cruise, hoping it would help him heal his loss.
“I believe we have a strong case to warrant a criminal investigation,” Mr Purcell said.
“That’s enough”
Shirene Thomas, 58, a retired actress and social worker from Wilmington, NC, is one of many passengers who are effectively homeless. She spent a third of her retirement savings and gave up rent to pay $156,000 for the cruise. Now, with limited credit, he was unable to secure a new lease.
“I’m about to go on my fifth cruise in a row,” she said, speaking from a friend’s home in North Carolina. “I literally went from Rome to Manhattan on a transatlantic cruise and four days later I was back in Rome to do the same cruise again.”
Ms. Thomas paid for the cruises by credit card, hoping that her refund from Miray would be processed in time to pay off her balances.
Another passenger, Adam Pers, a retired engineer in his 50s from Bristol, England, was diagnosed with cancer after the cruise was canceled and is now looking for work to cover his mortgage and cancer treatment, which he had to delay. He said he paid six figures in advance for the entire cruise fare so he could get a discount.
“Instead of focusing on my treatment, I have to go through the stress of chasing my money and looking for work,” Mr Perce said.
Mr. Perce has explained his situation to Mireille many times. Every week, Mr. Bayramoglou emails him, writing that he will get his money “by Friday.” But Mr. Perce has yet to receive any money and Mireille has stopped responding to his messages.
“That’s enough,” said Mr. Perce. “I’m resigned to the fact that I’m not going to get my money back, but even if I don’t get anything, at least if the U.S. attorney opens an investigation and these people go to jail, that’s something.”
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