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Prosecutors have labeled it as among the biggest deceptions of its type in the Britain.

Altogether 14 individuals have been sentenced for their involvement in a multi-million pound plot to cheat more than 3,500 holiday ownership investors.

The victims were eager to terminate age-old timeshare contracts and sought out support.

Most were from 60 and 80. In excess of 500 of them parted with over £10,000, and one handed over over £80,000.

Those victimized were subjected to intense sales meetings continuing for six hours. They were financially worse off, possessing valueless fake "rewards" and still locked into costly vacation property deals they could no longer use.

The Business Central to the Deception

The company at the core of the scheme was Sell My Timeshare (SMT). They collected people's money to fund the owners' lavish way of life of private schools, high-end properties and exclusive air travel.

The leader at the top of the organization, the company director, was sentenced to a seven-and-half year sentence in January for deceptive scheme.

On Friday, his spouse Nicola was one of the final three to learn their fate.

She was given a 24-month deferred imprisonment at the judicial venue after confessing to money laundering.

This has been a long time coming and marks a major victory for the people who spoke out, the police and the Crown.

How the Inquiry Started

I first heard about SMT was in the mid-2016. The role involved in the reporting team of a broadcasting service, producing investigative shows.

A friend noted that his parent had inherited the ownership of a timeshare apartment in the Spanish coast and, after years of holidays, had begun looking to terminate the contract.

It's worth mentioning how common holiday ownership had become with UK travelers in the last decades of the 20th century.

Vacation properties allowed individuals to use the equivalent unit every year, or trade their weeks with additional holders who had apartments in other resorts. Roughly 600,000 holiday enthusiasts took up that opportunity.

The first timeshare rush was paired with a numerous reports about unscrupulous sellers deceptively promoting properties. They were regularly featured on public interest broadcasts.

The typical vacation property deal locked buyers for decades.

In that period, those investors who had enjoyed their regular accommodation in the sunshine for a long time were getting older, and a significant number were looking to say farewell to their timeshares.

Some had reduced ability to travel and were unable to visit their properties. A few just believed they'd enjoyed sufficient use from them. And some had passed away, in numerous instances bequeathing their heirs to assume the agreements - plus their regular contributions and service charges.

The Undercover Operation Develops

And that's where the friend's mum had been placed. She browsed the internet for answers and discovered the company, a firm whose website promised to get her out of her contract.

However, having submitted funds and booked a meeting with them, her relatives smelled a rat.

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

The investigative unit started looking into what was happening. 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 the company.

The team interviewed clients who had used the firm and they all told the same story. They assumed the company would acquire their investment away 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.

In place of that, they were encouraged - actually pressured - to spend more money acquiring "the company's points system", associated with the organization's holding firm, the parent organization.

What exactly these were was rather ambiguous. They appeared to be a kind of currency, offering cheaper vacations and amenities and retail offers.

And they were seemingly "exchangeable with fellow investors, some time down the line.

Committing funds up front now would result in an long-term benefit that would pay for the firm's costs and result in the timeshare holder with a gain, released finally from their troublesome contract.

An unbelievable offer? Certainly, that proved correct.

A 'Bait-and-Switch Scheme'

Based on these descriptions were correct, this was a large-scale fraud.

It's what is called a "bait-and-switch."

An operator - specifically the company - "baits" the consumer by marketing a particular product and then say that's not available, pushing the client towards another, inferior option.

That's illegal. Possessing all the testimony we had collected, we argued to covertly record one of the company's meetings.

The process requires time, effort, and clear arguments for why this is the sole method to gather the evidence needed to demonstrate illegal activity.

Once authorized, our small team arranged a meeting with one of the organization's staff in the location.

Acting as a member of the public wanting to get his mum out of her timeshare contract|holiday ownership agreement