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It has been described as one of the largest scams of its nature in the UK.

A total of 14 individuals have been convicted for their role in a multi-million pound scheme to defraud in excess of 3,500 timeshare holders.

The targets were desperate to terminate long-standing vacation property deals and tried to find support.

Most were aged between 60 and 80. Over 500 of them surrendered over £10,000, and one individual paid more than £80,000.

Those affected were faced aggressive presentations extending for six hours. They were financially worse off, holding useless fake "points" and still locked into expensive timeshare contracts they could no longer use.

The Firm Behind the Deception

The company at the core of the scam was Sell My Timeshare (SMT). They took people's money to fund the directors' lavish standard of living of prestigious schooling, luxury homes and private jets.

The individual at the helm of the company, the company director, was given a 90-month jail time in January for deceptive scheme.

On Friday, his wife another individual was part of the concluding cases to hear their sentences.

She received a two-year deferred imprisonment at Southwark Crown Court after confessing to illegal fund handling.

It has been a lengthy process and signifies a significant success for the individuals who testified, the authorities and the Crown.

The Way the Inquiry Was Initiated

The initial awareness of the firm was in the that particular year. I was working in the research department of a media outlet, producing current affairs features.

A acquaintance pointed out that his parent had assumed the rights of a timeshare apartment in a European resort and, after years of holidays, had commenced searching to get out of the agreement.

It's worth mentioning how popular vacation properties had evolved with British holidaymakers in the eighties and nineties.

Timeshares allowed people to access the same accommodation every year, or swap their vacation periods with fellow investors who had properties in other resorts. Roughly 600,000 holiday enthusiasts seized that opportunity.

The first timeshare rush was accompanied by a many stories about rip-off merchants mis-selling investments. They appeared frequently on public interest TV programmes.

The typical vacation property deal bound owners for decades.

At that time, those investors who had used their guaranteed place in the sunshine for 20 or 30 years were ageing, and many were attempting to wave goodbye to their vacation investments.

Several had declining mobility and couldn't get to their apartments. Some just felt they'd achieved their goals from them. And some had died, in many cases leaving their family members to inherit the agreements - plus their regular contributions and service charges.

The Investigation Progresses

And that's where the relative had found herself. She searched the web for answers and discovered the company, a business whose online presence claimed to get her out of her contract.

But, having paid a fee and arranged an appointment with them, her relatives had doubts.

Additional investigation showed numerous individuals reporting they had paid money and achieved no result out of it. In fact, they had lost money. A lot of it.

The reporting group started looking into what was going on. It was rapidly apparent that there were questionable operators active in the vacation property industry.

One lawyer had many grievance cases preparing to take action against SMT.

Reporters contacted clients who had engaged the company and they collectively described identical situations. They assumed the firm would buy their property off them but when they attended a meeting (for which they paid up front) they were advised there was no re-sale value.

In place of that, they were encouraged - indeed coerced - to invest additional funds acquiring "the company's points system", associated with the business's umbrella group, Monster Travel.

The nature of these rewards was not exactly clear. They seemed similar to a type of exchange medium, providing reduced-price holidays and benefits and consumer discounts.

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

Paying cash up front now would lead to an long-term benefit that would pay for the company's charges and leave the timeshare holder in profit, freed at last from their pesky agreement.

Too good to be true? Well, yes.

A 'Misleading Scheme'

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

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

A business - here the organization - "attracts the consumer by advertising a particular product only to then say that's not available, steering the customer in the direction of a different, lower-quality product or service.

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

This takes commitment, energy, and clear arguments for why this is the only way to collect the evidence needed to demonstrate illegal activity.

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

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