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It has been described as among the biggest frauds of its nature in the UK.

A total of 14 individuals have been convicted for their part in a £28 million scheme to cheat in excess of 3,500 vacation property investors.

The affected individuals were desperate to terminate decades-old holiday ownership agreements and went looking for support.

A large number were in the age range of 60 and 80. In excess of 500 of them lost over £10,000, and one handed over over £80,000.

Those victimized were faced intense presentations continuing for six hours. They were financially worse off, owning valueless fake "rewards" and remained trapped in costly vacation property deals they frequently were unable to use.

The Business Behind the Deception

The company at the centre of the fraud was the timeshare resale company. They took customers' funds to finance the owners' opulent lifestyle of exclusive education, high-end properties and personal aircraft.

The man at the head of the firm, the company director, was given a seven and a half year jail time in January for deceptive scheme.

On Friday, his spouse one of the co-defendants was among the last group to receive sentencing.

She was given a two-year long suspended jail sentence at the London court after admitting money laundering.

The outcome represents a lengthy process and marks a huge win for the people who spoke out, the law enforcement and the Crown.

How the Probe Was Initiated

I first heard about the company came in the summer of 2016. I was working in the reporting team of a broadcasting service, producing current affairs shows.

A colleague pointed out that his parent had inherited the rights of a timeshare apartment in a European resort and, after long-term use, had commenced searching to exit the agreement.

It should be noted how popular vacation properties had become with British holidaymakers in the last decades of the 20th century.

Timeshares allowed families to use the identical property annually, or swap their time slots with other owners who had apartments in other resorts. Approximately 600,000 holiday enthusiasts accepted that option.

The initial boom was accompanied by a many reports about rip-off merchants mis-selling investments. They appeared frequently on public interest TV programmes.

The common timeshare contract bound owners for long periods.

By 2016, those investors who had enjoyed their assigned property in the sunshine for decades were ageing, and a large proportion were hoping to end their association to their holiday properties.

A number had health issues and were unable to visit their apartments. Some just felt they'd got all they wanted from them. And some had died, in frequent situations leaving their heirs to take over the deals - plus their yearly fees and service charges.

The Undercover Operation Progresses

This was the situation the friend's mum had been placed. She looked online for solutions and discovered the company, a enterprise whose online presence promised to release her from her agreement.

Yet, having paid a fee and scheduled a consultation with them, her relatives had doubts.

Subsequent checking uncovered hundreds of people saying they had submitted funds and got nothing from the service. Indeed, they had suffered financially. Significant sums.

The reporting group started looking into what was happening. It was rapidly apparent that there were some shady characters working within the timeshare resale sector.

A legal professional had numerous client reports preparing to take action against the organization.

We spoke to individuals who had engaged the company and they all told the same story. They assumed the firm would acquire their investment away from them but when they went to a consultation (for which they submitted funds initially) they were advised there was no re-sale value.

Instead, they were encouraged - actually compelled - to spend more money investing in "the firm's incentive scheme", named after the organization's holding firm, the parent organization.

What exactly these were was not exactly clear. They appeared to be a type of exchange medium, providing cheaper vacations and benefits and shopping deals.

And they were reportedly "transferable with fellow investors, eventually.

Paying cash at the time would result in an future return that would cover the firm's costs and leave the timeshare holder ahead financially, liberated eventually from their pesky agreement.

An unbelievable offer? Well, yes.

A 'Bait-and-Switch Scam'

If these accounts were correct, this was a major deception.

It's what is called a "bait-and-switch."

An operator - specifically the organization - "attracts the client by promoting a defined offering and then say that's not available, pushing the client in the direction of a different, lower-quality product or service.

That's illegal. Possessing all the evidence we had collected, we made the case to covertly record one of the firm's consultations.

Such an operation demands time, effort, and compelling reasons for why this is the only way to gather the data needed to demonstrate illegal activity.

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

Pretending to be a potential client hoping to get his mum released from her timeshare contract|holiday ownership agreement