ALERT!! Scamming Travel Agent

This is to warn all stakeholders in the travel industry worldwide about a scammer who poses as an international travel agent. Her name is Whitacre Wendy Lynn from California, USA. She operates a travel blog called "INTO THE WILD," (https://itwadventure.com/). 

Early this year, Wendy booked a trip with our company (Gorilla Trek Africa) for a group of her clients (10 ladies) which we effectively carried out. Unfortunately, Wendy did not fulfil her financial obligation to us and she decided the ignore us and cut off communication after the trip. 

How Wendy scammed us! Evidence from our Manager....the tour consultant 

I first heard from Wendy last year in Jan when she contacted us booking a 6 days Rwanda gorilla tour for 12 ladies (31st jan-5th Feb) which we successfully organised.

Early this year, she again contacted us for another trip, this time combining both Uganda and Rwanda and booked it at the last minute. 

We went ahead to organise everything as she told us she was organising the transfer of funds. 

On 5th Jan, she sent us what looked like a receipt for the transfer for 10 ladies for a total amount of usd36,000. A few days later. She asked us to add one more slot to make it 11 ladies on this tour and also sent us another document as proof of another usd3,600 transfer. We waited for the money for a week and nothing was showing up and yet the trip had started.

Wendy kept promising us to keep running the trip as the money was on its way. We advised her that something was not right since we had never had such an incident that money can be sent and it spends a whole week on the way.

As the trip was going on, I kept interacting with Wendy about the progress and she kept giving excuses on how she was traveling and how she was getting hard time to communicate with the bank. Finally, she told us she had been on a long call with the bank and that the bank confirmed the money was coming.

I made several requests to her to get us the bank's contact number such that we could link them up with our bank to track down the transactions but Wendy couldn't share the number. She even in one of the communications told us she had no phone contact for the bank and when I reminded her about her previous claim of having been on a long call with the same bank, she didn't mention it again.

On the last day of the trip, I instructed Luchi ( the tour guide) to bring the issue to the attention of the clients and told him to let Hannah (the group leader) know that we were not going to let them go without receiving our payment and that was about 2 weeks after the purported date of wire transfer.

Hannah called me on Luchi 's phone begging me not to embarrass them and in her own words said she would stand in as a guarantor to make sure we receive our money even after the trip. Wendy now told Luchi that she had actually not paid for the extra person (despite having sent me the so called receipt for that) and went ahead and made a pesapal transaction for the 11th lady that evening before the last day.

Having been in this industry for long and knowing its dynamics, we didn't want to tarnish Wendy's reputation, we decided to trust her word and that of Hannah.

As a precautionary measure, I instructed Luchi to get the clients' contacts as plan B in case Wendy failed to meet her obligations and fulfil her promise.

To my greatest disappointment,  after the trip had ended and we kept making efforts to remind her to send us the money as we were struggling to run other trips with such a huge deficit,  Wendy started changing the tone and I think she instructed Hannah not to reply to our messages. Wendy herself sent me a text telling me to keep Hannah out of the issue that she was just a mere employee and she won't be able to help us.

I obliged and kept the communication between my self and Wendy for about another week. Remember during the trip, she had even told me how she had another upcoming trip for this Feb and so I had all the reasons to trust her.

I was greatly disappointed at first of all, Hannah. Who pledged to be a guarantor and after letting everyone go back, she never made any effort to help us get our money,  she even kept quite and refused to reply to any of my Whatsapp texts. Such level of dishonesty and lack of responsibility hurts us.

Wendy later offered to make some payment in installments and we agreed that she makes it in 2 instalments by credit card. She first sent us usd11,580 and promised to send us the remainder with in a day or 2. After 2 days, I reminded her, she said her card hadn't cleared to allow another transaction and promised to send it once it clears.

A week passed and there was no payment. I reminded her again and she promised she was going to send that very day (2nd Feb 2026).

That was her last email, since then we have made so many attempts to hear from her but in vain.

It has come to our attention that she could have intended not to pay us our money and that's how we finally resolved to post this online since it may help to save other people she would attempt to scam in the future. 

As of today, Wendy owes us usd24,420.