Manhattan Club Lawsuit

Like so many of you, I found a recorded mortgage in my and my husband's name. We had for a very short period had a mortgage on our TMC timeshare, but we transferred it to a credit card within a couple of months. The mortgage was recorded several months after the balance was transferred to the credit card, for the full amount. Although we were in touch with TMC the entire time to ensure this went smoothly, and they were aware of what was happening, they still went ahead and filed the mortgage (which by the way, we never signed this particular document; TMC extrapolated signature pages from another document), they never filed a satisfaction of mortgage. I'm going to ask them nicely to do just that now. Let's see what happens.

I sent a lengthy letter to Serwat Farooq with a copy to Judge Rakower today. Thank you everybody on this blog for helping us through this.

Fraudulent Manhattan Club ACRIS Listings Per Mary Y. Scheman-Stella, Deputy City Register Division of Land Record or ACRIS. ACRIS is simply a recording agency. ACRIS does not check or verify any information it receives. Any information regarding real estate submitted to ACRIS in recordable form will be recorded. To remove information from ACRIS requires a court order.

Chris,

Send a letter to Serwat.Farooq as well. I wonder how many fictitious mortgages TMC registered? Irene Smalls

Why can't you find a place to go with RCI? How often do you travel? How many points have they assigned to your unit? Why don't you return to your resort?

Where do you own?

I wonder why you have so much trouble

Write back Andy

HI IRENE,

SENT COPIES OF INFO THAT I SENT TO THE JUDGE TO SERWAT FAROOQ YESTERDAY. HOW MUCH MORE FRAUD IS YET TO BE UN..... AND DIS.....COVERED? HOPE EICHNER DINES WITH MADOFF.

CHRIS

irenes93 wrote:

Chris,

Send a letter to Serwat.Farooq as well. I wonder how many fictitious mortgages TMC registered? Irene Smalls

Corrine Smith cited a current lawsuit against Eichner and Park Central LLC by a group of investors for office space who had their funds fraudulently used for other Eichner projects. Other lawsuits against Eichner can provide testimony and information helpful to Manhattan Club owners defrauded by Eichner and the Manhattan Club. We as TMC owners should be monitoring those court transcripts and if possible attend those hearings. In one Manhattan Club court document filed in 2012 TMC stated the actual number of TMC owners as 18, 271 not the 14,000 plus The Manhattan Club puts out.

Irene Smalls

Cookie, when did you make your trade in Mexico? We also have a timeshare in Mexico, and they offered to buy our MC timeshare last year. The paperwork was overwhelming and we gave up on the idea. Should we try again? We are with Vida Resorts.

We are at Vidanta resorts. We did it about 7 years ago and they took another timeshare we owned as we wanted to keep our NY one (big mistake) but they were ready to take it off our hands. We have been with Vidanta for over 20+ years and love going. We pay no maintenance fees unless we use it. Hope this helps...

melody517 wrote:

Cookie, when did you make your trade in Mexico? We also have a timeshare in Mexico, and they offered to buy our MC timeshare last year. The paperwork was overwhelming and we gave up on the idea. Should we try again? We are with Vida Resorts.

If it gets you out of your MC timeshare and you don't have to pay maintenance fees, you don't use it and you enjoy going there why not? I would make sure you read everything before signing so your not stuck with still having it. You can always try to find a local real estate attorney before you commit to look over paperwork if it's overwhelming. Our trade went very smoothly at Vidanta but I don't know about other resorts. Not sure where your resort is in Mexico but if it's in Cancun, Cabo or Puerto Vallarta area I'm sure you won't have any issues finding an attorney to review the paperwork for you at a reasonable price. You can check on line the next time you go and set it up beforehand. Timeshares in Mexico are not deeded like MC but that may not be a big deal for you.

melody517 wrote:

Cookie, when did you make your trade in Mexico? We also have a timeshare in Mexico, and they offered to buy our MC timeshare last year. The paperwork was overwhelming and we gave up on the idea. Should we try again? We are with Vida Resorts.

Hello Alex, I can't remember if we've joined in the class action lawsuit. Would love to if we haven't yet. This is Shirley and Robert Fuller. Thanks!

If you Google Grupo Vidanta, one of the responses will be their corporate website. Listed on the banner near the top of Corporate's page you will see Vida Vacations. You both have timeshares with the same company in Mexico. That company was formerly known as Grupo Mayan. We , too, have owned there for years as well as being owners at TMCNY. When you are in Mexico at one of their resorts they will offer you incentives to attend a sales pitch for upgrading your ownership. At such a session, the sales people were supposedly willing to quickly have the value of our Manhattan Club ownership ascertained, and that value deducted from the price of the upgrade at Vidanta if we bought the upgrade. We didn't want to upgrade, so we don't know what would have happened.

melody517 wrote:

Cookie, when did you make your trade in Mexico? We also have a timeshare in Mexico, and they offered to buy our MC timeshare last year. The paperwork was overwhelming and we gave up on the idea. Should we try again? We are with Vida Resorts.

