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It has been described as among the biggest frauds of its kind in the UK.

A total of 14 defendants have been found guilty for their role in a £28m plot to swindle in excess of 3,500 holiday ownership investors.

The affected individuals were eager to terminate age-old timeshare contracts and went looking for support.

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

Those affected were faced aggressive sales meetings lasting up to six hours. They were financially worse off, holding valueless fake "points" and remained locked into high-priced holiday ownership agreements they frequently were unable to use.

The Firm Behind the Scam

The firm at the centre of the scheme was Sell My Timeshare (SMT). They took clients' cash to finance the directors' luxurious lifestyle of prestigious schooling, high-end properties and personal aircraft.

The individual at the top of the firm, Mark Rowe, was handed a seven and a half year prison term in January for deceptive scheme.

On Friday, his partner another individual was part of the concluding cases to hear their sentences.

She was handed a two-year suspended jail sentence at Southwark Crown Court after confessing to financial crime.

This has been a lengthy process and signifies a significant success for the individuals who testified, the authorities and prosecutors.

The Way the Inquiry Started

I first heard about the firm came in the summer of 2016. I was working in the reporting team of a media outlet, making investigative programmes.

A colleague pointed out that his parent had taken over the use of a vacation unit in a European resort and, after years of holidays, had started seeking to get out of the agreement.

It's worth mentioning how popular timeshares had grown with English tourists in the eighties and nineties.

Holiday ownership enabled individuals to use the equivalent unit every year, or swap their time slots with additional holders who had properties in alternative destinations. Approximately 600,000 holiday enthusiasts accepted that opportunity.

The first timeshare rush was linked to a lot of accounts about unscrupulous sellers fraudulently marketing properties. They became a staple on investigative broadcasts.

The standard vacation property deal locked buyers for decades.

By 2016, those investors who had used their regular accommodation in the sun for decades were getting older, and a large proportion were attempting to say farewell to their vacation investments.

Several had health issues and were unable to visit their apartments. Others just felt they'd achieved their goals from them. And others had passed away, in numerous instances passing on their heirs to inherit the contracts - plus their yearly fees and maintenance fees.

The Undercover Operation Unfolds

And that's where the family member had been placed. She browsed the internet for solutions and found the organization, a enterprise whose digital platform claimed to terminate her agreement.

Yet, having made a payment and arranged an appointment with them, her relatives had doubts.

Subsequent checking uncovered hundreds of people reporting they had handed over cash and got nothing out of it. In fact, they had been left out of pocket. A lot of it.

Our team began investigating what was going on. It soon emerged that there were some shady characters active in the timeshare resale sector.

One lawyer had many grievance cases aiming to litigate against the organization.

We spoke to people who had dealt with the organization and they all told the same story. They assumed the business would purchase their timeshare off them but when they attended a meeting (for which they made an advance payment) they were told there was no re-sale value.

Rather, they were pushed - actually compelled - to commit further cash purchasing "the company's points system", named after the outfit's parent company, Monster Travel.

The nature of these rewards was rather ambiguous. They seemed similar to a kind of currency, offering cheaper vacations and benefits and retail offers.

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

Committing funds at the time would produce an future return that would pay for the company's charges and result in the timeshare holder in profit, freed at last from their troublesome agreement.

An unbelievable offer? Certainly, that proved correct.

A 'Deceptive Scam'

Based on these descriptions were accurate, this was a major deception.

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

Someone - here the organization - "attracts the client by marketing a particular product but then to state it cannot be provided, directing the customer towards an alternative, lesser product or service.

This is against the law. Armed with all the accounts we had collected, we argued to secretly film one of the company's meetings.

The process requires commitment, energy, and clear arguments for why this is the sole method to obtain the data necessary to demonstrate illegal activity.

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

Posing as a member of the public aiming to get his mum out of her timeshare contract|holiday ownership agreement