MARBLEHEAD — Volusia Sheriff’s Department (VSO) detectives have issued an arrest warrant for 56-year-old Robert Goodwin, the owner of a Marblehead travel agency, after 104 Seabreeze High School students and chaperones were defrauded out of $400,000 for an international trip that was canceled without refunds.
Detectives with the Financial Crimes Unit of the VSO began their investigation into Stone & Compass Travel in May of 2024 after the case was referred to VSO by the State Attorney’s Office, according to the Department’s press release.
In 2023, the group of students and chaperones signed up with the agency for a nine-day class trip to Italy and Greece, which was to begin in June of 2024. Each traveler paid a minimum of $3,550 in travel fees that included airfare, lodging, and excursions.
One month before the trip, the agency emailed the students that it was going out of business, and there was no money to offer refunds. Shortly after, the agency’s website went down, and all previous contact phone numbers and email addresses were inactive.
In June of 2024, Rob Goodwin told the The Item that he was actually the victim of a fraud scheme.
Goodwin faces two counts of grand theft (over $100K) and two counts of organized scheme to defraud (over $50K). His bond is set at $4 million.
Goodwin told the The Item in 2024 that he was unable to access roughly $900,000 in his account when trying to allocate money for multiple trips after switching over to a new investment company.
When Goodwin tried contacting the company, he claimed that there were no active phone lines and his account had been frozen, forcing him to cancel between 20-30 summer trips just days before the company was expected to run them, except for eight trips out of Marblehead.
Despite the fraud claim, Goodwin told The Item that the company has been able to provide “70-80% (of refunds) to some schools,” and is in the process of getting refunds back to the remaining schools.
“We’re just trying to pound the pavement as best we can to get them (refunds) back,” Goodwin told The Item in 2024.
The Item reported that the fallout from the cancellations included two schools in Florida filing complaints to the attorney general against Stone & Compass. Immediately following the alleged fraud, Goodwin filed a fraud complaint with the office of New York Attorney General Letitia James. As part of the legal process, law enforcement also looked into the company itself. Goodwin, in an interview, said that the company has “been cleared of all wrongdoing, 100%.”
He told The Item in 2024 that those who booked trips will be getting their refunds, but he emphasized that it is a slow process due to needing to get money back from overseas vendors, including hotels and travel companies.
The two schools filing complaints against Goodwin also did not pay through a third party, such as a credit card, which, according to Goodwin, means that the company has to physically go to the vendor’s location to attempt to get the refunds.
“It’s kind of hard to get a guy in Crete, who has a small hotel, to give your money back,” Goodwin said. “It’s just time. It takes time. I would say overall, we’ve got to be probably pushing 70% at this point.”
Goodwin said that one of the schools, Seabreeze High School in Daytona, Fla., has received close to 70% of its refunds, including all of its flight credits.
According to the press release, the investigation revealed the agency was being sued by numerous other organizations for similar allegations to include Flagler College in St. Augustine.
