Back in April last year we wrote about the Williamsburg attorney, Deborah Wagner, who played a major role in transfers of timeshare units using two companies; Goodbye Timeshare LLC and Exotic Equity LLC. Both of which were owned by Brendan Hawkins and Keith Kosco, who were jailed for 46 and 74 months back in 2015.
Deborah attended a trial in September of 2016 where she pled guilty on account of taking part in the fraudulent transactions. Her law firm was paid hundreds and thousands of dollars by the above named companies to carry out the fraudulent timeshare transfer transactions.
The timeshares were transferred into false owners who never intended to pay maintenance or have anything to do with the timeshare itself. This was taken to the extreme that Deborah even opened a company solely to bring more of these straw owners on board. The losses that were suffered by the resorts and owner associations were in the region of $2 million dollars.
On Friday, she found herself facing a 50-month jail sentence to start on 9th September 2017 for her participation in the scheme. She also faces one year release. The transfer companies Goodbye Timeshare and Exotic Equity retained the monies that they were paid by the original timeshare owners in Virginia and never credited the straw owners with this money. However, one would presume that they benefited somehow through the scheme, but were not themselves to blame.
Deborah did however know exactly what she was doing in the tune of opening a new company to disguise the straw owners, whilst benefiting from big pay-outs from Brendan Hawkins and Keith Kosco.
This is another unfortunate story of timeshare owners being so desperate to rid themselves of their timeshare that they pay unknown companies to ‘transfer’ their timeshare to someone else. The owner is led to believe that this is a legal transfer, however, it is simply being passed around, and the transfer itself is not legal. Hence everyone loses except for the transfer company.
We at the TCA encourage any timeshare owners to make sure they are dealing with a legitimate company before parting with any money. There are companies that can help you with this service, unfortunately there are a lot more that will not, and will fleece you of your money and not make the transfer. If you would like to talk to someone in respect of your timeshare transfer, please contact us on the email address or phone number below.
For more information regarding this article or assistance in any other timeshare related issues please contact the TCA on 01908 881058 or email: info@TimeshareConsumerAssociation.org.uk