Alleged Private Jet Trip to Hawaii- Dec 2023

My story is connected to ZealousidealBug3024’s. Read her post first before you read mine.I met Haleigh and Charles through Zealous in 2022. We weren’t close at all, but I saw Haleigh often in passing around Zealous. When Haleigh offered their family the big “contract” with the Four Seasons in Summer 2023, Zealous and I had a lot of discussions about how their extended travel schedule was going to impact our kids (our children are very close) and dreamed of how fun it would be if we all could eventually go on some trips together.

I had no intention of joining them in the first round of trips. To be honest, I was pretty skeptical about the whole thing and wanted to wait to see how their first few trips played out before getting involved.

During those first couple weeks, mostly as a joke, I told Haleigh and Zealous that I wanted to go on this specific African Safari Private Jet trip that the Four Seasons has on their website. It costs more than $100k per person in real life, and is the most unrealistic thing someone like me would ever go on.

But lo and behold, just a few days after that conversation, their “travel rep” says that she wants them to go on that exact same trip. So of course they have to invite me! And it apparently just had to happen before the end of the year for “tax reasons”.

It was not great timing for our family, but it seemed like a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for our kids, so we agreed to try to make the Africa trip happen that December. As we were starting to pin down the final dates, I came to my senses and realized that there was no way we could safely take an infant (my youngest was only a few months old at that time) to countries with high Malaria rates. I informed Haleigh and Zealous that I unfortunately needed to pull out of the trip before I paid the deposit. But the Four Seasons contact came back and suggested that we all go to Hawaii together instead. This was yet another trip to which I just couldn’t say no because I used to live in Hawaii and have mentioned many times how much I would like to go back there to visit my friends.

We agreed to the Hawaii trip, requested the days off from work, and were informed that the deposit would be $1950 for the whole family. (A steal for an all inclusive island hopping trip to Hawaii, obviously.)

Since this was all agreed to in early July, I just assumed that I would eventually pay that deposit directly to the Four Seasons sometimes before December. Instead, the next day, Haleigh sent me a screenshot of a Venmo transfer from her to the alleged Four Seasons rep and a request to pay her (Haleigh) the $1950 directly through Apple Cash. (Apparently it was also very important to Haleigh’s “taxes” that payments be sent and received through different payment methods.)

I was not at all comfortable with that method of payment and absolutely would not have agreed to the trip if I had known that was how it worked. I was very concerned about it all being a scam from the beginning, and this direct personal Venmo payment had scam written all over it.

BUT–and this is where Haleigh displayed how good she was at manipulating people–I also now felt guilty about being in debt to this girl I barely knew, and I was worried potentially hurting Zealous if I didn’t pay Haleigh back soon. My husband and I were very conflicted on what to do, but the anxiety of believing I owed someone money won out. I asked Haleigh if I could wait for my annual bonus to come in before paying, and she oh so graciously agreed. But I ended up paying her in early August.

We had the whole trip meticulously planned out, down to which islands we would see on what days (island hopping on the Four Season’s so-brand-new-it’s-not-even-listed-on-their-website-yet Hawaiian private jet, of course). When the Maui fires happened, the “rep” even asked if we would be willing to participate in a service project to help the victims on the Four Seasons’s behalf. [In retrospect, this suggestion was made only after I had first reached out to Haleigh concerned that we shouldn’t vacation to Maui so soon after the tragedy.]

Then, Zealous’s first trip in September 2023 was canceled at the last minute. And then their second trip also fell through the next month. And I started to get pretty stressed that it was all really was a scam after all. As the date for our Hawaii trip got closer with no “official” word from Four Seasons, I ended up requesting to just cancel it preemptively so that our family could plan our Christmas season without all the scheduling drama. I was pretty over the whole thing at that point, and I asked for my money back.

In December 2023 and January 2024, Haleigh sent me half a dozen texts about how she had requested my funds back from the Four Seasons and included screen shots of the deposits pending in her PayPal. Apparently the transactions were being delayed for review by PayPal, but were going to come through by the end of the month. Then, when the money still didn’t come through as expected, she said it was because the lawyers had gotten involved and the Four Seasons had to go through them now. Obviously, I wasn’t happy about any of that and expressed many times to my husband that the whole thing was super fishy. But at that point I just wanted my money back, and the best path for that seemed to be to keep going along with what she said.

When Haleigh announced she had cancer, I went all in to help support her and Charles. I made a lot of freezer meals for the Knights last year (supposedly my chicken noodle soup was all she could keep down after chemo), and my husband met up with Charles many time to offer friendship and support. At this point, I don’t believe the cancer is real, but I personally have no proof. I may post more in the future about some of the conversations we had with Charles that make me highly suspicious that he was in on the scams the whole time, but his involvement is all just mostly speculation on my part at this point too.

Flash forward to June 2024 (so six months after I was supposed to get my refund), Haleigh tells me that the refund has come through to her account and that she just needs to forward the funds to me. But then, again, it was just week after week of problems with their bank accounts and Venmo with no money actually sent.

I tried to be gracious, since Haleigh was supposedly deep into her cancer treatments at this point, but I also started to get on her about needing to get more organized with her finances and repeatedly suggested that she get checks to avoid the Venmo issues. At one point she sent me screenshots of a USPS tracking record that was supposedly for the checks being sent by the bank, but those got “delayed” in the mail as well. It was maddening, but I felt like there was little I could do at that point except wait. I was also concerned about putting Zealous in a bad spot if I reacted too strongly.

Finally, in August 2024, Haleigh sent me the full $1950 in three separate transactions, using two different payment methods (Zelle and Venmo) over the course of a week. It was weird, but I took my eventual refund as a sign that the whole thing wasn’t actually a scam. At that point I was willing to accept that Haleigh was just hella disorganized.

I reached out to Haleigh a couple times after I received my refund to offer to help with the accounting work for the other refunds (which were allegedly due back from the lawyer any day), and she called me once to thank me for the offer. But that was basically the last time I spoke to her. My husband tried to maintain a relationship with Charles for a bit, but it got awkward, and they both just kind of faded out of our lives after that.

I don’t use social media, so I wasn’t aware of the needlepoint blow up until Zealous called me about her discovery with the lawyer last week. I am grateful to be one of the few that has my money back, but I am sad for everyone who is still out thousands and thousands of dollars. (And, let’s be honest, she probably used someone else’s scammed funds to pay me back.) I wish I had trusted my original instincts that something was wrong with the payment methods from the beginning, although I can also see now how she used my offhand comments to craft the scam in such a way that I would be willing to participate despite my skepticism. She used my (and a lot other people’s) genuine love for and trust in Zealous to harm us, and I am so upset about how much she has hurt Zealous and her family. I don’t really regret the effort I put in to make food and be supportive through her “cancer journey,” as awful as the revelations about that have been. My husband and I had some doubts about the cancer from the start, but we decided the most Christ-like way to behave would be to go out of our way to be kind to Haleigh and Charles—even if it was possible that they were horrible, lying people. (We specifically decided not to donate to their GoFundMe though, because so many things were already fishy with them and money.)

I sincerely hope that Haleigh and Charles face justice for the harm they have caused, and that there is some way for the victims to receive restitution.