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It has been described as one of the largest scams of its type in the United Kingdom.

In all 14 individuals have been sentenced for their part in a multi-million pound scheme to defraud more than 3,500 timeshare holders.

The victims were eager to terminate age-old holiday ownership agreements and sought out help.

The majority were in the age range of 60 and 80. Over 500 of them parted with more than £10,000, and one handed over more than £80,000.

Those affected were subjected to intense consultations continuing for six hours. They were out of money, owning worthless fake "points" and still trapped in expensive vacation property deals they often use.

The Firm At the Heart of the Fraud

The business at the core of the scheme was the timeshare resale company. They accepted clients' cash to finance the owners' lavish way of life of exclusive education, millionaire mansions and private jets.

The man at the head of the organization, the company director, was sentenced to a seven-and-half year prison term in January for conspiracy to defraud.

On Friday, his partner one of the co-defendants was part of the concluding cases to receive sentencing.

She was given a two-year long suspended jail sentence at the London court after admitting money laundering.

This has been a long time coming and represents a significant success for the people who spoke out, the police and the Crown.

How the Investigation Started

The initial awareness of the firm was in the summer of 2016. The position was in the research department of a news organization, making documentary programmes.

A friend mentioned that his mother had inherited the rights of a timeshare apartment in the Spanish coast and, after decades of vacations, had started seeking to terminate the agreement.

It is important to recall how popular timeshares had evolved with British holidaymakers in the eighties and nineties.

Vacation properties permitted people to occupy the same accommodation each season, or exchange their vacation periods with other owners who had units in different locations. About 600,000 vacation seekers took up that option.

The initial boom was paired with a numerous reports about dishonest operators mis-selling properties. They became a staple on consumer shows.

The standard holiday ownership agreement tied investors in for decades.

By 2016, those owners who had enjoyed their guaranteed place in the resort for 20 or 30 years were getting older, and a significant number were attempting to wave goodbye to their vacation investments.

Several had health issues and couldn't get to their properties. Others just thought they'd got all they wanted from them. And others had passed away, in frequent situations passing on their loved ones to take over the agreements - plus their yearly fees and service charges.

The Covert Probe Unfolds

It was at this point the friend's mum had found herself. She searched the web for answers and came across SMT, a firm whose website assured to get her out of her agreement.

Yet, having paid a fee and scheduled a consultation with them, her relatives had doubts.

Subsequent checking revealed numerous individuals saying they had submitted funds and achieved no result in return. In fact, they had suffered financially. A lot of it.

Our team started looking into what was occurring. It soon emerged that there were dubious individuals operating in the holiday ownership market.

A legal professional had hundreds of individual complaints waiting to sue the organization.

We spoke to people who had used the firm and they all told the same story. They believed the company would purchase their timeshare from them but when they went to a consultation (for which they made an advance payment) they were informed there was no market for their property.

Instead, they were pushed - indeed pressured - to spend more money purchasing "Monster Rewards", linked to the organization's holding firm, the overarching entity.

The nature of these rewards was rather ambiguous. They sounded like a kind of currency, giving access to reduced-price holidays and benefits and consumer discounts.

And they were apparently "tradable" with fellow investors, some time down the line.

Committing funds at the time would produce an long-term benefit that would cover the company's charges and allow the investor in profit, released finally from their pesky contract.

Too good to be true? Well, yes.

A 'Bait-and-Switch Scheme'

If these accounts were true, this was a major deception.

The technique is termed a "misleading sales."

Someone - in this case the company - "baits" the consumer by marketing a specific service and then say that's not available, pushing the client towards another, inferior offering.

This is against the law. Possessing all the accounts we had collected, we made the case to covertly record one of the company's meetings.

The process requires time, effort, and compelling reasons for why this is the sole method to gather the data required to demonstrate illegal activity.

Once authorized, our compact group arranged a consultation with one of the organization's staff in Stratford-Upon-Avon.

Pretending to be a member of the public wanting to assist his parent free from her timeshare contract|holiday ownership agreement