Manchester’s link to an alleged multimillionaire shared fraud investigation

“We know that some of those involved are part of organized criminal groups. Therefore, very experienced and very well connected scammers.”

It is believed that hundreds of people have been victims of an alleged scam that is believed to have noted dozens of millions of pounds for criminals. And a main suspect of the complex scheme was arrested at Manchester airport.

Nineteen companies that claim to help people out of their shared time contracts are under scrutiny. They are being investigated by the Office of Serious Fraud that they believe were operated by an organized crimes network.

In August, the OFS arrested a man whom they called a “key suspect” Manchester airport And he registered his home address, made four arrests of alleged accomplices and made three property raids in England the following month.

The OFS was assisted by the National Crime Agency, Greater Manchester and the Hertfordshire police in these operations.

One of the 19 supposedly involved companies is registered in Manchester.

It is suspected that COLD companies called members of the public that offer departure and/or compensation of shared or vacation clubs for an initial rate of a thousand pounds between January 2018 and September 2024. No services have been provided in most cases.

In a double scam, it is believed that the people who bought these services were contacted again and pressured to pay another initial rate to recover their money on the basis that it was fraudulent.

It is understood that many of the victims are old and retired and that they have invested in shared time schemes in places such as Tenerife, Lanzarote and the Spanish continent.

The OFS asks anyone contacted by these companies to share information through their questionnaire on their website.

The Companies Are: AML Executive Contracts LTD, ASA Partnership Ltd, DW Contract Consultancy Ltd, DW Law Consultancy Ltd, Ers Europe LTD, Harwood Advisory Group Ltd, Huntland Rock Associates Ltd (Hunter Rock Associates), Meta Uk Group Ltd Chadwick Consultants Ltd, The Nobel Group of Companies (Including But Not Limited to Nobel Acquisions and Investment Group Ltd and Nobel Business Services LTD), Park Square Associates Ltd, Rockland Associates Ltd, Silversream Management Group Ltd, Sonata Trading Ltd SERVICES LTD, BIZ DOC UK LTD, also known as Business Doctor, Timeshare Legals LTD, TSL Europe Ltd and Venture Complence Ltd ..

Emma Luxton, director of Operations of the OFS, told the Manchester Evening News: “We realized a crime in which a shared time output scheme was being sold fraudulently for cold calls.

“I asked people basically if they would like to buy a service that would allow them to get out of a shared time scheme if they were tied to him.

“This was happening in a very widespread way since 2018. We have hundreds of victims and witnesses we are trying to contact.

“Once they sold the departure schemes, they called the victims back to the costume of a different company that tried to sell them another shared time exit scheme that says that the first was fraudulent, so some of the poor victims who fell for the first scheme also fell by the second. We believe that millions of pounds have disappeared.

“The arrest we made in August was one of our suspects that was at Manchester airport trying to board a flight.

“Then we conducted more suspicious interviews in September making three raids and acquiring a lot of information for our research. We are now working through that trying to gather everything.

“We know that there were at least 19 companies prepared to organize this fraud and we know that some of those involved are part of organized criminal groups. So very experienced and very well connected scammers.”

The OFS is now looking for more victims while preparing a case against suspects. “We don’t know exactly how many victims are there, but we know that it is hundreds of the United Kingdom,” Luxton said. He added that the amount made by the scam “could be in dozens of millions.”

“If the victims recognize the facts and the MO of these scammers and have bought a shared time output scheme, they can go to our website and verify to see if one of those 19 companies contacted them. Our challenge is to find out how much a genuine business was and how much it was fraudulent possibly from the beginning, especially when we see the same people involved in these schemes over and over again.

“The best thing for us with this particular research is that we interrupt it when we make those arrests. We believe it has stopped, but there is a risk that it can resurface with another appearance, but we are maintaining attesting and streamlining our research.

“We are very interested in supporting witnesses and appreciating that it is not easy to present themselves. We ask them to cling to any documentation. We will treat what they tell us confidentially. We have a strong witness support unit and keep them in contact with the case. We help them if they have to give evidence in court.”

He added that financially some victims had been “chopped very badly.” “We want as many victims as possible. We realize that it can be shameful and that people can feel silly. But perpetrators may seem quite genuine, they are very skilled in what they do. We do not want the victims to be reluctant to present themselves.”

He added that the investigations would continue abroad if necessary and the OFS would seek to obtain compensation for the victims through their powers of confiscation after the conviction. “We are interested in recovering assets. Anything that we find that scammers have been spending their poor earnings. We are looking to freeze accounts and bank assets, such as homes.”

In April of last year, one of the 19 companies, Timeshare Legals Limited was closed after the investigations of the insolvency service.

The insolvency service said in a statement that they “convinced customers to pay rates in advance of £ 5,000, depending on false guarantees about how strong their claims” add “many of the claims finally turned out to be valid, despite what the company’s representatives said during the sales process.”

The investigations of the insolvency service also revealed the transfer of client funds to a company in Spain with the same name, Timeshare Legals SL, and the same director, creating a lack of transparency.

The business was created in October 2018 for people who wish to terminate or claim shared time agreements, mainly in Tenerife.

The insolvency service said: “Clients were charged in advance more a percentage of any recovery. However, many of the statements in which rates had never been taken in advance had any realistic opportunity to succeed and were evaluated without the proper commitment of lawyers.”

Shared time was completed in the Superior Court of London on Tuesday, April 16. Mark George, chief investigator of the insolvency service, said: “The legal time of time cheated hundreds of people who wanted to leave or claim shared time agreements misunderstood to pay fees in advance so they were finally useless cases.

“His obvious deficiencies for record maintenance and their breach of paying funds to the designated lawyers have clearly hindered progress and damaged the perspectives of customers to recover money.

“The company provided a very limited cooperation with our research, by not producing any commercial or financial registration, which results in investigators cannot establish the legitimacy or reasons for the transfer of more than £ 900,000 to unknown accounts. We will not hesitate to act in the public interest so that rebel companies that cause financial losses and financial damages.

The investigations of the insolvency service established the clients were persuaded to pay an initial rate to the legal time shared based on the guarantees on the strength of their case that had taken place without any legal review.

A significant number of the 440 general plaintiffs really did not have possible shared time claims, but the initial rate had been charged before any evaluation could be completed.

Many of the cases had no jurisdiction in Spain, related to canceled or resigned contracts that could not be litigated or that were continuous cases with another company.

In some cases in which the Spanish lawyers who worked with the legal time of time were able to obtain information required for a claim, the company did not pay the legal fees, which resulted in the cases were not issued.

Legal shared time told some clients that their statements were progressing despite the fact that lawyers did not act because the shared time agreement was not governed by Spanish law.

The company also used cold calling techniques, with more evidence that indicated that customers were encouraged to resign the cooling period of 14 days after signing a contract with the legal time legal so that the work in the claim could begin immediately.

The investigations of the insolvency service have not been able to identify where funds of more than 3.75 million were produced that passed through the company’s bank accounts due to the lack of negotiations and financial records.

It was known that a total of 244 claims were ongoing at the end of 2023, 41 of which were with a Spanish law firm and the rest with two other claims management companies. The company has no presence in its office registered in northern London and customers looking for an update on their claim.