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Prosecutors have labeled it as among the biggest scams of its kind in the UK.

In all 14 individuals have been convicted for their involvement in a £28 million plot to defraud over 3,500 timeshare investors.

The victims were keen to exit age-old holiday ownership agreements and tried to find support.

Most were aged between 60 and 80. More than 500 of them parted with more than £10,000, and a single victim transferred in excess of £80,000.

Those targeted were subjected to aggressive sales meetings lasting up to six hours. They were left out of pocket, owning useless fake "rewards" and still bound by expensive holiday ownership agreements they could no longer use.

The Business Behind the Fraud

The company at the heart of the scheme was the organization in question. They accepted clients' cash to fund the directors' luxurious lifestyle of private schools, millionaire mansions and personal aircraft.

The man at the helm of the company, the main defendant, was given a seven and a half year jail time in January for conspiracy to defraud.

Recently, his spouse Nicola was among the last group to hear their sentences.

She was handed a two-year suspended prison term at the London court after pleading guilty to money laundering.

It has been a lengthy process and marks a huge win for the victims who came forward, the law enforcement and legal representatives.

How the Investigation Started

I first heard about SMT emerged during the mid-2016. The role involved in the research department of a news organization, producing documentary shows.

A colleague mentioned that his mother had taken over the rights of a vacation unit in the Spanish coast and, after years of holidays, had commenced searching to exit the deal.

It should be noted how common timeshares had grown with English tourists in the last decades of the 20th century.

Timeshares allowed individuals to access the equivalent unit annually, or trade their weeks with fellow investors who had units in other resorts. About 600,000 sun-lovers seized that opportunity.

The first timeshare rush was linked to a numerous reports about unscrupulous sellers deceptively promoting units. They appeared frequently on public interest TV programmes.

The common timeshare contract locked buyers for long periods.

In that period, those holders who had used their assigned property in the resort for 20 or 30 years were getting older, and many were looking to say farewell to their timeshares.

Several had declining mobility and found it difficult to access their properties. A few just thought they'd got all they wanted from them. And some had deceased, in frequent situations bequeathing their family members to assume the contracts - plus their regular contributions and upkeep costs.

The Covert Probe Develops

And that's where the family member had ended up. She searched the web for options and found the organization, a enterprise whose digital platform assured to release her from her contract.

Yet, having paid a fee and arranged an appointment with them, her family had doubts.

Further research showed many victims saying they had paid money and received no benefit from the service. Actually, they had suffered financially. A lot of it.

Our team started looking into what was occurring. It quickly became clear that there were questionable operators active in the holiday ownership market.

One lawyer had many grievance cases waiting to sue the company.

The team interviewed individuals who had engaged the company and they collectively described identical situations. They believed the company would acquire their investment away from them but when they participated in a session (for which they submitted funds initially) they were told there was no market for their property.

Rather, they were persuaded - indeed coerced - to commit further cash purchasing "Monster Rewards", associated with the organization's holding firm, the overarching entity.

The nature of these rewards was somewhat vague. They sounded like a type of exchange medium, giving access to cheaper vacations and amenities and shopping deals.

And they were seemingly "tradable" with fellow investors, some time down the line.

Paying cash up front now would result in an long-term benefit that would pay for the firm's costs and leave the investor in profit, liberated eventually from their pesky agreement.

An unrealistic promise? Indeed, it was.

A 'Bait-and-Switch Scam'

Assuming these reports were correct, this was a massive scam.

The technique is termed a "bait-and-switch."

Someone - specifically the organization - "baits" the client by advertising a specific service only to then say that's not available, directing the individual in the direction of a different, lower-quality offering.

Such practices are unlawful. Possessing all the accounts we had assembled, we presented the rationale to covertly record one of the company's meetings.

Such an operation demands time, effort, and clear arguments for why this is the only way to gather the information required to prove wrongdoing.

Armed with that permission, our limited crew arranged a appointment with one of the organization's staff in the English town.

Pretending to be a ordinary individual wanting to get his mum out of her timeshare contract|holiday ownership agreement