The creative minds of the scam world are working overtime to find new ways to get ex timeshare owners to part with monies. This scam is not new to us but it does have variations, in basic terms it goes like this.
It all begins with cold contact, in this case it surrounds Silverpoint S.L / Resort Properties S.L / David Taylor / Mark Cushway who apparently have been convicted by the Tenerife court and our enquirer has been awarded the princely sum of €12,934, let’s deal with this bit first.
It’s true that Silverpoint is in administration, a process which is still continuing as we write. To date there has been absolutely no court case involving either company mentioned or the named individuals, that isn’t to say there won’t be criminal charges in the future but for now there is nothing on the horizon.
Moving on, as this is a scam, naturally there will be a request for money, and here we will quote directly from the scammers’ letter:
“As you are aware, the refundable imposed Brexit fee is 812€”
The letter then goes on to quote a complete load of garbage concerning the Double Taxation Treaty (DTT) between the UK and Spain, in basic terms they are saying the fee has to be paid but because of the DTT, their taxation department will apply for a 100% refund!
The kind law firm are only going to charge €380 for their services, not bad, €12,934 minus €380 leaves €12,554, don’t forget the €812 but that will be returned, except there is no settlement in the first place, there is no Brexit fee and there is no Leonardo Alvarez. So if our astute enquirer had gone along with this, he would have been scammed for €1,192. That said, once on the hook we reckon there will be further demands for monies, again with spurious reasons.
Leonardo Alvarez, the firm that isn’t
It wouldn’t be TCA if we didn’t carry out thorough investigations and offer evidence to establish that this supposed law firm doesn’t exist, so here we go.
The letterhead quotes a CIF number, in Spanish this stands for Certificado de Identificación Fiscal. Basically it is a company registration number that is a legal requirement. In this case the number quoted is B60364719. When checking this number with the Spanish equivalent of Companies House, this is what we found:
Empresa no encontrada translates to company not found. OK maybe they made a typo when having their letterhead produced, so in order to be fair, we made the same search but this time using the company name:
Pretty conclusive evidence that this organisation, if we can call it that, doesn’t exist.
Turning to the address quoted; C. Castellon de la Plana 107, Santa Cruz de Tenerife, when checking Google Maps we established that this quite a small street in Tenerife, in fact the highest building number we could see was 18, that would seem to confirm that 107 doesn’t exist.
TCA comment
100% scam, we have a law firm that doesn’t exist working from an office that doesn’t exist relating to a court case that doesn’t exist offering an award that doesn’t exist after paying a Brexit fee that equally doesn’t exist. As we have said time and time again, if you are approached regarding a settlement from a court case that you have no prior knowledge of and have had no prior involvement then it’s a scam.
Brexit has made absolutely no difference to the Spanish court system or settlements, there is no Brexit tax or fees to be paid. Attached is an obviously fake court document, we say obviously because TCA know what real Spanish Court documents look like and for sure this one is 100% fake.
If you are approached by either Leonardo Alvarez or any other Spanish law firm saying you have been awarded monies from a court case you knew nothing about, don’t be fooled. If you are almost convinced that the story is real, do yourself a favour and like our enquirer, his due diligence has saved him €1,192 (£1,049) or maybe more. Get in touch with TCA, we can tell you in 30 seconds whether it’s fake or real and in 100% of cases so far, fake is the answer.
Fake court document may be downloaded here:
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