Idaho businessman accused of selling bogus Alaska vacations agrees to pay $100,000
A business that sold fishing trips to Alaska, then left people stranded, has reached a settlement with the Idaho attorney general.
Access Life’s Adventures and its owners, Craig Keith Fletcher and Crystal Renae Fletcher, agreed to pay more than $100,000 in refunds to 25 customers. The Fletchers also agreed not to advertise or sell vacation packages, travel or vacation-related goods or services from within Idaho, or to Idaho consumers, for 10 years. If they don’t pay the refunds within 10 years, the ban continues indefinitely.
The settlement says the Fletchers maintain they did not break the law, as alleged by Idaho Attorney General Lawrence Wasden in a lawsuit filed last July. They agreed to the settlement solely to “efficiently and economically” resolve the complaints, the document says.
The case is civil; the Fletchers have not been charged with a crime.
“While stopping a business from further harming consumers is a primary enforcement goal for my office, recovering consumer restitution also is important,” Wasden said in a news release about the settlement. “I’m therefore pleased the business has closed and that the owners have agreed to repay their customers.”
Wasden filed a lawsuit last July against the couple and Access Life’s Adventures, alleging violations of the Idaho Consumer Protection Act. The case stemmed from a series of consumer complaints to the Attorney General’s Office from people who said the company canceled their trips and did not refund their money.
The customers paid thousands of dollars, Wasden’s news release said.
“Some consumers were told only days before their departure dates that their trips were canceled,” the release said. “At least one customer said he arrived at the Anchorage airport with his son but no one showed up to take them to their hotel. After arranging their own transportation and hotel, they learned their trip was canceled.”
Before the most recent complaints, Craig Fletcher was accused for 14 years of various misdeeds in Idaho and Alaska, the Idaho Statesman found in an investigation. Complaints were filed with at least seven different government agencies in both states, but very little came of them, the Statesman found.
People accused Fletcher of selling high-end vacations to Alaska and not delivering on the promised trips. Fletcher’s employees filed claims for unpaid wages. A local whitewater rafting company’s owners said Fletcher agreed to buy their business and instead left them with debt. The complaints spanned multiple businesses owned by Fletcher.
“(Fletcher) had an entire season of guests booked, then disappeared within a week of the scheduled start of our season, and we never saw him again,” one former employee told the Statesman last year. “He disappeared while we were out on the river. We finished our weeklong trip, only to land our rafts at the river takeout and find no one there to pick us and the guests up. We were all stranded.”
This story was originally published February 13, 2020 at 2:08 PM.
