Vacation Club Victims Still Waiting for Justice

A follow up for you tonight about a travel club that Calvin took off the map.  Many years later, victims of the Vacation Travel Club are still waiting for justice.  James "Rocky" Pridgen is the former owner of the company that customers say, took money from them, promising wonderful vacation packages.  Pridgen has been awaiting trial in North Carolina, where he's charged with taking money fraudulently.  We have reopened our investigation to see where those cases are, and whether folks here will ever get their day in court with the man, some call "Runaway Rocky."

When James Pridgen was arrested in North Carolina two years ago, and charged with taking money from people like Linda Rogers for vacation reservations. She, like dozens of other people, thought she'd be getting her 23-hundred dollars back quickly..
That was then.. This is now..  "I haven't heard anything else since that," says Mrs. Rogers.  As for Pridgen's Chattanooga office manager, Tracy Rogers, we haven't heard anything from him, since the shouting match he initiated, when our cameras caught him and his entourage leaving town in a big hurry.  "Where is the owner of this company," I repeatedly asked Rogers, and the answers he gave, are unprintable.  Pridgen is charged with two counts of obtaining money by false pretenses.  At the time of his arraignment in District Court in Buncombe County, North Carolina two years ago, he refused comment to us, and referred us to his attorney, Max Cogburn, who coincidentally was at his side.

We started looking into Pridgen's case again, and discovered shocking news.  His North Carolina charges have never been settled.. two years later.  Although the charges were transferred to Superior Court from District Court in Buncombe County, they've never been heard by a grand jury, and there's been postponement after postponement.  The assistant district attorney pressing the charges, had no answers for us.  "That case is still pending," Assistant District Attorney Pat Patton told me.  As to why the case has been going on for two years without resolution, Mr. Patton told us that every case was different, and it was not unusual for a case to take a long time to go through the court system.  He refused any other comment on Pridgen's charges.

Chattanooga attorney Chuck Fleischmann says, sometimes, defense lawyers use postponements as a delay tactic.  "People lose interest in the case," he says, "people pass away, people forget, and so generally it would benefit the defense to drag a case out longer."  He says even though there is a statute of limitations on most criminal charges, if there are enough victims who've lost money to one person, a judge might extend that.  Fact is, the Vacation Travel Club is long gone from Chattanooga, and even though the company is no longer around, it might still have a connection to Chattanooga.  That connection may be its victims, who lost money to the company.  "If people lost money and think they have been wronged by this company or its owner, they need to call the Chattanooga Police Department, if they paid their money at the former business location on Bonny Oaks Drive," says Chattanooga Police Sergeant Jeri Weary.  And if enough victims come forward, Chattanooga detective Mike Minnick says Pridgen could be charged with theft of property, which could mean JAIL time here, "a minimum of one year, depending on the depth of the charges and the number of victims."

For folks who live outside Chattanooga, Detective Minnick says, as long as you paid the Vacation Travel Club IN Chattanooga, just come to the Police Services Center with your documentation, and detectives will take a report from you..
He says, the more victims of the Vacation Travel Club that come forward, the better the case for criminal charges here.

For more information, contact the Chattanooga Police Department at 423-698-2525, and arrange to file a criminal theft of property report against James Pridgen and his former company, the Vacation Travel Club.