It was gratifying to read in The Olive Press July 14 -17 2011 that their reporters had been busy looking into some of the scams they have reported on that are active along the costa del sol. The report on Timeshare identified two organisations that appear to be involved in the old Timeshare Resale Scam, a scam well reported on by ourselves over the years and a scam which we helped scammed owners recover over £5million pounds with our “How To Get Your Money Back Guide”. Now it seems that after a period of quiet that scam is raising its ugly head again with two organisations being named “Golden Sands Marketing”  and “Customer Mediation Services”. Anyone being approached by any timeshare organisation purporting to have a buyer for their timeshare should view it with the utmost caution and suspicion.  We have several years experience of uncovering these fraudsters and recovering fees and the methods we used are still valid today.  If anyone believes they have been scammed this way, please email tony@scambusters.gb.com with details. New Information reaching us about a software scam and involving Diamond Resorts and a company called Holiday Software UK (hswuk) It seems that this Holiday Software UK business is offering points owners with Diamond Resorts the opportunity to sell their points but they have to buy  a £6,000 software package that states can find the cheapest holidays available on the internet. It seems that this company will give a code to access the software, available on a disc, once the £6,000 is paid and they guarantee to take your points off your hands and you will have no more maintenance to pay. For us it sounds like a scam. Diamond Resort Points can only be sold back to another DR member and at the moment no one appears to be buying points as they have none or very little value. There is a litigation service in place to take legal action against DR and according to what we have been told there are some 17,000 timeshare points owners who have signed up for this.  If they have taken £6,000 off each one, it amounts to a staggering £102 Million and we are watching. This sounds similar to the Club Class Concierge scam purportedly taking legal action in a class action against RCI, but you generally have to sign up for membership to their holiday club package and pay their fees on this one. We are looking into this and we hope that it is genuine and not a scam, but to us, it sounds  like one. So if anyone has any information they can let us have about this and if they are convinced or have proof that they have been or are being defrauded, or believe so, please let us know so that we can look for ways to assist you recover your fees.
Scambusters.gb.com 34A Engineers Lane, PO Box 655, Gibraltar               Email: tony@scambusters.gb.com     We are watching you! © Scambusters 2005 - 2014 All Rights Reserved Whenever you see this warning symbol. Know that there is some new information that you need to take note of, or a new scam or company. scams The Costa Del Sol has long been a hotbed of fraudulent activity and for many years now Timeshare Fraud has been rife along the coast.  That has not really changed, and the only reason there is not more revelations, is due to a number of reasons. One is that many of the old timeshare companies have gone, some have changed their modus operandi and are keeping well under the radar, some have moved into other scams. We are still looking out for Timeshare Scams and do receive emails from scammed owners, so we know it is still going on.  However, not as much as it was a few years ago, either that, or people are just not reporting the scam as much as they used to. There has been news of fraudsters committing “Boiler Room” scams, that is to do with Stocks and shares.  Then there was the Antiques scams, they flourished for a while but most of them were closed down and many people went to jail. The one scam that is replacing these is Carbon Trading or Carbon Credit Scams. This is becoming the up and coming scam of choice of many of the old Timeshare fraudsters.  We are dedicating a page to this scam and we will be publishing what we learn over time. So if anyone has any information or evidence that we can use, we would appreciate you letting us have it.  We will not disclose your details unless you authorise us to do so. Check out the downloads page, there are several pdf documents you can download.