All holiday cold calls should be
treated as scams.
A genuine timeshare
scammer.
I've been doing various
telemarketing scams for years. This includes up front fee scams for timeshare
owners. These forums have been eye opening for me in ways that I doubt any of you
would be able to relate to.
I'd like to address some of the
recurring themes and why they caught me off guard. Firstly, when people are
giving warnings about these scams, they'll almost always include a phrase along
the lines of "...and once you've paid, the buyer will suddenly
disappear." The first 5 or 6 times I read that, I kept thinking to myself
"what buyer?" Then I realized how much different the call must seem
to the person on the other end of the line.
The fact that the people actually
believe in the existence of a buyer took a while to sink in with me. I don't
know why. I've been telling people this same ridiculous story for years. For
some reason though, I just didn't understand that the victims genuinely
believed there was a buyer.
Another thing that people said from
time to time is something along the lines of "I guess these people think
that if we'll fall for buying a timeshare,we'll fall for anything." This
is more or less correct. I engage in multiple telephone scams. When I
know that one of my leads is a timeshare owner, I pretty much take for granted
the fact that I'll be able to get money out of them. I'm usually right. The
beauty of a timeshare owner is that, to a scammer, they're a perfect
combination of two things: somebody who has money and somebody who is a
pushover. Now, you may or may not have cash in the bank, but I know that you
have credit cards and that they have high limits.
I have a sheet in front of me with
the future victim's information when I call. I don't always have the full
social security number, but I at least have the last four digits. Apart from
that one possibly incomplete piece of information, I have all of the relevant
information that I need. Your full name, date of birth, address, credit card
numbers (with expiration dates and CVC), and oftentimes your mother's maiden
name. I have the address of your timeshare. Sometimes I have multiple credit
card numbers. Also, over the course of the conversation, I will get the first
five digits of your social. I can't remember the last time that I wasn't able
to. Having this information makes it far
less difficult to talk you into something.
"Let's go ahead and apply this
charge to your Chase Freedom Visa card ending int 0027." Of course, I
hardly ever put charges on credit cards anymore. That's how people get caught.
Although, if I'm in a pinch, I have ways to charge the cards. I live in
Florida. I doubt that this information will surprise any of you. My business is
licensed in another state. All of the articles you read in the papers about
scam timeshare companies getting raided are locations that the state has on
file. I've never understood why those people used in-state registration. It's
just as easy to file in, say, Arizona, or Iowa, or anywhere else, really.
My "operation" is small.
There are four of us. We have an office, but we don't leave anything in there
overnight. We take our leads with us when we leave at night and bring them back
in the morning. The office manager has no idea what we do and neither does anybody
else in the building. We don't use landlines. We have prepaid cell
phones.
I am 31 years old. We have been
working together ever since we got out of college. We are not seedy-looking
blue collar people. All four of us are as WASPY as they come. We all have
degrees. This is a total anomaly in the call center world. Unless one of
you were ripped off by somebody in my group, you were more than likely talking
to somebody with a criminal record and a drug habit that might or might not
have completed high school. Every call center I have ever seen is staffed with
a sales team that fits this description. I've seen a lot of call centers. I
have a good reputation among them and drop by on other places from time to time
to talk shop with the owners and share the latest scams.
I don't share all of my scams with
them. I won't share most of them with you. The ones that I make the most money
on are totally absent on this board. That's a good thing, but flying under the
radar online isn't critical. Most people who get ripped off don't even bother
to check Google. Sometimes people do and we still end up with their money.
"Yeah, I saw that online too. It's such a shame that a few bad apples can
potentially ruin the reputation of legitimate businessmen like myself. I mean
honestly, it makes me sick to my stomach knowing that there are people out
there who prey on hard working people like you and ..." I'll give my side
of the scams. The main one that people complain about is the "I have a
buyer ready and waiting to purchase your timeshare" one. It's surprising
how often this works. What's even more surprising is that it often works on
people who have already fallen for it. Sometimes it works on the same exact
people I've scammed before. It always amazes me when that happens. Depending on my read of the victim, I'll
follow that up with one of several things. I won't tell you what the follow up
scams are because nobody's blowing the whistle on them yet. The important thing
for this post though is to know that I do it quickly. Sometimes a day after I
get the wire transfer. Sometimes I do it on the same day. No matter what
though, I always do it within a week of the initial wire.
