🔗 Share this article

It has been described as among the biggest scams of its nature in the United Kingdom.

Altogether 14 individuals have been found guilty for their involvement in a £28 million scheme to defraud over 3,500 timeshare holders.

The victims were keen to exit age-old timeshare contracts and sought out help.

The majority were aged between 60 and 80. Over 500 of them surrendered over £10,000, and a single victim handed over more than £80,000.

Those affected were subjected to aggressive consultations continuing for six hours. They were financially worse off, holding useless fake "points" and remained trapped in high-priced vacation property deals they frequently were unable to use.

The Firm Behind the Deception

The business at the core of the fraud was the timeshare resale company. They collected customers' funds to support the directors' luxurious lifestyle of prestigious schooling, high-end properties and private jets.

The man at the head of the company, Mark Rowe, was handed a 90-month prison term in January for conspiracy to defraud.

In the latest development, his wife one of the co-defendants was part of the concluding cases to hear their sentences.

She was given a two-year long suspended prison term at Southwark Crown Court after admitting money laundering.

The outcome represents a lengthy process and marks a huge win for the individuals who testified, the authorities and legal representatives.

How the Investigation Was Initiated

The first knowledge of the firm came in the mid-2016. I was working in the reporting team of a news organization, making current affairs features.

A colleague mentioned that his mum had taken over the ownership of a vacation unit in a European resort and, after decades of vacations, had begun looking to exit the deal.

It's worth mentioning how common holiday ownership had evolved with British holidaymakers in the last decades of the 20th century.

Holiday ownership allowed families to use the equivalent unit annually, or swap their time slots with other owners who had properties in different locations. Roughly 600,000 holiday enthusiasts took up that opportunity.

The initial boom was accompanied by a lot of reports about rip-off merchants fraudulently marketing units. They became a staple on public interest shows.

The standard holiday ownership agreement bound owners for many years.

In that period, those investors who had experienced their assigned property in the resort for 20 or 30 years were advancing in years, and a significant number were attempting to wave goodbye to their vacation investments.

Several had reduced ability to travel and found it difficult to access their apartments. Some just believed they'd enjoyed sufficient use from them. And some had deceased, in many cases bequeathing their family members to take over the deals - along with their annual payments and upkeep costs.

The Investigation Unfolds

It was at this point the relative had found herself. She searched the web for solutions and discovered SMT, a enterprise whose digital platform claimed to get her out of her agreement.

But, having submitted funds and scheduled a consultation with them, her family smelled a rat.

Further research showed hundreds of people reporting they had paid money and achieved no result out of it. Indeed, they had suffered financially. Substantial amounts.

The reporting group started looking into what was occurring. It soon emerged that there were dubious individuals operating in the timeshare resale sector.

One lawyer had hundreds of individual complaints aiming to litigate against the organization.

We spoke to clients who had used the firm and they all told the same story. They assumed the business would acquire their investment away from them but when they participated in a session (for which they paid up front) they were advised there was no re-sale value.

Instead, they were pushed - actually compelled - to commit further cash investing in "Monster Rewards", named after the outfit's parent company, the overarching entity.

The nature of these rewards was rather ambiguous. They appeared to be a kind of currency, providing reduced-price holidays and amenities and retail offers.

And they were apparently "tradable" with other owners, eventually.

Paying cash immediately would produce an future return that would pay for SMT's fees and allow the property owner ahead financially, freed at last from their pesky contract.

An unrealistic promise? Indeed, it was.

A 'Misleading Scheme'

Assuming these reports were true, this was a large-scale fraud.

The technique is termed a "deceptive marketing."

A business - specifically SMT - "baits" the client by promoting a particular product but then to state it cannot be provided, directing the customer towards a different, lower-quality offering.

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

This takes dedication, work, and strong justifications for why this is the exclusive approach to collect the evidence needed to confirm deceptive practices.

Armed with that permission, our small team organized a meeting with one of the organization's staff in the location.

Pretending to be a ordinary individual wanting to help his mother out of her timeshare contract|holiday ownership agreement