Timeshare Scam | A Perfect Scam | Forensic Files

[audio logo] [tense music] Dave Eaton: The scam in this case focused on timeshare ownership.
- I have a buyer who wants to buy her timeshare. But in order to close the deal, you're
going to have to pay different upfront costs. - This is just one time payment, but then they would come back and be like, I promise you,
this is last time. Rachel Jones: Things can kind of spiral after that. - I saw him in court.
I basically told him to go to hell. - It breaks my heart for what I put her through.
I saw my whole life savings go out the door. Zana Maric: At this point, I don't think any of the victims
will see any of that money. - The judgment that God's gonna put on them for what they done
to me is gonna be horrible. [theme music] ♪ ♪ [upbeat music] Dave Eaton: The advent of timeshares was sizzling.
And they were new and fresh and family oriented. The sales industry boomed. announcer: Own a timeshare?
Turn it into cash. - Timeshares Only sold our timeshare fast and for the price we wanted.
- And they gave us $1,000 shopping spree. announcer: Introducing the Timeshares Only
$1,000 shopping spree bonus. Call now. Dave Eaton: They were initially attractive
because of their cost and because of the location and the opportunity. So we'll take Walt Disney World, for example.
You would pay probably 4 or $5,000 to rent a decent hotel room or a suite large enough for your family,
for $600 a year. You could do it every year. But kids grow up. And suddenly, the enchantment that was so strong
begins to wane. - Once you own one, the fees sort of never stop. And they're difficult, at times,
to sell or to get rid of. Dave Eaton: The unfortunate reality of a timeshare ownership, you can't just walk away.
Your credit, your status, your reputation is at stake if you don't pay what you owe.
And when you buy into a timeshare community, you sign a promise and a covenant to pay your share until either the timeshare
comes to an end, which doesn't happen, or else, you sell it. And of course, with the market saturated with sales,
people increasingly became desperate to offload them. Jason Shearn: Right down the street is Orlando,
one of the largest timeshare attraction areas probably in the world. This geographical area, you had the--
I don't know-- the perfect storm, if you will, of individuals and the local area where
there are a lot of timeshares. [tense music] This case involves, at its simplest form,
timeshare ownership and timeshare sales. We have a number of individuals who own timeshares, one or
several, that are looking to get rid of said timeshare for one reason or another,
whether it be financial, health, just sick and tired of it, whatever it might be.
You have a number of individuals who sort of prayed on that point. - The group that was involved in this scam
were a group of people who used to work for timeshare companies or companies that sell timeshares.
When they became unemployed, they decided they can do this on their own, and by purchasing lead lists from each other
and stealing lead lists from these companies. - They took this list of individuals.
And they represented to them that they had buyers for their timeshare. And therefore, in order for this sale
to go down and it to be successful, they needed to pay some sort of fee. - The very first call, you have to remember,
is just that call that's like, I have a buyer for you, and all you have to do is pay $480.
And it's reimbursable. You'll get it back once the sale comes through. All you gotta do is pay that $480,
and then you'll finally offload this property you've been trying to sell. Zana Maric: This is just one-time payment.
But then they would come back and be like, you know what? Just I promise you, this is last time, one more time.
Rachel Jones: Once you put a little bit of money in, you tell yourself, well, I don't want to lose that $480,
so I may as well pay another $480. And then I'll get my buyer. And then they come back again and you say, well, I don't want
to lose that $1,000. So I'll just put another little bit in, and then I'll get it all back.
[shattering] Jason Shearn: The Bureau became involved in around 2017, along with St. Petersburg Police Department and
the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. The scheme was essentially situated with two classes of subjects, the first being what we called
were callers, the second being runners. The callers were the individuals who were actually on the phone contacting
the individuals that were looking to sell their timeshares. They were the ones that were telling
them that they had a buyer-- not true. They were the ones that told them that they had to pay certain fees
in order for this timeshare sale to materialize-- not true. And they were the ones that were able to get and induce
those victims to actually send the money to the second part of this scam, which were to the runners.
- We call them the runners because they're instructed to go and get the money. Rachel Jones: One of the reasons
that we use money mules is that I don't want my face and my identity linked with a particular transaction.
So when you go to MoneyGram and you pick up a certain amount of money, you have to give them your ID.
And they're going to write that ID down, and they're going to write your license
number down or whatever. And so then, you're connected to that. Or if you go to an ATM and you're pulling out cash,
you're gonna get a photograph. Obviously, if you're the top dog, you don't want to be linked in that way.
But you've got to find people who are willing to take that risk for what is probably
a relatively small amount of money, because they're getting a low cut. - The callers had the victims send the money
to wire transmitter services, and they would feed them a story. - I have a buyer now who wants to buy your timeshare.
And so they're excited, right? There's a buyer. But in order to close the deal, you're
gonna have to pay different upfront costs. So sometimes, there were like clerk of court costs
or the typical kinds of costs that you actually do see when you're buying a piece
of residential property. - Scammers will use the pressure where they would say, hey, I have the money.
I have the money. I can send it to you within a day or two, which was very tempting for these victims
because they really want to get rid of these timeshares. And there's this money sitting that needs to be
