• Eric Hodgson founded OUTbound in 2020 with Mean Girls star Jonathan Bennett and Jaymes Vaughan
• Despite being at the center of two lawsuits, Hodgson has continued to travel the globe, running luxury group trips to Asia and Europe
• But his former employer, a rival travel company, claims he is a ‘serial fraudster’  

Luxury LGBTQ holiday planner Eric Hodgson has travelled to 100 countries, ridden elephants, seen the pyramids and hopped around the globe from one high-end destination to another. 

His social media is filled with photos of him and his OUTbound travel company co-founders ‘Mean Girls’ star Jonathan Bennett and Jaymes Vaughan from ‘The Amazing Race’.

But behind the glamourous pictures, Hodgson has been embroiled in a series of law-suits and complaints with a rival LGBTQ travel company, Vacaya.

A decade ago Hodgson was serving a nine-year jail sentence in California for defrauding the Californian Department of Transportation out of $1.9million. 

He was released early in 2016, but four years later, he found himself at the center of another lawsuit, battling his former employer, Vacaya. 

Vacaya has now claimed in legal documents seen by the LA Times that Hodgson is a ‘serial fraudster’ who ‘has lied, cheated and stolen from others over the past decade.’

Hodgson vehemently denies the claims, and says that a recent LA Times article published about them is ‘factually inaccurate’ and ‘contains false information, misquotes’. 

He added: ‘I deny any accusations that I attempted to defraud Vacaya in any way’ and says his time with the company was ‘incredibly negative, full of fighting, manipulation, coercion, plotting’. 

The story began in 2008, before Hodgson entered the travel business, when he was running a printing shop in Sacramento. 

He won three state contracts worth more than $1.9million to publish details about upcoming government building projects. 

He was supposed to pay for the publications and then submit receipts to the department to be reimbursed.

But a random audit in 2011 discovered that he had only published a handful of the thousands of notices he had claimed for – and had submitted documents ‘containing forged or false signatures of real or fictional employees of the publications’ to walk away with the $1.9million. 

During the subsequent investigation, he was revealed to have spent the money to ‘pay off his mortgage’, build a pool, buy flights and a ‘cruise a month’ for an entire year. 

In April 2013, he was arrested and charged with 22 counts of grand theft, he pled guilty to seven counts and was sentenced to nine years in prison by then-Attorney General Kamala Harris.

He was ordered to pay back the $1.9million and forced to hand over belongings including a ‘collection of Star Wars items worth more than $10,000’. 

Hodgson admitted that he did the ‘wrong thing’ with Caltrans, and said: ‘I take full responsibility for getting in over my head & doing the wrong thing… but I felt trapped.’

He added: ‘I owned it all, & the restitution has been satisfied in full.’

But that wasn’t the end of his legal troubles. 

While in prison, Hodgson was writing letters to his then-friend Randle Roper, who was in the process of setting up a LGBTQ travel company, Vacaya. 

Vacaya alleges that at this point, Hodgson began to lie to them about his background – and his innocence in the Caltrans case. 

A lawsuit filed against Hodgson by Vacaya in March and seen by the LA Times reportedly claims: ‘Instead of approaching life outside of prison with an honest, clean slate, Hodgson chose to double-down as a fraudster while feigning repentance for his prior crimes.’ 

They said Hodgson told them that he had been wrongly convicted, and it was going to be quashed, and then sent them two allegedly forged documents claiming he had been cleared of the theft. 

Vacaya claimed they had no reason to doubt that the documents were real, and when Hodgson was released from prison in 2016, they decided to employ him. 

In 2019, Hodgson was made a minority owner in the firm and given a 10 per cent stake in the business. 

But then, Vacaya claim that during a trip to South Africa in November 2019, Hodgson harassed an attendee.

They say that the person, known as ‘John Doe’ reported the harassment and Hodgson was suspended pending an investigation, he was then fired in March 2020. 

Hodgson denies this entire version of events. 

He claims Roper encouraged him to submit the forged letters, and says he was never employed by Vacaya – and had only worked for them as a contractor. 

He also says he ‘never once touched John Doe, solicited him, pressured him or threatened him in any way, sexually or otherwise’.

Two weeks after he was fired, Hodgson launched his own lawsuit against Vacaya claiming they had defrauded him out of his interest in the company and conspired not to pay him. 

But during the course of the suit, Vacaya began to suspect that Hodgson had lied to them about his innocence in the previous court case, and had forged the two letters. 

Legal documents claim that when Vacaya’s lawyers confronted Hodgson’s lawyer, Thomas Barth, Hodgson admitted that the letters were forged. 

Vacaya’s attorney reportedly said in a filing: ‘Using the resources of his graphics design company, Phenix, your client’s ability to forge documents seems to be limitless.’

When Vacaya presented the evidence to the court, Hodgson’s lawsuit was dismissed, and he was ordered to pay out $43,766 in sanctions to Vacaya – Barth was also ordered $28,555.

Vacaya and its owners issued a statement through their lawyer: ‘Mr. Hodgson’s lawsuit was dismissed and, after finding that he sued Vacaya ‘to enforce agreements that he procured in part by fraud,’ he was rightfully sanctioned by the Court ‘to prevent and remedy the harms of abusive and wasteful litigation.

‘Vacaya refuses to discuss the merit of falsehoods that already have been resolved and sanctioned by the Court.’

Throughout both lawsuits, Hodgson has kept up appearances and founded his own LGBTQ travel company, OUTbound, with Bennett and Vaughan.  

Although the trio have described themselves as owning the company, and posted numerous pictures promoting the brand online, Hodgson says it is actually owned by his 81-year-old mother. 

He says that he has only discussed his legal troubles with Bennett and Vaughan in ‘broad strokes’ and that they have ‘always been sympathetic’ but have ‘valid concerns’. 

OUTbound’s Bennett and Vaughan’s publicist told the LA Times: ‘We are blindsided and absolutely shocked to learn this information, and are launching our own investigation accordingly.’