Tour company sued over vacation club

Fri Jul 27, 4:17 PM ET
LOS ANGELES - Luxury travel company Abercrombie & Kent has been sued for allegedly misleading investors into spending millions of dollars to join high-end vacation clubs that were not run by the tour group as they had believed.
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The plaintiffs claim they lost their investments — $100,000 to $1.3 million each — after the operator of the clubs went bankrupt. They said they would not have invested in the clubs had they known they were not run and operated by Abercrombie & Kent, the lawsuit said.
"The reason most of my clients bought into this club was because A&K has an excellent reputation, they assumed A&K was managing it," said plaintiffs attorney Brian Kabateck. "These people were misled and they've lost their money."
An after-hours call to Oak Brook, Ill-based Abercrombie & Kent was not immediately returned Thursday. The lawsuit said Abercrombie & Kent allowed another travel company, Complete Retreats, to use its brand names in connection with the marketing of Complete Retreats clubs. The use of the Abercrombie & Kent name in promotional materials misled investors, the lawsuit says, into believing the clubs were operated by the luxury travel company.