Travel agent gets ticket to state prison

NEW BERN, N.C. (WITN) - A woman who operated a New Bern travel agency’s next stop is prison after she was found guilty Monday of felony embezzlement and obtaining property by false pretenses.

District Attorney Scott Thomas says 58-year-old Julie Mincey, of New Bern, was found guilty by a Craven County jury of nine counts of felony embezzlement and one count of obtaining property by false pretenses.

Thomas says that following the verdict, Mincey was sentenced to a maximum of five years in prison and ordered to pay $53,402.58 in restitution to the victims of her crimes.

Mincey operated a travel agency in New Bern called Country Travel and Tours. Evidence in court, according to Thomas, showed that Mincey accepted thousands of dollars from dozens of customers, promising each of them to book travel packages around the world.

WITN is told that near the dates of the customers’ departures in September 2018, they realized no travel packages had been made and Mincey was not around to explain why. Investigators later learned she had left the country for Europe and had not reimbursed any of her clients for their losses.

Thomas says that an analysis of Mincey’s business accounts showed that from August 2017 through December 2018, instead of using the money from her clients for travel packages, Mincey had used them for her own benefit, paying off personal and friends’ credit cards, paying for a vehicle, and transferring money to her personal bank account.

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