deposited into their account. - You're going to send this money to my courier or to my employee or whatever story they would provide them,
and then those runners would actually go pick up the money, keep a little bit for themselves,
and kick the rest of it back to the callers. Zana Maric: These runners were basically
people who were drug addicts. They were homeless. Rachel Jones: Those bottom levels
tend to be-- you look for the people you can take advantage of to make a relatively small amount of money
for doing a very important part that kind of keeps you away from being the face of the problem.
The callers were this group of people at the top who were very loosely organized.
They largely had their own lists. Periodically, we'd see a message where somebody would offer to sell a list to another one.
But it would-- anyone would take their victim kind of as far as they could go and then
pass it off to the other guy. And once passed off to the other guy, he would just take it as far as he could go.
And because there were, if I recall correctly, like five or six callers, they had a decent number of people
that they could pass victims around to who would come in with a new but related story.
[unsettling music] Jason Shearn: Probably one of the most heart wrenching for the investigators, certainly, and obviously
the victims' portion of this scam, is when it sort of transitioned to this second phase.
Some of these victims were actually contacted by, now, a separate fake attorney.
Real attorney, in that the name actually exists and it really is an attorney, but this person has stolen their identity.
They are now being told that we are really sorry to tell you, but that money that you had sent for the timeshare sale
that you thought was going to go through-- sometimes, a few hundred dollars, sometimes,
tens of thousands of dollars-- was actually fake. You were scammed in sending that.
There's a case going on. Those individuals have been reported to law enforcement.
That was all for naught. You sent that money in vain. I am an attorney. I specialize in this sort of legal world.
And I am going to represent you going forward. We're gonna get your money back. - But of course, you have to pay court costs.
And so once it entered into that second stage of this scam, when they're paying court costs,
it got astronomically higher. Jason Shearn: And as such, these people were revictimized.
- Any amount of money that anyone loses is substantial. But the people who really lost the most money kind of
got caught on that second side of this scam. - We had a particular group of about five individuals
that, once this portion of this scam happened, were revictimized to the tune of hundreds of thousands
of dollars collectively. ♪ ♪ Doug Fodeman: The timeshare scam works simply because people are so trusting.
If you have a timeshare that has been on the market for a long period of time, you've
not been able to sell it, not many interested parties, you're very susceptible because you're eager.
So when someone contacts you and says, I have an interested buyer but there's some fees
that they're expecting you to pay, but then they'll pay the cost of the timeshare,
I mean, you're in. So if I claim to be a real estate agent and they look up me and find out,
oh, yes, he is a real estate agent, they may not notice that the website I sent them to
or that the phone number given is off by a digit, or the email address I'm using is off by one letter.
And that kind of fraud is easy for someone to miss. They start to communicate with the person,
never once thinking, let's meet in person, or let's have a video chat just so I can feel safe and
comfortable with this. They're all in because now they have a buyer. And all I have to do is pay these fees.
Oh, and there's now these other fees and that I wasn't expecting? All right, I'll pay those.
But then we're done, right? [suspicious music] ♪ ♪ Jason Shearn: Approximately 2017,
I started to get a couple calls from the St. Petersburg police department, basically asking us to run
some checks, some database checks and things like that. An attorney in the area, David Eaton,
who was making complaints that his name and likeness was being used for a fraud scam
involving timeshares. - My victimization all began when I got a phone call, oddly, from a friend of mine who was
employed with the Florida Bar. [phone ringing] Part of his responsibility was to take in complaint calls
from victims of shady lawyers. And so my name came up in the context of a shady timeshare scam.
So this gentleman, who happened to know me from his tenure as a practicing lawyer in St, Petersburg,
just called me up as a friend and out of professional courtesy to say you're not the subject of any investigation,
but I thought you just might like to know-- someone, I don't know who, is pretending to be you
and scamming the public. - They would use the names of real attorneys that were local to the area and put there-- just
pop their names into Gmail. And so if the individual googled them, they would see an attorney that did
real estate work in Orlando. Dave Eaton: 99% of the victims didn't call me to verify I'm the David Eaton that they're actually
sending their money to. They looked me up on the internet. Yes, he's in St. Petersburg, but
I have his cell phone number, so he's got to be legitimate. My landline is what's registered on the internet.
So they wired the money to the dirtbag, and then he disappears. So now, they're going back to David Eaton.
That's when they place the call. So they dial my number. I took a lot of phone calls from a lot of irate souls
after they had become victimized and literally spent dozens of hours listening to victims vent,
trying to console them to what degree I possibly could. And since I knew that the police
department was working on our behalf to catch this guy, I was inspired. Zana Maric: Most victims did not file police reports
because they were embarrassed. Having Mr. Eaton come and tell us about what happened to him
was what actually made this case possible. - We were able to identify about 700 victims.
They were from all over the country. They all had some sort of timeshare property or
properties, as well as a small percentage of them had some vacant property. - All of our victims were over the age of 55.
