The inventiveness of the scam industry never fails to amaze us but this latest one takes the biscuit. Cold calls are being made from an individual named Roland Fink. The story goes that his “division” of “FRP” has been charged with the responsibility of contacting Club la Costa owners who purchased their timeshare before 1st January 2002 as the administrator has stipulated that everyone who concluded a contract with Club La Costa before that date is entitled to a payment from the bankruptcy estate. First TCA comment is… rubbish.
We decided to dig a little deeper and below are the results of our investigation.
The facts
First we will start with the bogus website https://clublacosta.eu Interestingly we expected this web address to have been created recently, however it appears the domain was registered in 2000, this leads us to believe that this domain was originally allocated to CLC but has subsequently been hijacked.
As per usual, the registrar is hidden behind a privacy shield. For all intents, the site looks like old style CLC sites with photos of the various resorts, however there is a section covering the administration of various CLC companies. The site is in German which makes us believe that the scam is aimed towards German owners. The cheeky scammer has even used the CLC Mijas address as a contact point on the site, more evidence that most content is a clone of an original CLC site, now retired is the copyright statement at the foot of the site confirms no update since 2021:
COPYRIGHT © 2021 CLUB LA COSTA – ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
Nonsense
Where the site differs is there is an added page covering the administration/bankruptcy proceedings with most of the content being false. As those with an interest will know that the administration process is being handled by FRP in London, however, bearing in mind this is supposedly a CLC site, we find this statement rather interesting:
We are not employees of Club La Costa, we are the administrators of the liquidation and are responsible for examining your claims and, if necessary, satisfying you from the crowd.
We are pretty sure FRP may have something to say about this statement! If this scammer was representing FRP, why is the communication seemingly from CLC? Surely FRP themselves would be the ones to make contact.
As with any administration process the onus is on the administrator to ascertain which assets may be found and used for settlement to creditors. As we write we are unaware that FRP have concluded the necessary work. With this in mind the following statement taken from the site is 100% false:
“The administrator has also stipulated that everyone who concluded a contract with Club La Costa before January 1, 2002 is entitled to a payment from the bankruptcy estate.”
The bankruptcy page has a statement that goes even further:
“You can contact us here if you signed a contract with Club La Costa before January 1, 2002. You are then entitled to a payment from the bankruptcy estate.”
At this juncture, it should be pointed out that CLC only have one active website and that’s for member login: https://www.myclublacosta.com/ As we have pointed out in a previous article, all CLC businesses are being rebranded as Idiliq, the following site replaces all previous CLC sites: https://www.idiliqhotels.com/
Another very odd point is that the contact number on the site is a UK mobile, why would there not be a land line? As far as we are aware, FRP don’t use mobile numbers to contact claimants. The number quoted is also odd from another perspective as the network is run by not the normal BT, Vodaphone etc it’s supplied by Hanhaa. On perusing their website we see the following:
“Hanhaa has announced the launch of Hanhaa Mobile. The company’s very own mobile network will become the first global network dedicated to parcels”
Hannhaa appears to be a logistics company, hence the mobile network dedicated to parcels:
“The only hotline telephone number used by the administrator for this purpose is the following telephone hotline: +44 7389 647120”
Note the emphasis of the word “only”; obvious really, this scammer doesn’t want you calling the real FRP.
TCA comment
Well this scammer is certainly imaginative; however everything on the site falls over at the first fence. Here is a list of unanswered questions:
- Why would FRP be using a CLC website?
- Why would CLC even sanction such use?
- Why when FRP are in London is the contact address CLC in Mijas, Spain?
- Why would a professional business use mobile numbers for contact?
- Why would the number be supplied by a logistics company?
As the lyric in the Johnny Nash song says, “There are more questions than answers, the more I find out the less I know”.
If you are cold called by Roland Fink, or any other person for that matter, we suggest that you terminate the call immediately. At some stage, if you should get involved, there will be a request for money. The real administrator, FRP would never make such a request.
Finally there is a link to a TCA article on the site. We can confirm that no permission has been granted to use this link therefore it contravenes our website terms.
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