NSW police officers closed in on a unit in Kingsgrove last Friday to arrest travel agent Zahra Rachid who is accused of swindling customers out of hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Rachid who ran Travel World Sydney – based in Arncliffe – appeared on Nine’s A Current Affair last month after devastated customers said they had booked trips with the agent only to be given fake itineraries.
Following the show, officers from St George Police Area Command in Sydney’s south established Strike Force Bail to investigate the reports. Yesterday the NSW police released footage of them arresting Rachid.
Zahra Rachid
The 53-year-old was reportedly arrested at a complex on Mashman Ave, Kingsgrove before she was taken to Kogarah Police Station and charged with 16 counts of obtaining financial advantage by deception.
She was initially refused bail before appearing at Sutherland Local Court where she was given strict conditional bail. Rashid will appear in court on the 1 July.
In one instance, a customer alleged she had been swindled out of a staggering $160,00 by Rachid.
Nicole Vris said she used Travel World Sydney to book a holiday to Greece for 35 members of her family.
“To plan this holiday it takes a very long time, to take time off work, to save your money for the ticket and for your spending money,” Vris told Nine’s A Current Affair.
The family say they paid Travel World Sydney the $160,000 only to later find out that their booking confirmations weren’t real.
“We called Emirates directly, obviously they asked us for numbers that were on that itinerary, they just didn’t exist, we were not in the system.” a visibly distressed Vris told Nine.
She says most of the families will now no longer be able to attend the family reunion.
“A lot of families will never recover from this financially, it’s a disaster, they can’t recover.”
Meanwhile another customer – Fatima Awada – said she used the agency to book a trip to Germany. She said that she realised something was wrong when she hard the agency had been shut down. After ringing the airline she was distressed to discover her trip had been cancelled.
“Yeah, it is a big hit, and it is not just me. My sisters, my mum and her kids as well,” Awada is reported to have said.
“They paid nearly $10k. That’s just from us, that’s nearly $15k of our money.”
Lead Image: NSW arresting Zahra Rachid as seen on A Current Affair