Two former employees of VO Group LLC, also known as The Vacation Ownership Group LLC, were sentenced last month for conspiracy to defraud timeshare owners.
The Vacation Ownership Group LLC claimed to offer advice services to owners of timeshares, including timeshare cancellation services.
The first fraudster, Alex Jordan, whose real name is, Alfred Giordano, was sentenced 18-months in prison after pleading guilty to conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud.
The second fraudster, Frank Martin, whose real name is Francis Santore, had a slightly reduced sentenced of 12 months although he was charged with the same offences and also pleaded guilty before U.S. District Court Judge Noel L. Hillman. Judge Hillman imposed the sentences on Friday, 19th February 2016 in Camden federal court.
Giordano started working at The Vacation Ownership Group LLC in January 2010 and was trained by Adam Lacerda to contact customers using tried and tested scripts.
Adam Lacerda and his wife, Ashley, were tried and sentenced in September 2013 in extremely similar circumstances alongside 2 others. Adam was found guilty of nine counts of mail fraud and three counts of wire fraud.
Giordano would call customers leading them to believe he had their complaint file and was working for their bank or lending facility. After Giordano had gone through his script many customers sent cheques to The VO Group. This particular scam run by Giordano caused over $120,000 in losses alone. Giordano also devised a separate scheme to collect unemployment compensation benefits from New Jersey Department of Labour while in employment with The VO Group. He was able to gain an addition $13,676 in fraudulent benefits which he was not entitled to – Giordano admitted to applying and collecting the unemployment welfare.
In October 2010 Santore began employment at The Vacation Ownership Group LLC, where he was also allegedly trained by Adam Lacerda to deceive customers using the same prepared scripts. Santore admitted to deceiving customers in a similar way to Giordano and allowing them to believe the false assumption given by his co-workers that the VO Group had the customer’s complaint file from a timeshare resort developer in front of them.
Santore admitted that he habitually told untruths to customers in order to execute the timeshare owner scam.
Santore admitted that he deceptively told a timeshare owner if they paid $8,562 to The VO Group, the group would be able to eliminate the customer’s $18,000 mortgage debt with a timeshare developer. Santore admitted causing more than $70,000 in losses. In a similar scam to Giordano, Santore also devised a separate scheme to deceive the California unemployment system and managed to apply and collect $16,200 in unemployment compensation benefits while in employment for The VO Group.
In addition to the sentenced prison terms, Judge Hillman issued both defendants to three years of supervised release. Compensation for the victims will be determined at a hearing yet to be scheduled.
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