How Undercover Recording Exposed a £28m Timeshare Fraud

It has been described as one of the largest frauds of its nature in the United Kingdom.

Altogether 14 individuals have been convicted for their part in a £28 million plot to defraud over 3,500 holiday ownership investors.

The targets were keen to terminate age-old timeshare contracts and went looking for support.

A large number were aged between 60 and 80. More than 500 of them surrendered in excess of £10,000, and one individual transferred in excess of £80,000.

Those affected were exposed to intense presentations continuing for six hours. They were out of money, owning worthless fake "points" and continued to be bound by expensive holiday ownership agreements they often use.

The Firm Central to the Deception

The business at the core of the scheme was Sell My Timeshare (SMT). They took people's money to support the owners' luxurious lifestyle of private schools, high-end properties and personal aircraft.

The individual at the head of the organization, the main defendant, was handed a seven-and-half year sentence in January for conspiracy to defraud.

In the latest development, his wife one of the co-defendants was one of the final three to receive sentencing.

She was given a 24-month suspended prison term at Southwark Crown Court after pleading guilty to illegal fund handling.

This has been a long time coming and signifies a huge win for the individuals who testified, the authorities and legal representatives.

How the Probe Began

The initial awareness of the company emerged during the that particular year. The role involved in the research department of a media outlet, creating documentary features.

A acquaintance mentioned that his mother had assumed the rights of a holiday property in a European resort and, after years of holidays, had begun looking to exit the agreement.

It should be noted how popular vacation properties had become with British holidaymakers in the eighties and nineties.

Vacation properties enabled people to access the identical property each season, or swap their vacation periods with additional holders who had properties in different locations. Roughly 600,000 vacation seekers took up that opportunity.

The initial boom was accompanied by a numerous stories about rip-off merchants mis-selling properties. They were regularly featured on investigative TV programmes.

The common vacation property deal tied investors in for decades.

In that period, those owners who had used their assigned property in the resort for decades were ageing, and a significant number were looking to say farewell to their vacation investments.

Several had declining mobility and found it difficult to access their properties. Some just thought they'd got all they wanted from them. And others had died, in frequent situations passing on their loved ones to assume the deals - plus their annual payments and maintenance fees.

The Investigation Develops

It was at this point the friend's mum had ended up. She looked online for solutions and found the company, a firm whose website assured to release her from her contract.

However, having paid a fee and arranged an appointment with them, her family became suspicious.

Additional investigation revealed hundreds of people reporting they had handed over cash and got nothing in return. Actually, they had suffered financially. Significant sums.

The reporting group started looking into what was happening. It quickly became clear that there were some shady characters working within the vacation property industry.

An attorney had many grievance cases preparing to take action against SMT.

We spoke to individuals who had used the firm and they collectively described identical situations. They thought the company would purchase their timeshare off them but when they participated in a session (for which they submitted funds initially) they were informed there was no market for their property.

In place of that, they were encouraged - actually coerced - to spend more money purchasing "the company's points system", linked to the business's umbrella group, the overarching entity.

What exactly these were was rather ambiguous. They sounded like a kind of currency, giving access to discount travel and benefits and shopping deals.

And they were reportedly "tradable" with fellow investors, some time down the line.

Paying cash immediately would produce an eventual payoff that would cover SMT's fees and leave the property owner with a gain, liberated eventually from their burdensome deal.

An unbelievable offer? Well, yes.

A 'Bait-and-Switch Tactic'

Assuming these reports were accurate, this was a major deception.

It's what is called a "bait-and-switch."

Someone - specifically the organization - "baits" the client by marketing a specific service and then state it cannot be provided, steering the customer towards an alternative, lesser option.

Such practices are unlawful. Possessing all the accounts we had gathered, we argued to covertly record one of the organization's sessions.

Such an operation demands time, effort, and strong justifications for why this is the only way to gather the information necessary to demonstrate illegal activity.

Once authorized, our compact group organized a meeting with one of the company's representatives in the location.

Posing as a ordinary individual wanting to assist his parent free from her timeshare contract|holiday ownership agreement