How Undercover Filming Exposed a £28 Million Holiday Ownership Fraud

Prosecutors have labeled it as a major scams of its type in the United Kingdom.

Altogether 14 people have been convicted for their role in a £28 million plot to defraud more than 3,500 timeshare holders.

The targets were eager to get out of age-old holiday ownership agreements and sought out help.

The majority were aged between 60 and 80. In excess of 500 of them parted with over £10,000, and a single victim paid in excess of £80,000.

Those affected were faced aggressive sales meetings lasting up to six hours. They were left out of pocket, holding useless fake "rewards" and still bound by costly timeshare contracts they frequently were unable to use.

The Business Central to the Deception

The firm at the heart of the scheme was Sell My Timeshare (SMT). They took people's money to fund the proprietors' lavish standard of living of private schools, millionaire mansions and private jets.

The man at the helm of the organization, the company director, was given a 90-month sentence in January for deceptive scheme.

Recently, his wife another individual was part of the concluding cases to receive sentencing.

She received a 24-month suspended jail sentence at Southwark Crown Court after confessing to money laundering.

This has been a long time coming and marks a major victory for the people who spoke out, the authorities and prosecutors.

The Way the Probe Was Initiated

The initial awareness of SMT emerged during the mid-2016. I was working in the research department of a broadcasting service, making documentary features.

A friend mentioned that his mother had taken over the ownership of a timeshare apartment in Spain and, after decades of vacations, had commenced searching to terminate the contract.

It's worth mentioning how popular vacation properties had become with UK travelers in the eighties and nineties.

Vacation properties permitted families to occupy the equivalent unit each season, or exchange their weeks with additional holders who had apartments in alternative destinations. About 600,000 holiday enthusiasts seized that option.

The first timeshare rush was paired with a lot of accounts about unscrupulous sellers deceptively promoting units. They appeared frequently on consumer shows.

The standard timeshare contract bound owners for many years.

In that period, those holders who had enjoyed their guaranteed place in the resort for decades were getting older, and a large proportion were attempting to wave goodbye to their timeshares.

Some had reduced ability to travel and found it difficult to access their apartments. Some just thought they'd achieved their goals from them. And others had died, in many cases bequeathing their loved ones to inherit the deals - plus their yearly fees and upkeep costs.

The Investigation Develops

This was the situation the friend's mum had found herself. She searched the web for answers and discovered SMT, a business whose online presence assured to terminate her deal.

However, having made a payment and scheduled a consultation with them, her family became suspicious.

Subsequent checking revealed many victims reporting they had submitted funds and achieved no result out of it. In fact, they had suffered financially. Significant sums.

Our team started looking into what was happening. It quickly became clear that there were dubious individuals operating in the vacation property industry.

An attorney had numerous client reports aiming to litigate against SMT.

The team interviewed clients who had engaged the company and they collectively described identical situations. They believed the business would buy their property off them but when they went to a consultation (for which they submitted funds initially) they were told there was no market for their property.

In place of that, they were encouraged - actually compelled - to spend more money acquiring "the firm's incentive scheme", named after the outfit's parent company, Monster Travel.

The precise definition was rather ambiguous. They seemed similar to a form of credit, giving access to cheaper vacations and benefits and retail offers.

And they were reportedly "exchangeable with other owners, eventually.

Investing money at the time would produce an eventual payoff that would pay for SMT's fees and allow the investor in profit, released finally from their pesky contract.

An unbelievable offer? Well, yes.

A 'Misleading Scam'

Based on these descriptions were true, this was a major deception.

This is known as a "deceptive marketing."

Someone - specifically the company - "baits" the consumer by advertising a defined offering only to then claim it is unavailable, directing the customer to another, inferior option.

That's illegal. Equipped with all the evidence we had assembled, we presented the rationale to discreetly video one of the company's meetings.

The process requires commitment, energy, and compelling reasons for why this is the sole method to collect the information required to prove wrongdoing.

With approval secured, our small team set up a meeting with one of the organization's staff in the English town.

Pretending to be a member of the public wanting to get his mum released from her timeshare contract|holiday ownership agreement