A SOPHISTICATED, £12 million timeshare fraud that is thought to have stripped thousands of British investors of their savings has been exposed by Spanish police.

Four Britons were among eight suspects arrested yesterday for their part in the alleged scam, which is said to have been operating on the Costa del Sol for five years.

A Spanish police source said: “The figures we are talking about here could represent more than 90 per cent of the fraud in UK timeshares on the Costa del Sol in recent years.

“It is too early to say how many Britons are affected, but it is likely to run into the thousands. Many people affected by this scam will have lost their life savings.” Unofficial police estimates put the total number of victims at about 15,000.

Detectives said that key gang members arrived on the Spanish mainland from the Canary Islands in 2000. Over the past five years they had operated through 300 companies and employed about 1,000 people who cold-called prospective buyers. Telephone calls were made to some victims in Britain while others were on the Costa del Sol.

Police said that potential customers would be asked to buy into fictitious timeshare properties or would be sold package holidays that did not exist. The gang is also alleged to have employed sales staff to call time-share owners and offer to sell their annual holiday allowance for them, then asked them for administration fees and taxes for work that would never be completed.

Some victims are believed to have been stung twice after turning to companies set up by the alleged fraudsters to offer legal help to the victims of other firms they were behind.

Police sources named the arrested Britons as Steven Stewart Ross, 53, from London, Malcolm David Kennedy, 32, from Sudbury, Suffolk, Rupert Quentin Marshall, 37, and Willy Smieja, 44.

The head of the operation has been described as a 58-year-old South African named only as Willem Marthinus P. His 48-year-old Norwegian wife, a 49-year-old South African and a 51-year-old Belgian have also been arrested.

The arrests were in Fuengirola, Mijas and the increasingly popular expatriate town of Coin. Several commercial properties were raided, including Planit Estates in Fuengirola.

A spokesman for the Spanish National Police, who made the arrests, said: “They would get sales staff to cold-call time-share owners in places like the UK and offer to buy their annual holiday allowance, then dupe them into transferring money to Spain to cover things like solicitors’ costs and administrative fees after securing an initial agreement.

“Several months would often go by before people realised they had been the victims of a fraud and there had been no resale.”

He continued: “The fraudsters even used false documents to offer to undertake legal action against other fraudulent companies they also ran, defrauding many victims twice in the process.

“Increasingly, the fraudsters have moved towards a situation where fictitious companies would rent premises, defraud people and then disappear to repeat the same scam under a different name in a different place.”

The Costa del Sol and the Canary Islands have long been favourites of timeshare operators. The eight arrests are believed to be linked to the arrests of a string of timeshare touts over the past couple of years on the Costa del Sol.

THE PITFALLS

Tips from the Timeshare Consumers Association:

• Do not buy off-plan, or in a resort with incomplete leisure facilities
• Make sure the resort has an Owners’ Club or Association
• Management fees should not be more than about £250 a week in warmer climes and £330 in cooler climes
• Never buy at a presentation; take weeks or months to decide

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