It has been reported that the Court of Arona in Tenerife, has placed an embargo on the property of timeshare giant Silverpoint Vacations (formerly Resort Properties). The group pf properties held by the Silverpoint Vacations are Hollywood Mirage Club, Beverly Hills Heights, Beverly Hills Club, Palm Beach Club and Club Paradiso/Paramount.
This is a first for the courts but is the final step as Silverpoint Vacations and Mark Cushway continue to ignore their obligations to the courts and to the many clients who have won their cases against Silverpoint. The Supreme Court eventually ruled in January 2017, that clients who purchased their timeshare apartments, in some cases many weeks, for “investment” were not professional investors but just consumers. Numerous complaints were filed against Silverpoint due to the irregular business practices they were using for selling a tourist product. Silverpoint´s business model was not just to sell clients a week or two of timeshare for their personal use but to sell clients a number of weeks (some in excess of 20 weeks over a period of time) which they would then sell on for them and the client would make a profit. Initially there were some sales, which gave the customers confidence, some immediately reinvested, others preferred to wait to see the full outcome. Unfortunately, these clients then received, at the end of each year, the maintenance bills for all their unsold weeks. This bill had to be paid otherwise their “ownership” of the weeks would be cancelled, monies lost, however Silverpoint would then have these weeks back to be resold to another “investor”.
Those that paid the bill, often in excess of several thousands of pounds, continued to wait for a resale, usually embarking on another visit to the sales deck to get an assessment of their investment which ultimately resulted in being told that the weeks they currently had were worthless and they needed to change their weeks for a new product or larger version of what they already had, of course this meant the customer had to invest further monies to purchase the new weeks.
A number of these clients have been fighting Silverpoint in the courts for several years and there have been plenty of wins reported, however Silverpoint have failed to make any payments to clients, as a result of this in September of this year, an official court notice announced that summary proceedings were to be opened against Silverpoint and its administrators. This means the possibility of investigations into possible criminal offences and obstruction of justice. The judge and the Justice Department agreed that there were “serious indications of obstruction” and that a full investigation should be launched. Silverpoint have continuously ignored the orders made by the courts, to pay back the 1000´s of clients that have won and been awarded a refund. Silverpoint have also failed to provide substantial information regarding the embargo of assets. The courts consider this to be a very serious matter for which the accused could face up to four years in jail. Currently the total value of the settlements awarded to Silverpoint clients stands at 9 million euros. A recent business opened by the ex team from Silverpoint has subsequently closed, unfortunately they may have been tainted by the bad reputation of those that ran the Silverpoint scams for years, however the latest news is that those original scammers, headed up by Mark Cushway again, could now be heading to Mexico or the Dominican Republic (no extradition) to start all over again, this will be good news for holiday makers heading to Tenerife who can now holiday in peace.
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