Duped customers fuming after We Are Bamboo bosses blew cash on lavish living

Would-be tourists who lost thousands of dollars in the bankruptcy of travel company We Are Bamboo say the director and co-founder have been living luxuriously with "extravagant" weddings, vacations abroad and a plan to build a boat and sail the world.

The company has come under fire after a liquidation report revealed that director Colin Salisbury invested more than $2 million ($3.24 million) of client funds across multiple cryptocurrency platforms from October 2020 to mid-June. 2022, and he lost all the money.

We Are Bamboo announced in October last year that they would go under and that the hundreds of customers who had already paid for their holidays would not receive refunds under the "force majeure" section of the terms and conditions.

The company offered ethical travel packages that allowed clients to participate in volunteer work in the countries they visited. Most of the customers were from the US, UK, Canada and Australia.

In a statement at the time of the shutdown, Bamboo blamed Covid and a small group of customers who weren't prepared to wait any longer for refunds, but customers were shocked last week to discover that money had been lost in the trade of cryptocurrencies. This included US$800,000 that Salisbury placed on four fraudulent crypto platforms.

Salt has been rubbed on the wound of some customers who said Salisbury and co-founder Mark Foster-Murray had previously been posting photos online of their "luxurious" lifestyles.

Client Sheryl Yesucevitz, from Massachusetts, said she had seen posts on social media showing Foster-Murray's "extravagant castle wedding" in June last year, and Salisbury's voyage building a ship he planned to sail on. around the world.

In an email sent to Bamboo customers before the shutdown, Salisbury announced his intention to break a world record.

He and his sailing partner were scheduled to leave Auckland on September 1 this year to sail their 19-foot yacht around the world in 400 days, setting a new record for sailing a boat under 20 feet, the report said. email.

Salisbury's boatbuilding project has been documented on its Facebook page, along with posts about international vacations, including a trip to Thailand in mid-2022, just months before the company announced its closure. It is unclear if Salisbury intends to proceed with the project.

The Foster-Murray wedding took place at a castle in Cardiff, Wales. It is understood that she lives abroad.

No man, nor any representative of We Are Bamboo, has responded to the Herald or has been contacted for comment.

“Seeing how luxurious the lifestyle these two men have makes me sick,” Yesucevitz said. "I am a single mother. I work very hard to do whatever I want to do. If I want to take a vacation, I have to plan for a year.”

She felt the couple essentially took her money, through her salaries, and used it for "extravagant weddings and boat building" while she was left without her vacations or money.

"I just think it's sad that we put our trust in these people for what we thought would be an amazing experience, that would make a difference, and they took advantage of that and left us with nothing."

Hamilton's wife, Donna Barraclough, said she was "not surprised" to hear how the money had gone missing.

“These people use our hard earned money as their play money without guilt.

"They lived by their dreams, not by their means."

Georgia woman Adrienne Thatcher toured several times with Bamboo prior to its closure and was booked to go to Vietnam.

“They broke my heart. I lost a lot of money, but that doesn't compare to what the staff and tour guides lost. They lost their livelihood and the animals and the people who needed help, that's what matters to me,” she said.

There is little hope for many of the customers that they will be able to receive payment when the settlement process is complete.

While some people have successfully placed a chargeback through their credit card companies, many remain several thousand dollars out of pocket. The latest BDO liquidation report shows that Bamboo has only $8,207 in cash on hand.

While the total creditor claims BDO has received exceeds $4 million, this figure is not verified. BDO has had trouble determining exactly how much money is owed due to Bamboo's poor record-keeping system.

“The database the company used was not practical for extracting information about which customers had paid deposits; there was no clear list of creditors, largely because the database system was more than 12 years old,” the report says. "We were informed that producing such a list would require manual extraction of individual creditors and the volume of creditors was such that this would not be practical."

Many customers also got stuck after purchasing a Chubb travel insurance package through the Bamboo website, only to be told by Chubb that their insurance was invalid.

“The travel insurance never covered the insolvency of the company, and we understand that the policy only came into effect once the client had started their trip,” the report says.

“We are aware that the insurance expired in February 2020. The director has confirmed under oath that the clients were insured at all times during the trip, however we have not reviewed the documentation to support this claim.”

Clients with whom he speaks Herald they said they had received messages from Chubb informing them that his insurance did not exist.

“There are also allegations that the currency certificates were doctored to include the names of travelers and travel periods. This information will be forwarded to the Commerce Commission and the Serious Fraud Office, who will determine if further action is appropriate,” the report says.

The commission and the SFO have suspended their own investigations pending the outcome of the liquidation process.

Melissa Nightingale is a Wellington-based reporter covering crime, justice and news in the capital. She joined the Herald in 2016 and has worked as a journalist for 10 years.