Man sentenced in East St. Louis court to 10 years for timeshare scam + must pay 1.1M

Related: Telemarketing timeshare scam netted $1.3 million, feds say

EAST ST. LOUIS • A Florida man was sentenced in U.S. District Court in East St. Louis Friday to 121 months in prison and ordered to pay restitution of $1.1 million for his role in a time share telemarketing scam that bilked 600 time share owners in Southern Illinois and elsewhere, prosecutors said Monday.

Darnell Disroe, 38, and Michael Lentine, 32, both of Boynton Beach, Fla., and Michael Starace, 42, of Lantana, Fla. were indicted in July and accused of scamming 615 time share owners across the country by billing the owners for costs associated with sham sales.

The three ran a company called Real Timeshare Marketing.

Starace was sentenced in January to 18 months in prison for one count of mail fraud and ordered to pay $23,723 restitution.

Lentine was sentenced earlier that month to 51 months in prison for one count of conspiracy and two counts of mail fraud and ordered to pay restitution of $249,432. He ran one of the two independent offices that made up RTM. Disroe ran the other. Starace was a telemarketer.

All three men, as well as most of their telemarketers, worked for a similar scam before, Disroe admitted in November, when he pleaded guilty to one conspiracy charge and four mail fraud charges.

Disroe, who is formerly of Mt. Vernon, Ill., argued that victims lost less than $1 million, however.