Couple robs over 3,000 people in £28m holiday scam

A fraudster couple preyed on elderly timeshare owners across the UK to fund their luxury lifestyle, defrauding as many as 3,000 people of £28.1 ($37.6) million.

Mark Rowe and his wife Nicola, both 54 and from Hampshire, operated their scam as Sell My Timeshare (SMT), targeting vulnerable, mostly elderly victims desperate to sell their properties.

The fraud, described as "elaborate" and "complex", resulted in 14 convictions under Operation Destin.

According to investigators cited by The Independent, Rowe “put victims up in hotels” and “created fake virtual offices and fake personas”. The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) said that crooks lured victims into “high-pressure sales meetings, which often lasted up to six hours”, pushing to trade their timeshares and make an additional investment.

Typically, timeshares is a form of ownership of a vacation property, where one pays a one-off lump sum (as well as maintenance fees) to be able to use the property for a set period of time each year.

In the 90s, many investors opted for timeshares, which were presented as “holidays without the hassle”, but as time went on, many could no longer afford the annual maintenance fees and wanted to transfer their ownership.

Here is where Mark Rowe and his accomplices came in, targeting those people with offers to exchange their timeshares for "Monster Credits", which, as they claimed, promised discounts on holidays and shopping.

They also suggested that the credits are likely to grow in value over time.

As a result, victims typically invested about £8,000 ($10,743) each, sometimes even taking out loans.

As you can imagine, victims soon realized that the credits they purchased were worthless. On top of that, they still owned and had to pay for all the cost associated with their timeshares.

In total, the fraud cost all of its 3,583 victims £28.1m ($37.6m), with the biggest single loss amounting to £80,000 ($107,472). The majority of the victims were between 60 and 80 years old, with some in their nineties.

The Rowes spent the stolen money on funding their luxury lifestyle, including expensive art, a house in Hampshire, and a private jet trip to Tenerife.

Mark Rowe received jail time of seven-and-a-half years for conspiracy to defraud, while his wife will be sentenced on Friday. She pleaded guilty to money laundering.

“The fact so many people were defrauded in this case reflects the lengths Mark Rowe went to both to lure victims to meetings with his criminal sales team and continually invent new methods to deceive them. He paid for TV and magazine ads, put victims up in hotels, and even created fake virtual offices and fake personas," senior investigating officer Peter Highway, from the South West Regional Organised Crime Unit said.

“Fraud cases, by their nature, are complex. When you have a case of this scale, where defendants made use of hundreds of bank accounts in multiple countries to move around millions of pounds stolen from thousands of victims, that complexity is amplified," he added, saying that the convictions, which follow four trials held over two years at Southwark Crown Court, are a testament to the hard work and dedication of the investigation team and CPS.