I believe there is also a Vida Resorts that is not associated with Vidanta so not sure about that but certainly a possibility. Our resort is in several places in Mexico, Nuevo, Rivera Mayan, Cabo, Etc...

davidp78 wrote:

If you Google Grupo Vidanta, one of the responses will be their corporate website. Listed on the banner near the top of Corporate's page you will see Vida Vacations. You both have timeshares with the same company in Mexico. That company was formerly known as Grupo Mayan. We , too, have owned there for years as well as being owners at TMCNY. When you are in Mexico at one of their resorts they will offer you incentives to attend a sales pitch for upgrading your ownership. At such a session, the sales people were supposedly willing to quickly have the value of our Manhattan Club ownership ascertained, and that value deducted from the price of the upgrade at Vidanta if we bought the upgrade. We didn't want to upgrade, so we don't know what would have happened.

melody517 wrote:

Cookie, when did you make your trade in Mexico? We also have a timeshare in Mexico, and they offered to buy our MC timeshare last year. The paperwork was overwhelming and we gave up on the idea. Should we try again? We are with Vida Resorts.

We also own in the Vidanta group of resorts. When we upgraded to the Grand Bliss they told us we could get a $22000 credit for our MC timeshare. It really never happened...they gave us the name of a company that was going to take it over but transaction was a farce. So don't fall for that happening.

re vida resorts and grupo vidanta:

sorry to hear that you're experiencing trouble with these timeshare, but these issues seem to have little or nothing related to the ny attorney general vs the manhattan club lawsuit.

chris

The legal wrangling in Schneiderman vs. the Manhattan Club continues as both parties have filed new briefs to back up their oral arguments at the March 11 hearing before Judge Rakower. Here are a couple excerpts that may be of interest to TMC owners.

From Eichner's attorneys: "The Attorney General's attempt to minimize the scope of its injunction as 'very narrow' and 'affecting' the individual respondents in their business capacity only" is outrageous. Armed with allegations on mere information and belief, and the affidavit of an investigator that was contradicted by its own attachments, the Attorney General has shut down a functioning business, forced the termination of 97 percent of Manhattan Club staff, prevented the company from foreclosing on delinquent owners at the expense of non-delinquent owners, sullied the reputations of respected members of the business community, and forced the respondents to incur tremendous legal costs."

Here is another statement from the Eichner team: "The Attorney General's assertion that respondents are somehow responsible for the length of this investigation is baseless. Respondents have complied with all of the Attorney General's onerous requests, have made staff available for daylong examinations (indeed, some examinations have continued over the course of several days), and have responded in a timely fashion to the Attorney General's requests. The Attorney General recently renewed its request for the examinations of the individual Respondents (the Eichners and Scott Lager) after pulling this request earlier this year once Respondents sought and obtained a Temporary Restraining Order staying those examinations pending briefing in light of the Attorney General's ongoing criminal investigation. Now that the Attorney General again seeks those examinations, Respondents will refile their motions (to block the depositions)."

These assertions, along with others, were filed with the NY courts on April 12, 2016.

Wow, not our experience but that was 7-8 years ago...things have certainly changed with resale of MC. Just trying to give you option of getting out of yearly maintenance, which seemed to be the issue.

The relevance is that many of us are desperate to get out of TMCNY maintenance fees. It has been a repetitive thread in this blog which began about a class action suit by a small group of owners, not the current case brought by the State of NY. Be patient, please, with those of us who need relief from the maintenance fees.

Thanks for the update, Jeff. We appreciate your continued interest in the TMC case.

THAT IS EXACTLY WHAT HAPPENED TO ME AT THE PUEBLO BONITO IN LOS CABOS! The sales rep told me they would take my MC unit off my hands and I could use towards my purchase of one their properties. Ignorantly I agreed. The truth is they turned me over to a reseller and I was dealing with selling it myself! All these timeshare organizations are unscrupulous and corrupt.

elainef88 wrote:

We also own in the Vidanta group of resorts. When we upgraded to the Grand Bliss they told us we could get a $22000 credit for our MC timeshare. It really never happened...they gave us the name of a company that was going to take it over but transaction was a farce. So don't fall for that happening.

Information from an attorney TMC owner who has been following the NY AG's investigation of the Manhattan Club "the Judge has requested additional briefs from all parties on the legal issue of whether the court had the legal authority to issue the injunction against tmc in 2014, and whether the court now has the legal authority to issue a similar injunction against Urban. Both sides have filed briefs. The legal issue relates to the standard which must be applied by the court to issue an injunction in an investigation by the AG. It is an easier standard in an AG investigation than in a lawsuit. But, there does not appear to be appellate case law directly on point for AG investigations. In other words--a higher court in NY may have to decide this legal issue. I fear this means an interlocutory appeal of whatever the Judge ultimately decides on this point. Such an appeal will probably be brought by whichever side loses this argument once our Judge renders her decision on the issue. It is kind of a juicy appellate issue for lawyers and judges, and of some importance. Therefore, we may be in for another long wait while this one issue goes up on appeal."