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Prosecutors have labeled it as one of the largest scams of its type in the UK.

In all 14 individuals have been convicted for their part in a £28m conspiracy to cheat more than 3,500 holiday ownership owners.

The victims were eager to exit age-old holiday ownership agreements and went looking for support.

Most were in the age range of 60 and 80. In excess of 500 of them parted with in excess of £10,000, and one handed over over £80,000.

Those victimized were faced high-pressure consultations lasting up to six hours. They were out of money, possessing valueless fake "rewards" and remained bound by expensive holiday ownership agreements they frequently were unable to use.

The Company Behind the Fraud

The firm at the core of the scheme was Sell My Timeshare (SMT). They collected customers' funds to support the directors' opulent standard of living of exclusive education, high-end properties and personal aircraft.

The individual at the head of the firm, the main defendant, was handed a seven and a half year sentence in January for conspiracy to defraud.

On Friday, his wife Nicola was one of the final three to learn their fate.

She was handed a 24-month suspended jail sentence at Southwark Crown Court after admitting financial crime.

The outcome represents a lengthy process and represents a major victory for the individuals who testified, the authorities and prosecutors.

The Way the Inquiry Began

I first heard about SMT emerged during the mid-2016. The position was in the reporting team of a news organization, producing current affairs programmes.

A colleague noted that his mum had assumed the use of a vacation unit in a European resort and, after years of holidays, had started seeking to exit the contract.

It should be noted how widespread vacation properties had grown with English tourists in the last decades of the 20th century.

Vacation properties allowed people to use the equivalent unit each season, or swap their time slots with additional holders who had properties in alternative destinations. Approximately 600,000 vacation seekers took up that option.

The first timeshare rush was accompanied by a numerous accounts about dishonest operators deceptively promoting properties. They were regularly featured on public interest broadcasts.

The common holiday ownership agreement bound owners for decades.

By 2016, those owners who had enjoyed their regular accommodation in the sun for decades were getting older, and many were attempting to end their association to their timeshares.

Some had reduced ability to travel and were unable to visit their apartments. A few just thought they'd achieved their goals from them. And a portion had deceased, in numerous instances passing on their loved ones to take over the deals - along with their yearly fees and upkeep costs.

The Covert Probe Progresses

It was at this point the relative had been placed. She searched the web for answers and discovered SMT, a firm whose digital platform promised to get her out of her deal.

Yet, having paid a fee and arranged an appointment with them, her loved ones smelled a rat.

Further research uncovered hundreds of people reporting they had handed over cash and got nothing in return. Actually, they had suffered financially. Significant sums.

The investigative unit commenced probing what was happening. It quickly became clear that there were some shady characters operating in the timeshare resale sector.

An attorney had hundreds of individual complaints waiting to sue the organization.

Reporters contacted individuals who had dealt with the organization and they all told the same story. They assumed the firm would buy their property off them but when they participated in a session (for which they submitted funds initially) they were advised there was no market for their property.

Rather, they were encouraged - in fact pressured - to invest additional funds purchasing "the company's points system", linked to the outfit's parent company, Monster Travel.

The nature of these rewards was rather ambiguous. They sounded like a kind of currency, providing cheaper vacations and benefits and consumer discounts.

And they were seemingly "tradable" with additional holders, eventually.

Paying cash immediately would produce an eventual payoff that would pay for SMT's fees and allow the investor ahead financially, freed at last from their troublesome deal.

An unrealistic promise? Certainly, that proved correct.

A 'Misleading Scam'

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

It's what is called a "bait-and-switch."

A business - in this case the organization - "lures the customer by promoting a particular product but then to state it cannot be provided, pushing the individual in the direction of an alternative, lesser offering.

This is against the law. Armed with all the testimony we had collected, we presented the rationale to secretly film one of the firm's consultations.

This takes commitment, energy, and compelling reasons for why this is the sole method to obtain the information required to demonstrate illegal activity.

Armed with that permission, our limited crew set up a meeting with one of the firm's agents in the English town.

Pretending to be a ordinary individual hoping to help his mother released from her timeshare contract|holiday ownership agreement