A good number of them were between 70 and 80. So something they had in common were
they were older generation, and they were not as familiar with technology like the younger
generation was. - Mr. Cato was one of those individuals who was revictimized and really thought the entire time that he
was going after the real bad guys, and he had the new good guy in his corner, when effectively,
they were all bad guys and they were all scamming him out of his money. [unsettling music]
- I've been married 59 years. It breaks my heart for what I put her through. The guy that first called me, he called me and said,
hey, you are owed $30,000. I can get it for you. And I said, what are you talking about?
Well, they sold one of your timeshares, and the bank has the money. But they can't clear it because they don't
have the title to the land. And if we can get the title to the land, then we can clear it.
And I said, I don't have none of those papers. He said, don't worry about it. You give me $1,500 and I can get it.
Sometimes, they wait a week. Sometimes, they'd call me three weeks later. But towards the end, it was like a game, every week.
They would call you or they would text you. If you didn't answer the phone, they'd text you.
They'd wear you phone out. And yes, it was pressure. I kept stealing from my business to pay them.
I was trying to get money from anywhere. It's like a disease. It's like you're hooked on drugs.
You can't get off of it. It's that high. And then to come, oh, man, we're gonna get our money.
Sometimes, they'd send me to a title company. That's what it was. One was in Clarksville, Texas.
I went all the way over there. The building was abandoned. They'd send me to-- they sent me to a bank in Dallas
to a certain person. He wasn't there. They ain't never heard of that person. And I call him back-- man, what are y'all trying to do to me?
Well, I talked to this guy on the phone. And they'd just lie to us. I wouldn't let go.
My wife wanted to back out a long time before I did, and I should have. I ruined us, financially.
I saw my whole life savings go out the door. [grim music] Zana Maric: My job was to contact the victims
and locate them. It was very difficult to have them, believe me, especially with me having
a foreign name and an accent. So when I contacted Mr. Cato, he was very suspicious of me.
One of the tactics scammers used was to isolate their victims. They would basically tell them, hey, don't trust them.
Trust me, I'm the attorney. I'm going to help you. They were told, when I called, that I am fake law enforcement.
So they believed the attorney whom they looked up online and saw that he is real.
I don't have a website with my name on it to where they can look it up and see that I'm real.
Yes, they can call the police department, but they have this real attorney telling them
she is fake. Mr. Cato briefly spoke with me. He told me that he had two timeshares.
But those timeshares were sold by scammers, and he did not receive any money. So as a result, he was contacted by an attorney
from Orlando, Richard Hornsby. And this attorney was prosecuting the scammers who scammed them out of his timeshare.
Well, when I explained to Mr. Cato that Richard Hornsby is possibly another scammer trying to scam him even more,
he wouldn't talk to me. He told me, I'm busy. He found excuses. I can't talk to you right now.
Now, FDLE Agent Patty Thompson and myself drove to Orlando and we met with Richard Hornsby.
And we verified that he was not working any timeshare-related cases, which kind of confirmed our suspicion of somebody using his name.
When we came back, I called Mr. Cato's family. They had a suspicion that their dad was being scammed.
They tried to make him realize, which, by that time, he sent a lot of money. He was very deep into this scam.
He was continuing to send money, and he believed Richard Hornsby. So after a couple of months, Mr. Cato, unfortunately,
he lost his business. He lost his home, contacted his kids because of this scam.
He did call me. He called me and he basically told me that he has been scammed since 2011.
And this was 2017 when I made contact with him. So he's been scammed for a good number of years.
[somber music] ♪ ♪ - The most emotional aspect of my consultations with the victims was the silence,
when they heard my voice, when they understood that I was wholly innocent and they came to realize,
if I had only called you before. - Because of this scam and because of the money he lost,
Mr. Cato, who I believe has just turned 80 years old, is still working. He drives prescriptions around and delivering
them to individuals. He is not able to enjoy the life that he built for he and his family.
And that's heart wrenching. - He's lost at least half a million dollars. - I beat myself in the ground.
How could you be so stupid? You know, I actually prayed for them, and I forgave them.
Because the judgment that God's gonna put on them for what they done to me is gonna be horrible.
[unsettling music] ♪ ♪ Detective Maric became my best friend. She pulled me up out of the pits.
[somber music] I couldn't have done it without her. And when I finally realized what I'd done,
she contacted the Texas Department of Public Safety and the Texas Rangers. And they came, and they took my phone.
And they took my computer, and they took everything out of it. And they sent it to her and built the case along
with receipts from those-- man, you know how many receipts that is for half a million dollars?
It was a box about that big. ♪ ♪ - Victims kept great notes. Some of the victims had spreadsheets of where
every single dollar went. - Every conversation that they had with these individuals
and what was said and the date and how much they sent, which was invaluable for a variety
of reasons. Zana Maric: This case was just huge. We were finding more and more victims every day.
We had the FBI involved at the point when we had close to 40 victims. These victims lived all over the United States.
It's obviously something FBI usually handles. So once we decided that we needed help,
we contacted Agent Jason Shearn, who ended up assisting us in this case. - Our primary role was using all
of those investigative tools in our toolbox. This included physical surveillance.
This included subpoenas. We did a lot of telephone analysis to try to determine and to attribute phones,
phone calls to particular subjects, particular perpetrators, as well as victims.
