A federal judge in Virginia sentenced a travel agency to 13 years for deceiving George Mason University, other schools and several others.
From September 2022 to November last year, Maurice Eugene Smith took money from customers’ travel planning services instead of booking their hotels or travel accommodations, but used the money at the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Eastern District of Virginia, and used the dollar for its own purposes.
Some money paid to Smith’s company Eugene Toriko LLC is spent on his travel or sports gambling expenses.
Smith also used some payments to Eugene Toriko to repay other victims of his deception. For example, after Smith’s guilty plea in April, he used the money he and his company received from GMU and its foundation to repay Reinhardt University in the Georgia Welsh Card from Georgia Welsh Card.
GMU signed Eugene Toriko’s basketball team to the Bahamas, while Reinhardt University paid the company a baseball team to Shreveport, Louisiana.
For GMU, Smith made a reservation, but got nothing. The school had to cancel the tour to the Bahamas.
For Reinhardt, Smith took the money paid to him by the school for the airline booking and told the athletic director that he had no idea what was going on with the tickets. The school then dispatched a team to Shreveport by bus.
In addition to these schools and a few people who were abbreviated in court documents, Smith also deceived Gwennett College in Georgia. According to the factual statement, he purchased tickets to Thailand for members of the school’s international research department, but only bought one return ticket.
In his plea agreement, Smith agreed to repay the $159,755.60 return to the George Mason University Foundation, $19,950.58 to Gwennett College in Georgia, and $19,950.58 to seven other parties.
