The Way Undercover Recording Exposed a £28 Million Timeshare Scheme

Authorities have called it as a major scams of its type in the UK.

A total of 14 people have been sentenced for their role in a £28m conspiracy to swindle more than 3,500 vacation property investors.

The victims were keen to exit long-standing timeshare contracts and sought out support.

A large number were from 60 and 80. More than 500 of them lost over £10,000, and a single victim paid in excess of £80,000.

Those victimized were subjected to high-pressure sales meetings lasting up to six hours. They were out of money, owning worthless fake "rewards" and remained bound by high-priced holiday ownership agreements they frequently were unable to use.

The Company Behind the Deception

The firm at the core of the scheme was Sell My Timeshare (SMT). They collected people's money to finance the owners' opulent lifestyle of exclusive education, luxury homes and private jets.

The man at the helm of the firm, the company director, was given a seven-and-half year jail time in January for deceptive scheme.

Recently, his partner one of the co-defendants was among the last group to hear their sentences.

She was handed a 24-month suspended jail sentence at the London court after admitting money laundering.

It has been a extended wait and marks a significant success for the victims who came forward, the law enforcement and legal representatives.

How the Probe Began

I first heard about the company was in the that particular year. The position was in the investigations unit of a broadcasting service, producing investigative features.

A friend pointed out that his mum had taken over the use of a timeshare apartment in the Spanish coast and, after decades of vacations, had started seeking to exit the deal.

It's worth mentioning how widespread timeshares had evolved with UK travelers in the eighties and nineties.

Vacation properties enabled individuals to access the identical property each season, or swap their weeks with additional holders who had units in different locations. About 600,000 vacation seekers took up that option.

The early surge was paired with a lot of stories about rip-off merchants mis-selling properties. They became a staple on investigative broadcasts.

The common timeshare contract locked buyers for many years.

In that period, those owners who had used their assigned property in the sun for decades were getting older, and a large proportion were looking to wave goodbye to their vacation investments.

A number had declining mobility and found it difficult to access their units. Others just felt they'd achieved their goals from them. And a portion had passed away, in many cases leaving their loved ones to assume the contracts - along with their yearly fees and service charges.

The Investigation Progresses

It was at this point the family member had been placed. She looked online for answers and discovered the company, a firm whose online presence assured to get her out of her deal.

However, having made a payment and booked a meeting with them, her relatives smelled a rat.

Subsequent checking showed numerous individuals reporting they had paid money and got nothing out of it. Actually, they had suffered financially. A lot of it.

Our team started looking into what was going on. It soon emerged that there were dubious individuals operating in the holiday ownership market.

A legal professional had hundreds of individual complaints aiming to litigate against the company.

We spoke to clients who had engaged the company and they all told the same story. They believed the company would acquire their investment from them but when they attended a meeting (for which they paid up front) they were advised there was no market for their property.

Rather, they were persuaded - actually coerced - to invest additional funds purchasing "the company's points system", linked to the business's umbrella group, the parent organization.

The nature of these rewards was rather ambiguous. They appeared to be a type of exchange medium, offering cheaper vacations and benefits and retail offers.

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

Committing funds at the time would produce an future return that would pay for the firm's costs and leave the property owner with a gain, liberated eventually from their troublesome contract.

Too good to be true? Well, yes.

A 'Misleading Scheme'

Based on these descriptions were correct, this was a massive scam.

This is known as a "bait-and-switch."

Someone - here the organization - "attracts the customer by advertising a defined offering but then to say that's not available, directing the customer in the direction of another, inferior product or service.

This is against the law. Equipped with all the evidence we had collected, we made the case to secretly film one of the company's meetings.

This takes time, effort, and compelling reasons for why this is the sole method to collect the data needed to demonstrate illegal activity.

Armed with that permission, our limited crew set up a meeting with one of the firm's agents in the location.

Pretending to be a potential client wanting to get his mum out of her timeshare contract|holiday ownership agreement