Rachel Jones: Throughout this entire case, the goal was not even necessarily prosecute people.
It was, how do we stop the people from making the calls. Jason Shearn: Each of the callers sort of had
their own niche in the scam. They, at times, were working together. They were sharing victims.
They were assisting each other as what we would call a second voice. But they didn't always get along.
They didn't always like each other. And so they were, at best, business partners in this scam.
That meant that each of those individuals had sort of their population of victims.
Rachel Jones: So they used burner phones in this case. So they're phones that-- you can get cheap phones
from a variety of companies. And you don't actually have to include your real name
or whatever. But most phones still ping off of towers. And so we had some ideas about who some of the individuals
might be, based on who the pickup people were and their relationships and open source stuff.
We were able to gear in on individuals based on location data that showed-- like, it cross-referenced with the person we kind of thought
might be involved, and then laying that data on top of it and zeroing in. Now, that really only led us to the first individual,
Mark Boring. Zana Maric: We actually conducted the undercover operation with him when we found a victim
in Florida, Fred Platt. And Mr. Platt was contacted, like many other victims, by fake attorney, David Eaton.
And he was told that they had a buyer for his timeshare. He did send about $780 for the first payment
that he was asked to do. - After the first payment, Mr. Platt decided he's going to call David Eaton's office that he
found a number for online. When he called Mr. Eaton, he found out that he was being scammed.
At that point, he contacted our police department. And we decided to meet with Mr. Platt at his residence.
And we decided that, because fake David Eaton asked him to send more money, we decided
we're gonna do undercover phone call with the fake David Eaton, who was Mark Boring.
And we told him that one of our detectives was Mr. Platt's daughter, and she was willing to assist her dad in sending this new payment
that was requested of him. Zana Maric: At that point, when we sent the payment, we had UC units, undercover units,
following Mr. Boring to a store where he picked up the money that was sent by undercover detective.
We followed him home. We ended up doing a search warrant for his house, where we, the next day, went in and surprised him
and found the payments from Mr. Platt and all the receipts related to Mr. Platt and other victims.
When we conducted a search warrant at Mr. Boring's residence, he did not appear to be surprised.
It was basically-- well, it was about time for this to happen. Mr. Boring was facing scheme to defraud charges.
He agreed to help us out by contacting other suspects and working undercover with us in order
to bring other suspects to get arrested. Rachel Jones: He was the easiest to find, frankly, of the group of people who were calling.
From there, it was a spiral. - As we talked to each one of them, they would give us another suspect.
And they would even work with us to get the other suspect arrested for something
they did together. - Once we would take out, say, a Mark Boring, we effectively were able to take out that list of victims.
The bleeding had effectively stopped for those individuals. But it continued, and there were additional callers.
Those callers were continuing to call. We had to work as quickly as possible because every day we didn't, somebody else
was sending money that we were probably not gonna get back. We would love to just take it down as quickly as possible.
But we figured, in this instance, if we took them individually, rather than waiting
till the end, we have at least stopped portions of it as we went along the rung.
Zana Maric: Who picked up the money? If you have surveillance, gather the surveillance.
So we would go to all these stores where the money was picked up, and we would obtain surveillance of the suspects
picking up the money. In this case, it would be mostly runners. However, they would meet main suspects
and the managers in the parking lot a lot of times. So we would have evidence of them meeting and having
that-- handing the money over. - Myself and another detective from St. Petersburg,
we would go and interview the runners, the people that were picking up money. Once we were able to gain some cooperation
from those individuals, we then transitioned into more of a proactive approach, using those individuals and having them make phone calls or
undercover transactions, things like that, to have them cooperate so that we could now
go after the next guy in the rung, the next bad guy who was calling and victimizing people.
Rachel Jones: For several of these individuals, this wasn't like a supplemental income.
This was the entirety of how they made their living for several years. And so there weren't a lot of like big flashy cars
or nice watches in this instance. It was really, they were considering this their jobs.
One individual in particular would go to the other individual's house, and they would work a work day together.
And so it was just spent as regular income. I wish that it was spent on a Ferrari
that we could seize and sell. But in this instance, it wasn't. - We approached everybody with an opportunity
to provide information, even if it be historical information. You have been caught, and you are in trouble
and you are going to plead guilty. Most of them said that right from the get go.
And the only way you minimize your potential incarceration duration is you need to cooperate with the government
as much as possible. Some choose to do it, some don't. [suspenseful music] ♪ ♪ In this instance, we had pretty good luck.
Whether it be Mark or any of the other individuals that we went after, I think they understood
that they were in trouble and that they needed to cooperate with us to minimize that exposure
that they would have. And they did so. - We had such solid evidence that we knew all these people
are going to get convicted. Jason Shearn: At the sentencing phase of all investigations,
victims are welcome to come and speak in a public forum at the hearing. - Most of the victims lived out of state.
And most of them are elderly, so they couldn't afford to travel. We still wanted the victims to be part of this trial.
