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It has been described as a major deceptions of its kind in the United Kingdom.

In all 14 defendants have been convicted for their part in a multi-million pound plot to swindle in excess of 3,500 vacation property investors.

The targets were desperate to exit long-standing timeshare contracts and tried to find support.

The majority were from 60 and 80. More than 500 of them surrendered over £10,000, and one individual paid in excess of £80,000.

Those targeted were subjected to intense presentations lasting up to six hours. They were left out of pocket, owning useless fake "credits" and continued to be trapped in high-priced vacation property deals they could no longer use.

The Business Behind the Deception

The company at the core of the scheme was the timeshare resale company. They collected clients' cash to finance the proprietors' opulent way of life of prestigious schooling, luxury homes and personal aircraft.

The leader at the top of the organization, the main defendant, was given a seven-and-half year prison term in January for conspiracy to defraud.

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

She was given a 24-month suspended jail sentence at the London court after pleading guilty to illegal fund handling.

It has been a long time coming and represents a huge win for the individuals who testified, the police and prosecutors.

The Way the Inquiry Started

The first knowledge of the firm came in the that particular year. The position was in the research department of a news organization, making documentary features.

A friend mentioned that his mum had inherited the rights of a holiday property in Spain and, after years of holidays, had started seeking to exit the deal.

It's worth mentioning how popular holiday ownership had evolved with UK travelers in the eighties and nineties.

Timeshares allowed people to use the identical property every year, or trade their time slots with other owners who had units in different locations. Approximately 600,000 vacation seekers accepted that option.

The first timeshare rush was paired with a lot of stories about dishonest operators fraudulently marketing properties. They became a staple on public interest TV programmes.

The typical vacation property deal bound owners for decades.

At that time, those holders who had used their assigned property in the sunshine for 20 or 30 years were getting older, and many were hoping to end their association to their holiday properties.

Some had health issues and were unable to visit their units. Others just thought they'd enjoyed sufficient use from them. And some had deceased, in many cases leaving their loved ones to assume the deals - including their yearly fees and upkeep costs.

The Investigation Unfolds

And that's where the relative had ended up. She looked online for solutions and found SMT, a firm whose website promised to release her from her contract.

But, having paid a fee and booked a meeting with them, her loved ones smelled a rat.

Subsequent checking revealed many victims reporting they had paid money and received no benefit from the service. Actually, they had lost money. A lot of it.

Our team began investigating what was happening. It was rapidly apparent that there were dubious individuals active in the vacation property industry.

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

The team interviewed people who had engaged the company and they each reported similar experiences. They believed the business would buy their property from them but when they attended a meeting (for which they submitted funds initially) they were told there was no re-sale value.

Instead, they were pushed - indeed coerced - to commit further cash purchasing "the company's points system", associated with the business's umbrella group, the overarching entity.

What exactly these were was rather ambiguous. They seemed similar to a type of exchange medium, offering cheaper vacations and amenities and shopping deals.

And they were apparently "tradable" with additional holders, eventually.

Committing funds up front now would produce an long-term benefit that would offset the firm's costs and allow the timeshare holder ahead financially, liberated eventually from their burdensome deal.

Too good to be true? Indeed, it was.

A 'Deceptive Scam'

Assuming these reports were true, this was a massive scam.

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

An operator - specifically the organization - "lures the client by marketing a defined offering only to then claim it is unavailable, pushing the customer towards another, inferior option.

This is against the law. Equipped with all the testimony we had collected, we presented the rationale to secretly film one of the organization's sessions.

The process requires time, effort, and compelling reasons for why this is the only way to obtain the evidence needed to prove wrongdoing.

Armed with that permission, our compact group organized a consultation with one of the company's representatives in Stratford-Upon-Avon.

Pretending to be a ordinary individual aiming to get his mum free from her timeshare contract|holiday ownership agreement