Bellevue Travel Agent Gets 2 Years for Stolen Airline Miles

A former Bellevue travel agent who abused her clients’ credit card numbers and mileage plan awards will serve two years in prison and three years of probation after pleading guilty to wire fraud, U.S. Attorney Jenny A. Durkan announced Thursday.

Yeakel, 64, was ordered to pay $339,242 to the people she defrauded and to her employer, Stellar Travel of Bellevue, which incurred thousands of dollars investigating the embezzlement, according to Durkan's office.

Stellar Travel told The Associated Press in January that Yeakel was fired in June 2011 after the company discovered discrepancies in the clients' accounts.

According to federal prosecutors, Yeakel worked at Stellar Travel in Bellevue when she devised two schemes between 2005 and 2011 involving purchasing airline tickets using her clients' credit cards and their frequent flier accounts.

Yeakel used 3.7 million frequent flier miles from high-end clients to purchase 135 flights for herself and her family. When clients wanted to use their miles, she would tell them that no mileage seats were available, according to Durkan's office. The use of the miles was worth more than $132,000, her office reported. 

According to charging papers, she also used her clients' credit card numbers to buy airplane tickets to Hawaii or Mexico at full price. Prosecutors say Yeakel then would resell the tickets as “travel vouchers” to other clients, keeping the cash for herself. According to federal prosecutors, Yeakel charged $180,000 to her clients’ credit cards in this scheme.

Yeakel pleaded guilty in January.

In their sentencing memo, prosecutors criticized Yeakel for abusing her clients' trust.

“Year after year, month after month, day after day, defendant Yeakel misused credit card and airline mile accounts her clients had entrusted to her. During this lengthy period, defendant Yeakel led her clients to believe that she was acting in their best interests, when in fact, she was embezzling hundreds of thousands of dollars from them to support her own lifestyle .... There is simply no excuse for an educated defendant, entrusted with private financial information by her clients, to engage in a multi-year fraud which caused significant emotional pain and significant losses,” prosecutors wrote in their sentencing memo.

Have your frequent flier miles ever been stolen? Do you keep close track of your frequent flier miles? Tell us in the comments.