If the person sounds completely
trusting, I'll usually hit them with two immediate follow scams. I've done
three before, but that doesn't happen very often and rarely works out when I
try. Okay, so now I've gotten their
money up front and nailed them with at least one more follow up scam. What I do
now is mail them a cashier's check. It's counterfeit, of course.
For the sake of discussion, let's
say they were expecting $25,000. Also, for the sake of discussion, let's say
that they ended up paying $1,600 for the follow up scam. For the purposes of
this post, we'll say that they paid the money on the follow up scam for the
closing fees. I've never actually used closing fees, but this is only an
example. What I'll do is mail the person a check for $26,600. I will call them
two days later and ask them if they got the check. If they didn't, I will tell
them to call me when they receive it so I can verify something before they
deposit it. If they do have it, I'll ask them if it's for $25,000. They will
inevitably say "no, it's for $26,600!" At that point I will act somewhat
confused and ask them if they're sure. They're always sure. I will say
something that conveys deep concern and tell them to hold on for a moment while
I verify something. I'll them put them on hold and play a level of Angry Birds
or something. When I pick the line back up, I'll say something like "Mr.
Smith? Okay, I was able to find out what happened. The check was written for
$26,600 because I accidentally forwarded the wrong information to our billing
department. I added up the sale price and the cost of your closing fees and
submitted that. This isn't good. Oh man. I can't believe I've done this. I'm
going to lose my job. I can't believe I've done this again!" I'll act like
this is something I've done a few times before and that I will lose my job if I
don't get the situation straightened out. "I need your help! I need you to
deposit the check into your account and immediately wire the difference back to
the same account you sent the other two wire transfers to. I'm sorry to make
you run to the bank again, but I really don't want to lose my job! I just put
my son in preschool and I don't have a lot of disposable income right
now!" If the person doesn't want to play ball, I'll tell them that I
will have to issue a stop payment on the check. I'll tell them that we'll have
to physically locate the buyer because the check needs his signature. He just
caught a flight to Ontario and we don't know when we'll be back. The people are
usually willing to send another wire though. They don't hate me yet. They love
me. I just sold their timeshare.
After I've gotten three or four
wires from them, I hand the file over to one of the other people I work with.
He'll call them in about two weeks and explain that he is a private
investigator and that he knows they got ripped off on a phony timeshare deal.
He can help them get their money back but they will have to pay a nominal fee
to get started. Of course, these things
are going on all the time. My buddies are always handing their people over to
me and vice versa. I can end one phone call as a timeshare salesman and be a
private investigator on the next call. So can they. After we've wrapped up the
investigator scam, we just put their information away for a year or two. It's
shocking how many people you can get to go through the entire sequence I just
mentioned multiple times.
The three scams I've mentioned here
are the ones that all of your are already very familiar with. We've got a lot
more. Most of them don't involve timeshare resale anymore because the state
seems to be taking the issue seriously for the time being. That happens from
time to time. Things will cool off in a few months. They always do. The only
time I'll do a timeshare deal nowadays is if I'm broke. This is because I can
call somebody out of the blue and have a wire by lunch.
What the police need to be doing is
investigating where the timeshare rooms get their leads from. That is the real
story here.
I've been doing this since I was 23.
I was going to start work at a "real job" in a few months but needed
to do something to make some money before then. When I first started, I had no
idea that the phone calls we were making to timeshare owners weren't
legitimate. I was actually shocked and horrified when I found out that the job
was a scam. I was making a lot of money though. More money than the salary
offer I received from the job that was waiting for me. I continued to be a
salesperson for about a year, taking a 30% commission on every sale. I hated
myself for that year. As time went by, I
stopped feeling sorry for the victims. As sickening as this is for many of you
to read, I feel only contempt for them now. What kind of person receives a
phone call they weren't expecting and ends up driving to the bank an hour later
to give a stranger thousands of dollars?
I have in my travels met rogue traders not only in
timeshare, some industries are far worse. Some come across as like able rogues,
as that's part of their charm, that's why you get caught out again and
again! Most times there is no proof of their crime as timeshare owners
usually don't have solid proof, only that they were told verbal lies.
They are quite open about why they
maintain their fraudulent operations. Their main reason for scamming is, because
we are easy money!!
As Always, Stay Safe !
-Bird
