How a network of scammers sells fake tickets to Cubans

MEXICO CITY. – Today, January 3, David was supposed to fly from Havana to Guyana on an Aruba Airlines plane. He had coordinated the service of some “coyotes” who, in exchange for 1,150 USD, would guide him on his journey, taking care of food, transportation and lodging expenses.

David’s ticket (Image: Courtesy)

This week I should be passing through gigantic Brazil; He would then enter Uruguay, where he planned to request asylum as thousands of Cubans have done in recent years. His wife, Reina, would join him later when they could cover the expense, after he started working.

On December 7, David paid an online agency, through a management company, USD 1,400 for the ticket that would take him out of the country. Encouraged by the same manager, Reina joined as a salesperson for the agency and immediately managed to sell two tickets to Nicaragua. Of the 2,800 USD he received from her clients, 200 would go to her; The rest of it was deposited into a freely convertible currency card (MLC).

On the night of December 9, the young couple discovered that they had bought a fake ticket and sold two that were not real either. They had to replace the money: they lost 4,200 USD of the limited capital they had for the journey and had to give up doing it.

“We sold my mother-in-law’s house to pay for the trip. Now she is living in our house and we don’t know how to tell her that David will not leave, that they cheated us of most of the money,” Reina told this medium.

The alleged agency that issued Aruba Airlines tickets to Guyana and Nicaragua has defrauded at least a dozen Cubans, according to what has been confirmed CubaNet through interviews with those affected.

In all cases the mode of operation was similar: the supposed managers of the agency announced two types of services on social networks: selling tickets and hiring managers to deal with clients as intermediaries and charge them. Clients trusted their managers and they trusted the agency managers, whom they never saw. Both clients and intermediaries were deceived.

How does the network operate? Step 1: Hire staff

“We have an agency here in Los Angeles, California, and we need people in Cuba to help us do face-to-face deals: to collect money and that type of things,” can be heard in one of the audios sent to a saleswoman consulted by CubaNet.

It was the managers or advisors who received the data from the interested parties and then provided them with the tickets. With the tickets in hand, the buyers entered the address registered only on December 5, 2023 from the United States, according to the information available in Who is.

There they wrote their ticket number and verified that the trips had been purchased. And everything, they thought, was in order.

Apparently the customers were visiting the Aruba Airlines website. They could see the logo, the images and the same information that appears on the real website because they had cloned its appearance, except for the contact numbers. On the fake portal they changed the phones for the WhatsApp of the supposed Los Angeles managers. Another notable difference is the URL. The official Aruba website is accessed through the link

Currently, the website designed for the scam is out of service.

“We Cubans are very ignorant about many things and are easily deceived. We don’t know anything about how to pay for tickets or that they are verified on the airline’s official website,” Reina admits.

Alleged confirmation that appeared to people scammed with the sale of fake tickets — Alleged confirmation that it appeared to people scammed with the sale of fake tickets (Photo: Courtesy)

From Cuba there are three reliable ways to confirm that a plane ticket is real: on the airline’s official website, at the physical agency or at the airport.

Reina and her husband, out of ignorance, reviewed the fake website and two days later discovered that they had been victims of a scam. By chance they observed that the ticket number on her ticket was exactly the same as one of the tickets she had sold to someone else and had the same information except her name.

“With the money from my mother-in-law’s house, I repaid my buyers for the two tickets that I sold them, but my manager still hasn’t paid me for mine because she has nowhere to get it from,” explains the Cuban resident in the capital’s Vedado.

“I agreed with her that I would expect her to pay me little by little and that I was not going to report her,” he adds.

However, another manager residing in Camagüey did not have the same luck and was sued by one of the seven people to whom she sold tickets. When they discovered the fraud, she no longer had that money in her possession and she could not replace it.

“The case is in the hands of the Police, but they don’t tell us anything,” he told CubaNet Marcia, a woman from Las Tunas who bought two tickets from the Camagüey manager. She, like Reina and David, sold a property to emigrate with her partner to Mexico, where an uncle would welcome them.

“Now we have to start from scratch again. I know we lost that money,” she says.

Marcia knew she had been scammed because she made some inquiries and discovered that Aruba Airlines did not fly from Camagüey, where she was supposed to depart for Nicaragua, as written on her ticket.

In fact, Aruba Airlines announced on December 1 that it would no longer fly the Havana-Managua route or sell new tickets. Following the warnings issued by the United States authorities to stop illegal crossings to the southern North American border, the company discontinued the service.