How Secret Filming Exposed a £28m Timeshare Scam

It has been described as a major frauds of its kind in the Britain.

Altogether 14 defendants have been sentenced for their involvement in a £28m conspiracy to defraud over 3,500 vacation property owners.

The targets were desperate to get out of long-standing holiday ownership agreements and sought out help.

A large number were in the age range of 60 and 80. In excess of 500 of them surrendered over £10,000, and one individual paid over £80,000.

Those victimized were subjected to intense sales meetings lasting up to six hours. They were left out of pocket, holding useless fake "points" and remained trapped in expensive timeshare contracts they could no longer use.

The Company Behind the Deception

The business at the centre of the fraud was the timeshare resale company. They collected people's money to fund the owners' luxurious way of life of private schools, luxury homes and exclusive air travel.

The man at the head of the organization, the company director, was handed a 90-month jail time in January for fraudulent conspiracy.

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

She was handed a two-year suspended prison term at the London court after admitting illegal fund handling.

It has been a lengthy process and represents a major victory for the individuals who testified, the law enforcement and prosecutors.

How the Inquiry Began

I first heard about SMT came in the that particular year. The role involved in the reporting team of a media outlet, making documentary shows.

A colleague mentioned that his mum had inherited the ownership of a vacation unit in a European resort and, after decades of vacations, had commenced searching to exit the contract.

It is important to recall how popular vacation properties had grown with English tourists in the last decades of the 20th century.

Holiday ownership enabled people to occupy the equivalent unit annually, or exchange their vacation periods with additional holders who had apartments in alternative destinations. Approximately 600,000 vacation seekers seized that chance.

The early surge was paired with a many reports about unscrupulous sellers mis-selling investments. They appeared frequently on public interest TV programmes.

The standard timeshare contract tied investors in for decades.

By 2016, those owners who had experienced their guaranteed place in the sunshine for a long time were ageing, and a large proportion were attempting to end their association to their timeshares.

Several had reduced ability to travel and couldn't get to their properties. Others just believed they'd enjoyed sufficient use from them. And a portion had deceased, in frequent situations leaving their family members to assume the agreements - plus their regular contributions and upkeep costs.

The Undercover Operation Progresses

This was the situation the family member had found herself. She browsed the internet for options and came across SMT, a firm whose digital platform promised to get her out of her deal.

But, having made a payment and booked a meeting with them, her relatives became suspicious.

Additional investigation showed many victims claiming they had submitted funds and received no benefit from the service. In fact, they had suffered financially. Substantial amounts.

Our team started looking into what was happening. It quickly became clear that there were some shady characters active in the timeshare resale sector.

One lawyer had hundreds of individual complaints preparing to take action against the company.

The team interviewed individuals who had dealt with the organization and they collectively described identical situations. They believed the firm would acquire their investment off them but when they went to a consultation (for which they made an advance payment) they were advised there was no market for their property.

Rather, they were pushed - indeed coerced - to spend more money purchasing "the company's points system", named after the outfit's parent company, Monster Travel.

The precise definition was somewhat vague. They appeared to be a form of credit, giving access to discount travel and services and consumer discounts.

And they were seemingly "exchangeable with other owners, some time down the line.

Committing funds immediately would produce an eventual payoff that would cover the company's charges and allow the property owner ahead financially, released finally from their burdensome agreement.

An unrealistic promise? Indeed, it was.

A 'Deceptive Tactic'

If these accounts were true, this was a massive scam.

The technique is termed a "bait-and-switch."

Someone - in this case SMT - "baits" the consumer by marketing a particular product only to then say that's not available, directing the customer to a different, lower-quality product or service.

That's illegal. Possessing all the evidence we had collected, we made the case to secretly film one of the firm's consultations.

This takes time, effort, and clear arguments for why this is the only way to collect the data necessary to demonstrate illegal activity.

Armed with that permission, our small team set up a meeting with one of the company's representatives in the English town.

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