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It has been described as one of the largest frauds of its kind in the UK.

A total of 14 individuals have been found guilty for their involvement in a £28 million scheme to cheat more than 3,500 timeshare investors.

The affected individuals were desperate to terminate long-standing timeshare contracts and went looking for assistance.

Most were from 60 and 80. Over 500 of them parted with in excess of £10,000, and one paid in excess of £80,000.

Those targeted were faced aggressive consultations continuing for six hours. They were out of money, owning useless fake "points" and continued to be trapped in expensive vacation property deals they often use.

The Firm Central to the Scam

The business at the heart of the scheme was the timeshare resale company. They collected clients' cash to fund the directors' luxurious standard of living of private schools, millionaire mansions and personal aircraft.

The man at the helm of the firm, the company director, was handed a seven and a half year jail time in January for fraudulent conspiracy.

On Friday, his partner another individual was among the last group to receive sentencing.

She received a 24-month deferred imprisonment at Southwark Crown Court after confessing to illegal fund handling.

This has been a long time coming and marks a major victory for the victims who came forward, the authorities and prosecutors.

How the Investigation Began

The first knowledge of SMT emerged during the summer of 2016. I was working in the investigations unit of a broadcasting service, making documentary programmes.

A acquaintance mentioned that his mum had assumed the ownership of a vacation unit in a European resort and, after decades of vacations, had commenced searching to get out of the contract.

It is important to recall how widespread timeshares had evolved with British holidaymakers in the last decades of the 20th century.

Timeshares allowed individuals to use the equivalent unit each season, or exchange their weeks with other owners who had apartments in different locations. Approximately 600,000 vacation seekers took up that option.

The first timeshare rush was paired with a lot of stories about rip-off merchants mis-selling investments. They appeared frequently on investigative shows.

The common holiday ownership agreement tied investors in for long periods.

By 2016, those holders who had enjoyed their regular accommodation in the resort for a long time were getting older, and a large proportion were hoping to wave goodbye to their timeshares.

Some had declining mobility and were unable to visit their apartments. A few just believed they'd achieved their goals from them. And a portion had passed away, in many cases leaving their loved ones to take over the deals - along with their annual payments and upkeep costs.

The Undercover Operation Develops

This was the situation the family member had been placed. She looked online for options and came across the company, a enterprise whose website assured to get her out of her agreement.

Yet, having paid a fee and booked a meeting with them, her relatives became suspicious.

Subsequent checking revealed many victims reporting they had paid money and achieved no result from the service. Indeed, they had lost money. A lot of it.

The reporting group started looking into what was occurring. It was rapidly apparent that there were questionable operators working within the timeshare resale sector.

An attorney had many grievance cases preparing to take action against the company.

We spoke to clients who had dealt with the organization and they all told the same story. They believed the business would purchase their timeshare from them but when they participated in a session (for which they paid up front) they were advised there was no re-sale value.

Instead, they were persuaded - in fact coerced - to invest additional funds purchasing "the company's points system", named after the organization's holding firm, the parent organization.

The nature of these rewards was rather ambiguous. They seemed similar to a kind of currency, providing discount travel and amenities and shopping deals.

And they were apparently "exchangeable with other owners, some time down the line.

Investing money immediately would produce an future return that would offset the company's charges and result in the investor ahead financially, liberated eventually from their pesky contract.

An unbelievable offer? Indeed, it was.

A 'Misleading Tactic'

If these accounts were accurate, this was a massive scam.

This is known as a "deceptive marketing."

A business - in this case SMT - "lures the consumer by marketing a defined offering only to then say that's not available, directing the individual to a different, lower-quality product or service.

That's illegal. Possessing all the testimony we had assembled, we presented the rationale to secretly film one of the firm's consultations.

The process requires time, effort, and strong justifications for why this is the sole method to obtain the evidence required to prove wrongdoing.

Once authorized, our compact group set up a consultation with one of the firm's agents in the location.

Posing as a potential client aiming to get his mum out of her timeshare contract|holiday ownership agreement