Original Message:
Re: Learning how to investigate & prevent timeshare resale related fraud (by J V.):
It occurred to me that another important aspect of timeshare related scams is how they evolve. As time goes on the timeshare fraudsters change the scam so they can claim that they're a different type of service, and that they're not the same as the other people who took your money.
A basic timeshare resale scam is when someone cold calls you claiming to have a buyer lined up for your timeshare, and all you have to do is pay the closing costs (or stamp tax or upfront deposit or any other number of made up reasons), and after you pay them the deal falls through. Sometimes they'll guarantee to rent it until it sells as well. This varies a little bit on the pitch. They might not always have a buyer lined up, but they'll guarantee to find a buyer. A big part of this pitch turned into resale companies having corporate partners who had already agreed to rent out all of the timeshares. In reality you've signed an advertising contract, and when push comes to shove they claim that they never said they would sell or rent the timeshare, and that your hundreds or thousands of dollars was only to pay for the poorly written advertisement on their website (often times with incorrect information).
Some companies have since taken to being upfront about just being an advertising company, but they then still make big promises that result in people paying hundreds or thousands of dollars for said advertising. This should also be avoided since you can find similar services for free or at least for very, very low cost.
Another big part of timeshare resale has been the PCCs (Post Card Companies). These are most often a part of another type of timeshare resale scam which is the property transfer scam. PCCs will mass mail post cards across the nation, often times not even focusing on timeshare owners. They have more of a throw everything at the wall to see what sticks approach. Often times the post cards will be very urgent, and state that if you don't call right away you'll lose out on the deal. Some of these companies have gone as far as to change the phone number on a bi-weekly basis, so that the postcards from one month will have different contact information from the next month, which allows them to disconnect their phone number and leave with all the money they took for that two weeks and then move on to the next group of people (this isn't incredibly common, but it is a tactic I have seen used).
Property transfer companies often times use the PCC approach, but not always. Property transfer companies claim to be able to transfer your timeshare property out of your name into someone else's name. Some of these companies are Viking Ships, which will transfer the properties into a shell corporation, and then bankrupt the corporation. This is an illegal process that will make it appear as though the property was transferred from your name, but it may came back to bite you months down the line. These companies more often than not charge thousands, even tens of thousands of dollars to transfer these properties (which of course rarely get transferred).
This is where some of the previous tactics can be used, because a lot of property transfer companies will claim to be licensed real estate companies or professionals. Now don't forget that if they do happen to have those licenses it doesn't necessarily mean they're legitimate.
The property transfer has several variations like the timeshare resale. One of the most in-depth transfer scams that also offered to buy/sell points and offered new resorts (that didn't usually exist) was the Point Rental Liquidators group of companies. Redweek regulars are very familiar with that story, and there are two threads dedicated specifically to that group of companies.
This is already a lengthy post with just a few variations of timeshare resale scams. If anyone else would like to suggest other variations of the scam please feel free to contribute.
Again, the best bet is to ignore anyone calling about your timeshare no matter what they're offering, but sometimes a new sounding offer can cloud your judgement, especially if you're desperate to be rid of your timeshare.