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It has been described as among the biggest scams of its type in the UK.

A total of 14 people have been convicted for their involvement in a £28m conspiracy to cheat in excess of 3,500 holiday ownership owners.

The victims were keen to terminate long-standing holiday ownership agreements and tried to find assistance.

A large number were from 60 and 80. Over 500 of them parted with more than £10,000, and one paid in excess of £80,000.

Those victimized were faced intense sales meetings extending for six hours. They were financially worse off, possessing worthless fake "rewards" and remained trapped in high-priced holiday ownership agreements they could no longer use.

The Company Central to the Scam

The firm at the centre of the scheme was Sell My Timeshare (SMT). They took people's money to fund the owners' opulent way of life of private schools, luxury homes and personal aircraft.

The leader at the top of the firm, the main defendant, was sentenced to a 90-month jail time in January for conspiracy to defraud.

On Friday, his spouse Nicola was one of the final three to receive sentencing.

She was given a two-year long suspended prison term at Southwark Crown Court after admitting illegal fund handling.

It has been a extended wait and represents a major victory for the people who spoke out, the police and the Crown.

How the Probe Began

The first knowledge of SMT emerged during the summer of 2016. I was working in the investigations unit of a broadcasting service, making investigative features.

A friend noted that his parent had inherited the use of a holiday property in Spain and, after long-term use, had commenced searching to get out of the agreement.

It's worth mentioning how common vacation properties had evolved with English tourists in the eighties and nineties.

Timeshares allowed individuals to access the same accommodation every year, or swap their weeks with additional holders who had properties in different locations. About 600,000 sun-lovers seized that opportunity.

The early surge was paired with a lot of reports about rip-off merchants mis-selling units. They were regularly featured on investigative TV programmes.

The standard timeshare contract bound owners for decades.

By 2016, those investors who had enjoyed their guaranteed place in the sunshine for a long time were advancing in years, and many were looking to say farewell to their vacation investments.

Several had reduced ability to travel and found it difficult to access their properties. A few just believed they'd enjoyed sufficient use from them. And others had passed away, in frequent situations passing on their loved ones to assume the agreements - along with their regular contributions and upkeep costs.

The Undercover Operation Develops

And that's where the family member had found herself. She searched the web for options and came across SMT, a business whose digital platform assured to get her out of her deal.

But, having paid a fee and arranged an appointment with them, her loved ones smelled a rat.

Additional investigation revealed numerous individuals reporting they had handed over cash and achieved no result in return. In fact, they had lost money. Significant sums.

Our team started looking into what was happening. It quickly became clear that there were dubious individuals active in the holiday ownership market.

A legal professional had numerous client reports waiting to sue SMT.

We spoke to individuals who had dealt with the organization and they all told the same story. They assumed the business would buy their property away from them but when they attended a meeting (for which they submitted funds initially) they were informed there was no market for their property.

Instead, they were pushed - in fact pressured - to invest additional funds investing in "the firm's incentive scheme", associated with the business's umbrella group, the parent organization.

The nature of these rewards was rather ambiguous. They sounded like a kind of currency, providing reduced-price holidays and services and consumer discounts.

And they were seemingly "exchangeable with additional holders, eventually.

Paying cash up front now would lead to an eventual payoff that would cover the firm's costs and leave the timeshare holder ahead financially, liberated eventually from their pesky deal.

Too good to be true? Well, yes.

A 'Deceptive Tactic'

Assuming these reports were correct, this was a major deception.

The technique is termed a "deceptive marketing."

A business - in this case the company - "attracts the consumer by marketing a particular product but then to state it cannot be provided, directing the client in the direction of a different, lower-quality option.

Such practices are unlawful. Armed with all the evidence we had assembled, we argued to secretly film one of the firm's consultations.

Such an operation demands time, effort, and clear arguments for why this is the sole method to collect the data necessary to demonstrate illegal activity.

Armed with that permission, our limited crew organized a appointment with one of the firm's agents in the location.

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