We had them write impact statements and those impact statements were read in court in front of these defendants
so they know what they've done. Mr. Cato was actually at the trial. Michael Cato: When I was testifying against him,
I was really honest with that judge. Let me tell you something, brother. I was mad.
I was humiliated. I guess that's why they didn't let me stay in there. They walked me in, I testified, and they walked me out.
- He told the judge, I think, in at least two instances for two different individuals, and looked both of them
in the eye and explained to them what this has done to him and his family, how he is not able to live the life that he was hoping
to live in the later years of his life, how he has not been able to retire, how he continues to work.
When somebody can actually come there and has the fortitude to stand in front of the individual who
took their money and explain to them and the judge what that has meant to them, that's powerful.
[tense music] Michael Cato: I told them exactly how it affected my marriage, my wife.
Man, we-- for two years, it's like we were strangers because of this thing. I couldn't even face her.
I hated that-- of course, I had to have the money from her. She had to help me with the money
or we couldn't have done it. I went through my savings first, and then we went through hers.
♪ ♪ I lost my business. They shut the doors because I couldn't pay the rent. I told him how bad it was and how much he hurt me and
my family, and what I did to my friends, how I destroyed relationships with this greedy thing,
trying to get the money to support this habit. And that's what it was, a habit. Some of my friends, I haven't talked to since.
I can't. I just-- I feel ashamed. Jason Shearn: We had David Eaton actually come and speak
on his behalf of what this did to him, to his firm, how he was negatively impacted by these individuals,
and especially Mark Boring, who was effectively stealing his identification and using
his corporate standing and his legal standing to scam these people. - Well, he apologized outwardly and
said he hadn't necessarily thought the degree of impact that his deeds would have.
He thought it would just be basically taking a little bit of money from rich people
who could afford to lose it. He had already pled guilty. And I was brought in to the sentencing hearing
to speak both for myself and for the police as to the degree of victimization that I had suffered professionally.
I generally keep my composure. But I was in an unfamiliar surrounding, and this had become quite personal.
And I had invested, you know countless, countless hours bearing the emotions of his vict--
his actual victims. And so it became personal in that sense. When I saw him in court, I basically
told him to go to hell. Zana Maric: Most of the scammers didn't have much reaction.
I think one or two did cry. But most of the other ones just sat there and listened to what
the victims had to say. - I do remember on a couple of instances, some remorse. But it's hard to forget the fact that these individuals
were literally stealing money and making up entire scams to get them to part ways
with their hard earned money and preying on their vulnerability to do so. What you will hear a lot of times
is we didn't start this to scam people. It just sort of went that way. At some point, the money's too good
or you see a sort of an opportunity to scam people. These guys started this as a scam.
None of this was legitimate. The only thing legitimate was the fact that we had real victims with a property
that they were looking to sell. When they say they're sorry, I believe them. I just wish it didn't have to be that way
because we know what the real impact of these individuals were. Everybody sentenced varied anywhere from probation to,
I believe Mr. Carapelluci received about seven years. - I thought seven years was pretty light, yes,
for all that money, for 2.2 million. He's probably out there right now. - At sentencing, AUSA Rachel Jones
was able to say these individuals did not agree to cooperate when provided the original opportunity to do so.
And then obviously, the judge is the one who makes that sentencing decision. The thing that they did, though,
is that, although they didn't cooperate on the front end, did not plead guilty on the front end,
they did plead guilty prior to trial. So they do get cooperation credit. And they did get cooperation credit,
even though they didn't do that when we would have liked them to have done it a year plus before.
- The case was rock solid. It was a federal crime. And when you're dealing with the federal criminal system,
you're in with the big boys, yeah, on both sides. [somber music] ♪ ♪ Rachel Jones: There's only so much you
can do to constantly protect yourself from people who are out there actively trying to scam you.
The minute that we think, like, that's never gonna happen to me is a dangerous minute.
- The reason this scam is so devastating is because it strikes at your sense of self-worth.
We all take pride in our mindfulness, our awareness of what's going on around us.
And so when someone who can hoodwink us in the name of a lawyer, of all things, is then able to extort not only our money, but our pride,
it's almost the worst of all sins. It's hypocrisy at its fatalistic worst. ♪ ♪ - To be felt like you've been taken advantage of
and that you can't trust anybody who is trying to talk to you, wants to sell you something, whatever it might be,
that's a real impact in somebody's lives and one of those things that's very difficult to quantify.
Michael Cato: Back in my day, we trusted folks. People were different then. We tell somebody we're gonna do something, we did it.
There was morals. When somebody calls me now and they start asking for my Social Security number or
my credit card number, I hang up the phone. Rachel Jones: Victim education is probably the most central
thing that we can do in order to teach people the tools of how to protect themselves
or what to do. - Especially with elderly people or people who have almost like a gambling problem
that can assist them and make them realize what they're doing is a scam. ♪ ♪ My guesstimate is that, in this scam, approximately
$4-plus-million was lost. At this point, I don't think any of the victims will see any of that money.
♪ ♪

