We have all heard about the increase of cold callers and call centres that flout the rules when it comes to the Telephone Preference Service (TPS), but this new fraud in America takes it an extra step further!
On Friday, 5th February 2016, 3 central Florida residents were sentenced after a sting on an elaborate telesales scam was successfully stopped. The conspiracy scammed in $10 million officials reported.
One female accomplice was given the lightest sentence with a five year probationary period, while the other 2 male scam artists were give prison sentences after all being found guilty of extorting money from over 5,000 victims, many of who were elderly.
Fabien C Fleifel, 45, from Winter Springs, Florida, was sentenced back in June 2015 for 14 years. The official charges were 19 counts of mail-fraud telemarketing and six counts of wire-card fraud.
Fleifel, along with the other accomplices, were ordered to pay $1.3 million in compensation – just 10% of the overall fraud.
Two other members of the alleged fraud were also sentenced. Bradley James Gomez, 36, of Longwood and Amanda Nadine Rizkallah, 32, of Oviedo were sentence to 2.5 years in prison and 5 years probations respectively with Rizkallah also being given 180 days of home confinement.
Fleifel allegedly conspired with others to make unsolicited, cold calls to timeshare owners with the objective to obtain money for a service they never planned to fulfil. The services that were promised was to sell their unwanted timeshare ownership.
Boiler rooms” were set up by Fleifel who then also hired and trained telemarketing staff in the art of hard sales tactics. Elaborate and false sales pitches were also concocted to convince the victims they had interested buyers waiting to purchase their timeshares. The highly bogus pitches would even go as far as to say that the potential buyers had already deposited money into an escrow account for the property as they were so eager to purchase that particular timeshare! This is known in sales as “creating urgency” and the client then losses sight of the upfront money that is being asked of them and focuses on the fear of loss – losing the buyer. The clients were then asked for a one-time fee to cover the title search and closing fees.
The officials reported that the clients were told it was a solid and safe transaction because in the unlikely event that the sale did not go through, they would be refunded all monies taken. This never happened and allowed the scam group to take over $10 million of the victim’s monies.
In the end only 10 people were charged and convicted of this timeshare resale scam with minimal compensation going back to the victims. Five people from the group are still awaiting sentencing.
For more information regarding this article or assistance in any other timeshare related issues please contact the TCA on 01908 881058 or email: info@TimeshareConsumerAssociation.org.uk