I strongly support the sentiments of those favoring Manhattan Club owners going on the offensive against Eichner and his cronies and signing on with Jean-Marc Zimmerman and suing the bastards. Just for an FYI, over the last 2 years I have been in contact with three other law firms exploring the possibility of bringing an action against TMC. Sue is absolutely right… hundreds of dollars an hour, tens of thousands in retainers. For an individual to do this is impossible from a cost standpoint. A group of several hundred of us joining together and kicking in $1250 each is a no brainer to me. That’s half of one year’s maintenance!! Since we purchased in 2005, TMC has cheated me out of ten times that!
Thousands of us have suffered for years at the hands of an unscrupulous timeshare company whose owners and agents committed PROVEN CRIMINAL ACTS against us, which were all ignored by the NY attorney general. But he was able to chalk up “a win” against TMC by getting them to sign a virtually meaningless “Notice of Discontinuance” which no one has done anything to enforce. I see this possible representation by Mr. Zimmerman as our last hope of gaining any possible restitution from these crooks.
For those of you who may have come lately to this site, or haven’t suffered the same financial losses as others, it’s worth reviewing a little history to understand the magnitude of the fraud perpetrated against many owners by The Manhattan Club.
Our decision to purchase was based on a sales presentation, during which just about every claim or promise made by the sales rep has proven to be false, misleading, or an outright lie; and the NY Attorney General’s undercover investigators have evidence of it all recorded on video. Unfortunately, we learned shortly after we purchased that the sales pitch was blatantly false. Rooms were never available to us when we called to try to reserve, no matter how far in advance we tried to book. Rooms ARE ALMOST NEVER available to timeshare owners who call to try to make reservations. We were misled by sales representatives during the purchase of our units and we have been denied the right to use our units for many years.
The Manhattan Club’s obligation to me as a timeshare owner was to make 7 days per year available to stay at the property. Instead of making those days reasonably available, The Manhattan Club engaged in an organized scheme to routinely tell me, and other timeshare owners who called to make a reservation, that the requested days were not available; while at the same time, Manhattan Club representatives were selling the same rooms for the same dates to the general public on the Internet. Could Eichner’s network of shell corporations and conduct fall under the RICO statute?
In 2014, once complaints against the company ran into the hundreds, the New York State Attorney General, Eric Schneiderman, started an investigation of the Eichners , The Manhattan Club, and all its related companies, charging them with committing fraud against its timeshare owners. The Eichners et al were the subject of an extensive civil and criminal investigation by the NY AG, which was concluded last July. Based on evidence gathered by the AG, we have learned that Eichner has been personally skimming 6 million dollars a year from The Manhattan Club through a shell management company called “Urban”. For years, this company had no employees and provided no services to the operation of the timeshare property, yet our timeshare corporation was paying Urban (Eichner) $6 million a year!
In their July, 2015 filing with the NY court, the Attorney General enumerates a remarkable list of allegations of civil and criminal conduct on the part of The Manhattan Club. In reading through the filing, one can't help but be struck by the enormity of the fraud which the Eichners, The Manhattan Club, and related companies have carried on for years. Here is the link to that AG filing. This document is a MUST READ for anyone who wants to see what the AG investigation uncovered.
https://iapps.courts.state.ny.us/fbem/DocumentDisplayServlet?documentId=arMAhc2Z8epneiTXUbb_PLUS_yQ==&system=prod
Based on those 2015 allegations by the NY AG, my wife and I concluded that The Manhattan Club had breached its contract with us. We informed the club of that fact and stopped paying the mortgage loan on the one unit we financed, as well as the annual maintenance fees on the two timeshare units we own. We have decided not to continue to fund The Manhattan Club's fraudulent, criminal enterprise.
It was announced in August, 2017, that the NY Attorney General had reached a settlement with the Respondents in this case, and ended his investigation into the operation of The Manhattan Club timeshare with the signing of an “Assurance of Discontinuance.”
https://ag.ny.gov/sites/default/files/manhattan-club-aod_0.pdf
Read this settlement document. You’ll be amazed at the criminal wrongdoing Eichner and his cronies have admitted to, with no consequences.
While it is true that the settlement… if it is ever enforced… may result in the removal of some really “bad apples” from the NY timeshare business, it fails to address most of the allegations of wrongdoing committed against us individual timeshare owners by Ian Bruce Eichner, and his close circle of associates. In the ensuing 10 months since the signing of the agreement, NOTHING HAS CHANGED IN THE OPERATION OF THE MANHATTAN CLUB.
During his investigation, the NY Attorney General gathered evidentiary proof together with admissions of guilt in the settlement, that Mr. Eichner, members of his family, and a close circle of associates played a direct role in carrying out a huge timeshare scam against an estimated 14,000 to 18,000 owners for at least 10 years, defrauding us out of tens of millions of dollars. Thousands of timeshare owners have suffered very significant financial losses due to the fraudulent, criminal conduct of the Eichner family, The Manhattan Club, and its related companies.
With such a preponderance of evidence in hand, I am at a complete loss to understand how the AG could choose to ignore 3 years of investigative effort and all the evidence of misconduct it uncovered, and end his investigation with nothing more than a financial slap on the wrist to Eichner, while leaving thousands of defrauded owners out in the cold, and in legal limbo as to their ownership status.
For the foregoing reasons, I am encouraging all aggrieved owners of The Manhattan Club to join in the suit against these crooks. Reach out to Jean-Marc Zimmerman at jmz@tmcsuit.com and tell him to want him to represent you.
Bob Biello
