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Prosecutors have labeled it as among the biggest scams of its type in the Britain.

Altogether 14 individuals have been found guilty for their involvement in a multi-million pound scheme to cheat in excess of 3,500 vacation property investors.

The victims were keen to terminate decades-old timeshare contracts and tried to find support.

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

Those victimized were exposed to aggressive consultations lasting up to six hours. They were out of money, owning useless fake "credits" and still trapped in expensive vacation property deals they often use.

The Firm Central to the Scam

The firm at the heart of the fraud was Sell My Timeshare (SMT). They accepted people's money to fund the owners' lavish lifestyle of private schools, luxury homes and private jets.

The man at the head of the organization, the company director, was sentenced to a seven and a half year sentence in January for deceptive scheme.

Recently, his wife one of the co-defendants was among the last group to learn their fate.

She received a two-year long suspended prison term at the London court after pleading guilty to financial crime.

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

How the Inquiry Began

The initial awareness of the company came in the that particular year. I was working in the investigations unit of a broadcasting service, creating investigative programmes.

A friend pointed out that his parent had assumed the ownership of a holiday property in the Spanish coast and, after decades of vacations, had started seeking to get out of the agreement.

It should be noted how popular holiday ownership had become with British holidaymakers in the eighties and nineties.

Vacation properties permitted families to access the same accommodation annually, or trade their weeks with fellow investors who had units in different locations. About 600,000 vacation seekers seized that chance.

The first timeshare rush was accompanied by a lot of accounts about unscrupulous sellers mis-selling properties. They became a staple on investigative shows.

The standard holiday ownership agreement locked buyers for many years.

In that period, those owners who had enjoyed their guaranteed place in the sunshine for decades were ageing, and a significant number were looking to wave goodbye to their holiday properties.

Some had health issues and found it difficult to access their properties. A few just felt they'd enjoyed sufficient use from them. And others had passed away, in many cases passing on their loved ones to assume the agreements - including their yearly fees and upkeep costs.

The Covert Probe Develops

It was at this point the relative had found herself. She looked online for answers and discovered the company, a firm whose website claimed to terminate her contract.

Yet, having paid a fee and booked a meeting with them, her loved ones smelled a rat.

Subsequent checking revealed hundreds of people claiming they had submitted funds and got nothing in return. Actually, they had lost money. Significant sums.

Our team started looking into what was occurring. It soon emerged that there were some shady characters active in the holiday ownership market.

An attorney had many grievance cases aiming to litigate against the organization.

Reporters contacted clients who had engaged the company and they all told the same story. They believed the company would buy their property from them but when they participated in a session (for which they made an advance payment) they were informed there was no market for their property.

Rather, they were pushed - indeed coerced - to commit further cash purchasing "Monster Rewards", associated with the business's umbrella group, Monster Travel.

The precise definition was somewhat vague. They sounded like a type of exchange medium, offering discount travel and benefits and shopping deals.

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

Paying cash up front now would result in an eventual payoff that would offset the company's charges and leave the property owner in profit, freed at last from their burdensome contract.

An unbelievable offer? Certainly, that proved correct.

A 'Bait-and-Switch Scheme'

Assuming these reports were correct, this was a large-scale fraud.

The technique is termed a "misleading sales."

A business - here the company - "attracts the consumer by advertising a particular product and then state it cannot be provided, steering the customer to an alternative, lesser product or service.

This is against the law. Armed with all the testimony we had gathered, we made the case to covertly record one of the company's meetings.

This takes time, effort, and strong justifications for why this is the exclusive approach to gather the information required to confirm deceptive practices.

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

Posing as a member of the public aiming to help his mother free from her timeshare contract|holiday ownership agreement