In April of this year Muhammad Ridzuwan Roslan, 30, pleaded guilty to conspiring with others and to a fraudulent trading offence under the Companies Act.
A district court heard that between August 2013 and July 2016, 48 victims testified to the police that they were duped into paying monies to Solution One. Consumers had paid a total of $942,142 ranging from $1,000 to $65,000, paying for the services to recoup monies they had lost.
The court heard that although Solution One was set up to provide medical consultancy services, it never offered such services. Instead, it provided services for the recovery of money from timeshare memberships.
Muhammad, a second person involved in the various scams, duped individuals into believing that the company could recover money by terminating consumers timeshare memberships was jailed for three years and seven months on 14 November 2017. Three other cheating charges were taken into consideration during his sentencing.
Ridzuwan was previously a sales representative of Solution One as well as an administrative manager of S1 Trast Holdings, a company registered in Labuan, at the time.
Solution One claimed to be the agent of S1 Trast and allegedly administered the victims’ retrieval of money from their timeshare memberships, collecting fees for these services on behalf of the Malaysian company.
Deputy Public Prosecutor Magdalene Huang said that Ridzuwan, “together with Mohanaram Suppiah, and Annie Sahlawaty Mohd Salleh, conned victims into believing that they would receive money from terminating their timeshare membership if certain fees were paid upfront”.
Mohanaram’s role was to obtain personal details of the consumers, including Mr Khamis Ismail, who had paid Holiday Program Association Asia Pacific to terminate and recover money under their timeshare memberships.
Annie’s role was to contact the victims and falsely claim (including Mr Khamis) she represented the court of Singapore and that Mr Khamis would receive money from terminating his timeshare membership if he paid $54,585 to her. Khamis had no reason not to believe Annie and paid $34,585 on 5th February 2015, and the remaining balance of $20,000 the following day. Ridzuwan was also present at the first meeting.
For Annie’s part in the scam, she was sentenced to 6½ years of corrective training.
The net is closing in on such companies and jail sentences are now been executed.
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