Michael Cato falls victim to a devastating timeshare scam that takes far more than his money.

This true crime series unmasks the sinister world of scams, examining how perpetrators exploit trust.

For More FilmRise Check Out Our Other Channels: FilmRise Television: https://www.youtube.com/⁨@FilmRiseTelevision⁩ FilmRise Movies: https://www.youtube.com/@FilmRiseMovies Highway to Heaven - Full Episodes: https://www.youtube.com/@HighwaytoHeavenFullEpisodes

Brief Summary

Victims of a timeshare scam share their experiences while investigators detail the deceptive tactics used by scammers.

Key points

The Timeshare Scam Unveiled. A deep dive into the deceptive world of timeshare scams and their victims.
Revictimization of Victims. Victims are often scammed multiple times, losing even more money.
The Role of Trust. Victims' trust makes them susceptible to scams, leading to devastating losses.
The Emotional Toll. Victims face not just financial loss but emotional devastation as well.
The Undercover Operation. Law enforcement conducts an undercover operation to catch a scammer in the act.
Victim Impact Statements. Victims share their experiences in court, highlighting the emotional damage caused by the scam.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

It breaks my heart for what I put her through.

Dave Eaton reflecting on the impact of the scam.

0:34WatchJul 24, 2026

Tension

70/ 100High tension

More from True Crime Files

Solve the Crime

Read a real case one clue at a time, then see how your call held up against the investigators.