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It has been described as among the biggest scams of its nature in the United Kingdom.

A total of 14 defendants have been sentenced for their part in a £28m plot to defraud more than 3,500 holiday ownership investors.

The affected individuals were keen to exit decades-old timeshare contracts and went looking for support.

Most were from 60 and 80. More than 500 of them lost more than £10,000, and one individual handed over over £80,000.

Those targeted were faced high-pressure consultations lasting up to six hours. They were left out of pocket, possessing worthless fake "credits" and still bound by high-priced timeshare contracts they could no longer use.

The Business Behind the Deception

The company at the heart of the fraud was Sell My Timeshare (SMT). They collected clients' cash to support the owners' luxurious standard of living of prestigious schooling, luxury homes and personal aircraft.

The man at the head of the firm, Mark Rowe, was handed a seven-and-half year jail time in January for fraudulent conspiracy.

On Friday, his wife one of the co-defendants was part of the concluding cases to learn their fate.

She was handed a 24-month suspended jail sentence at Southwark Crown Court after confessing to financial crime.

This has been a lengthy process and signifies a huge win for the people who spoke out, the police and the Crown.

The Way the Probe Began

The initial awareness of SMT was in the that particular year. I was working in the reporting team of a news organization, creating documentary features.

A colleague mentioned that his mother had assumed the rights of a holiday property in a European resort and, after decades of vacations, had begun looking to exit the agreement.

It is important to recall how widespread timeshares had evolved with British holidaymakers in the last decades of the 20th century.

Timeshares enabled people to access the same accommodation annually, or trade their vacation periods with fellow investors who had properties in alternative destinations. Roughly 600,000 sun-lovers took up that opportunity.

The initial boom was linked to a lot of reports about rip-off merchants fraudulently marketing investments. They appeared frequently on investigative TV programmes.

The typical timeshare contract bound owners for long periods.

In that period, those owners who had enjoyed their regular accommodation in the resort for a long time were getting older, and many were looking to end their association to their vacation investments.

A number had health issues and found it difficult to access their properties. A few just felt they'd achieved their goals from them. And some had passed away, in frequent situations bequeathing their heirs to take over the agreements - plus their yearly fees and service charges.

The Undercover Operation Develops

It was at this point the relative had ended up. She searched the web for solutions and found the company, a firm whose digital platform promised to get her out of her contract.

However, having submitted funds and scheduled a consultation with them, her family had doubts.

Subsequent checking revealed hundreds of people reporting they had paid money and received no benefit in return. In fact, they had lost money. Significant sums.

The investigative unit commenced probing what was occurring. It soon emerged that there were questionable operators active in the vacation property industry.

One lawyer had numerous client reports preparing to take action against the company.

We spoke to clients who had dealt with the organization and they collectively described identical situations. They assumed the firm would acquire their investment off them but when they attended a meeting (for which they paid up front) they were told there was no market for their property.

In place of that, they were encouraged - indeed coerced - to commit further cash purchasing "Monster Rewards", linked to the business's umbrella group, the overarching entity.

The precise definition was not exactly clear. They seemed similar to a kind of currency, giving access to cheaper vacations and amenities and retail offers.

And they were seemingly "transferable with fellow investors, at a future date.

Investing money up front now would result in an eventual payoff that would pay for the firm's costs and allow the timeshare holder ahead financially, released finally from their burdensome agreement.

Too good to be true? Indeed, it was.

A 'Misleading Scheme'

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

The technique is termed a "deceptive marketing."

A business - in this case the organization - "baits" the consumer by advertising a specific service only to then say that's not available, steering the client in the direction of an alternative, lesser option.

This is against the law. Possessing all the accounts we had collected, we made the case to secretly film one of the firm's consultations.

The process requires dedication, work, and clear arguments for why this is the exclusive approach to gather the evidence needed to prove wrongdoing.

Armed with that permission, our limited crew set up a meeting with one of the organization's staff in Stratford-Upon-Avon.

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