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Prosecutors have labeled it as one of the largest deceptions of its kind in the Britain.

A total of 14 people have been sentenced for their involvement in a multi-million pound scheme to defraud over 3,500 timeshare owners.

The targets were eager to terminate decades-old vacation property deals and went looking for support.

A large number were aged between 60 and 80. Over 500 of them lost over £10,000, and one handed over in excess of £80,000.

Those targeted were exposed to intense presentations continuing for six hours. They were financially worse off, possessing worthless fake "credits" and still bound by expensive holiday ownership agreements they frequently were unable to use.

The Company Central to the Deception

The business at the centre of the scam was Sell My Timeshare (SMT). They collected clients' cash to support the proprietors' luxurious lifestyle of exclusive education, high-end properties and personal aircraft.

The man at the top of the company, the main defendant, was handed a seven and a half year sentence in January for deceptive scheme.

On Friday, his wife Nicola was part of the concluding cases to receive sentencing.

She received a 24-month suspended prison term at the London court after confessing to financial crime.

It has been a long time coming and marks a major victory for the victims who came forward, the authorities and legal representatives.

The Way the Inquiry Started

The initial awareness of SMT was in the summer of 2016. The position was in the research department of a broadcasting service, creating investigative shows.

A colleague pointed out that his mother had assumed the use of a holiday property in the Spanish coast and, after years of holidays, had begun looking to terminate the contract.

It's worth mentioning how common timeshares had grown with British holidaymakers in the 1980s and 1990s.

Timeshares enabled individuals to occupy the equivalent unit annually, or trade their weeks with additional holders who had properties in different locations. Approximately 600,000 sun-lovers took up that chance.

The initial boom was paired with a many stories about dishonest operators fraudulently marketing investments. They were regularly featured on consumer broadcasts.

The typical timeshare contract tied investors in for decades.

In that period, those owners who had used their assigned property in the resort for 20 or 30 years were getting older, and a significant number were looking to wave goodbye to their vacation investments.

Some had declining mobility and were unable to visit their units. A few just felt they'd enjoyed sufficient use from them. And a portion had passed away, in many cases bequeathing their family members to inherit the contracts - along with their yearly fees and maintenance fees.

The Undercover Operation Develops

This was the situation the friend's mum had found herself. She searched the web for solutions and discovered SMT, a firm whose online presence assured to terminate her contract.

But, having made a payment and booked a meeting with them, her family had doubts.

Subsequent checking uncovered hundreds of people saying they had paid money and received no benefit out of it. Actually, they had been left out of pocket. Substantial amounts.

The investigative unit began investigating what was happening. It soon emerged that there were some shady characters working within the vacation property industry.

A legal professional had many grievance cases waiting to sue SMT.

The team interviewed individuals who had engaged the company and they all told the same story. They thought the company would buy their property off them but when they attended a meeting (for which they paid up front) they were advised there was no re-sale value.

Rather, they were encouraged - in fact coerced - to spend more money acquiring "the company's points system", linked to the outfit's parent company, the overarching entity.

What exactly these were was not exactly clear. They seemed similar to a kind of currency, offering reduced-price holidays and services and shopping deals.

And they were seemingly "transferable with other owners, eventually.

Investing money up front now would result in an future return that would offset the company's charges and result in the investor in profit, liberated eventually from their pesky contract.

An unrealistic promise? Well, yes.

A 'Bait-and-Switch Tactic'

If these accounts were correct, this was a major deception.

It's what is called a "deceptive marketing."

Someone - here SMT - "lures the client by promoting a particular product and then say that's not available, steering the individual to another, inferior product or service.

This is against the law. Armed with all the testimony we had assembled, we presented the rationale to covertly record one of the organization's sessions.

Such an operation demands commitment, energy, and clear arguments for why this is the exclusive approach to gather the data needed to confirm deceptive practices.

Once authorized, our limited crew arranged a appointment with one of the company's representatives in the location.

Pretending to be a member of the public hoping to get his mum out of her timeshare contract|holiday ownership agreement