Tickets to nowhere: Haitian refugees fall prey to travel scams

Global Voices reports that as Haiti's economic and security crises deepen, a wave of fraudulent travel agencies has emerged to prey on people desperate to leave the country. These operations advertise heavily on social media, collect thousands of dollars for promised trips to places like Mexico and Brazil, then disappear — in one instance pocketing four thousand dollars each from eighty people, some three hundred twenty thousand dollars, before abandoning their offices. Many of those targeted are undocumented Haitians in the Dominican Republic who fear that reporting the fraud could lead to their own arrest and deportation. One prominent case involves a spiritual figure known as Prophet Mackenson, whom Haiti's judicial police detained on July eighth after victims said he had urged them to trust one such agency; per Global Voices, those victims later reported handing him sixty-one thousand dollars directly.

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