🔗 Share this article

Authorities have called it as one of the largest deceptions of its kind in the UK.

A total of 14 people have been convicted for their role in a £28 million conspiracy to cheat in excess of 3,500 timeshare investors.

The affected individuals were eager to terminate age-old vacation property deals and sought out support.

The majority were from 60 and 80. More than 500 of them lost more than £10,000, and one transferred over £80,000.

Those affected were faced aggressive sales meetings continuing for six hours. They were out of money, owning valueless fake "points" and still trapped in expensive timeshare contracts they could no longer use.

The Company Behind the Fraud

The business at the core of the scam was Sell My Timeshare (SMT). They took customers' funds to finance the owners' lavish lifestyle of prestigious schooling, millionaire mansions and private jets.

The leader at the head of the company, Mark Rowe, was sentenced to a seven and a half year jail time in January for fraudulent conspiracy.

Recently, his partner Nicola was among the last group to receive sentencing.

She was handed a 24-month suspended jail sentence at Southwark Crown Court after confessing to illegal fund handling.

The outcome represents a long time coming and marks a significant success for the people who spoke out, the police and prosecutors.

The Way the Probe Started

I first heard about SMT emerged during the mid-2016. The role involved in the reporting team of a media outlet, creating current affairs programmes.

A colleague mentioned that his parent had taken over the ownership of a timeshare apartment in a European resort and, after decades of vacations, had started seeking to get out of the deal.

It should be noted how popular timeshares had evolved with UK travelers in the 1980s and 1990s.

Timeshares permitted individuals to use the same accommodation annually, or trade their weeks with additional holders who had properties in different locations. Roughly 600,000 vacation seekers seized that opportunity.

The initial boom was accompanied by a many accounts about unscrupulous sellers deceptively promoting properties. They appeared frequently on public interest shows.

The typical vacation property deal bound owners for many years.

At that time, those investors who had experienced their guaranteed place in the sun for decades were advancing in years, and a large proportion were attempting to end their association to their holiday properties.

Several had declining mobility and found it difficult to access their apartments. Others just believed they'd enjoyed sufficient use from them. And a portion had deceased, in many cases passing on their loved ones to take over the agreements - along with their regular contributions and maintenance fees.

The Investigation Develops

This was the situation the relative had been placed. She looked online for solutions and came across the company, a firm whose digital platform promised to get her out of her contract.

Yet, having made a payment and scheduled a consultation with them, her family had doubts.

Further research uncovered many victims saying they had paid money and got nothing in return. In fact, they had suffered financially. Significant sums.

The reporting group began investigating what was happening. It was rapidly apparent that there were dubious individuals operating in the vacation property industry.

An attorney had hundreds of individual complaints preparing to take action against the company.

We spoke to individuals who had dealt with the organization and they each reported similar experiences. They assumed the firm would buy their property from them but when they went to a consultation (for which they made an advance payment) they were advised there was no potential buyers.

In place of that, they were encouraged - in fact pressured - to spend more money purchasing "the company's points system", named after the organization's holding firm, Monster Travel.

The nature of these rewards was somewhat vague. They seemed similar to a form of credit, giving access to reduced-price holidays and services and retail offers.

And they were apparently "exchangeable with fellow investors, some time down the line.

Paying cash at the time would lead to an future return that would offset the firm's costs and leave the property owner ahead financially, released finally from their troublesome agreement.

An unrealistic promise? Indeed, it was.

A 'Bait-and-Switch Tactic'

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

It's what is called a "deceptive marketing."

Someone - here the organization - "lures the consumer by advertising a specific service but then to claim it is unavailable, pushing the client to a different, lower-quality option.

This is against the law. Possessing all the accounts we had assembled, we argued to secretly film one of the firm's consultations.

The process requires time, effort, and clear arguments for why this is the only way to obtain the data needed to demonstrate illegal activity.

Armed with that permission, our small team arranged a meeting with one of the company's representatives in Stratford-Upon-Avon.

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