🔗 Share this article

It has been described as one of the largest deceptions of its kind in the United Kingdom.

Altogether 14 defendants have been sentenced for their involvement in a £28 million scheme to cheat in excess of 3,500 holiday ownership owners.

The affected individuals were desperate to get out of age-old holiday ownership agreements and went looking for support.

A large number were from 60 and 80. In excess of 500 of them parted with in excess of £10,000, and one handed over in excess of £80,000.

Those targeted were exposed to intense presentations continuing for six hours. They were out of money, holding useless fake "points" and continued to be locked into costly holiday ownership agreements they could no longer use.

The Firm Central to the Deception

The firm at the core of the fraud was Sell My Timeshare (SMT). They accepted people's money to fund the proprietors' luxurious way of life of private schools, high-end properties and private jets.

The leader at the helm of the firm, Mark Rowe, was sentenced to a 90-month jail time in January for conspiracy to defraud.

In the latest development, his spouse Nicola was among the last group to learn their fate.

She was given a two-year suspended prison term at the London court after admitting money laundering.

The outcome represents a long time coming and signifies a huge win for the people who spoke out, the authorities and the Crown.

How the Investigation Started

I first heard about SMT emerged during the mid-2016. The role involved in the investigations unit of a media outlet, making investigative shows.

A colleague pointed out that his parent had inherited the use of a holiday property in a European resort and, after long-term use, had commenced searching to terminate the contract.

It should be noted how popular vacation properties had grown with UK travelers in the eighties and nineties.

Timeshares allowed families to occupy the identical property annually, or swap their weeks with additional holders who had units in alternative destinations. Approximately 600,000 holiday enthusiasts accepted that option.

The first timeshare rush was linked to a lot of reports about unscrupulous sellers deceptively promoting properties. They became a staple on public interest shows.

The common timeshare contract tied investors in for decades.

In that period, those holders who had enjoyed their assigned property in the sunshine for 20 or 30 years were getting older, and many were looking to wave goodbye to their vacation investments.

A number had declining mobility and were unable to visit their properties. A few just thought they'd got all they wanted from them. And others had passed away, in many cases leaving their loved ones to inherit the deals - along with their annual payments and maintenance fees.

The Covert Probe Unfolds

And that's where the friend's mum had been placed. She looked online for solutions and found SMT, a business whose online presence assured to release her from her agreement.

Yet, having paid a fee and booked a meeting with them, her relatives smelled a rat.

Further research uncovered hundreds of people reporting they had submitted funds and got nothing from the service. In fact, they had suffered financially. A lot of it.

Our team started looking into what was going on. It quickly became clear that there were questionable operators working within the timeshare resale sector.

One lawyer had numerous client reports preparing to take action against SMT.

Reporters contacted people who had used the firm and they each reported similar experiences. They believed the business would acquire their investment off them but when they went to a consultation (for which they paid up front) they were told there was no potential buyers.

In place of that, they were pushed - indeed compelled - to commit further cash purchasing "Monster Rewards", associated with the outfit's parent company, the overarching entity.

What exactly these were was rather ambiguous. They appeared to be a form of credit, offering cheaper vacations and benefits and retail offers.

And they were reportedly "transferable with fellow investors, at a future date.

Investing money immediately would lead to an future return that would pay for the company's charges and result in the property owner with a gain, liberated eventually from their pesky deal.

Too good to be true? Certainly, that proved correct.

A 'Bait-and-Switch Scam'

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

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

Someone - here SMT - "lures the customer by advertising a defined offering only to then state it cannot be provided, directing the client towards another, inferior option.

This is against the law. Armed with all the evidence we had assembled, we argued to covertly record one of the organization's sessions.

The process requires commitment, energy, and compelling reasons for why this is the exclusive approach to gather the evidence required to demonstrate illegal activity.

Armed with that permission, our compact group set up a consultation with one of the company's representatives in the English town.

Posing as a member of the public hoping to assist his parent free from her timeshare contract|holiday ownership agreement