More fraudulent timeshare resale telemarketing scam companies shut down by officials. TimeShare Adventures applauds these efforts and hopes continued progress paves the way for legitimate service providers.
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Members of the Orlando police SWAT team raided a time-share and credit-assistance telemarketing business Wednesday, holding employees at gunpoint and confiscating computers and other equipment.
Officers said H.E.S. Systems, 4401 E. Colonial Drive, was ripping off people by falsely claiming it could lower credit-card interest and also was running a time-share scam.
The raid was part of a continuing investigation into businesses that, according to investigators, have scammed thousands of people worldwide out of at least $8.5 million. The Office of Statewide Prosecution also is involved.
Since January, 20 raids have been conducted and $500,000 and several vehicles and other property were seized, said Sgt. Jim Young, a police spokesman.
This time, 70 employees were working in the second-floor office, east of Bennett Road. A few were detained after a check of everyone's identification, and some said police took their cell phones and other electronics.
About two dozen workers watched from across the street after being released, many angrily denouncing the raid and police.
No one was arrested.
Twenty of the employees are Orange County work-release inmates, corrections spokesman Allen Moore said. The company had passed a background check, and there had been no problems in the year that it had been authorized to employ people in work release, he said.
As of Wednesday, H.E.S. Systems is no longer part of the program.
Police said the company has had several incarnations under different names. None was doing legitimate business, investigators said.
"They're taking money and giving nothing for it," Young said. "They're just purely scamming them."
Several employees said that isn't true. Jaime Magsam, 33, said she's been working for the company for two years, and it's legitimate.
"We help people get out of debt," Magsam said. "We get thank-you letters all the time from all over the world.
Kirk Cano, 41, said he was at his second day on the job when the SWAT team arrived.
The company charged employees $25 per day for each of three days of training and told them the money would be deducted from a future commission check, said Cano, who heard about the job from a man he met on the way to the bus stop from nearby Workforce Central Florida.
Police confirmed that account, but other workers disputed it, saying they were paid.
Investigators have said such businesses make cold calls to time-share owners across the globe and offer to help owner resell. They claim to have found buyers and accept an upfront fee to broker a sale, but all that happens is that the owners lose their money, police say.
ORLANDO, Fla., July 19 (UPI) -- A U.S. court temporarily halted a telemarketing operation from allegedly scamming timeshare property owners wanting to sell, the Federal Trade Commission said.
The Florida-based operation, National Solutions LLC, is accused of charging interested sellers thousands of dollars in fees, falsely claiming they had ready buyers for the sales that supposedly would be reviewed and approved by the FTC, the federal watchdog said Tuesday in a release.
The telemarketing operation works under different names in other U.S. cities, the FTC said in papers filed with a federal court in Orlando, Fla.
The FTC's complaint alleged a "sales agreement" presented to the would-be sellers was, in reality, a marketing contract for advertising the property, not a sales contract. Consumers who signed the contract and remitted the fee to the defendants often weren't contacted again, and the properties were never sold. Those who called the defendants were given "the run-around" and demands for refunds were ignored or denied, the complaint said.
Also, contrary to the defendants' alleged assertions, the FTC does not review or approve timeshare sales.
The FTC charged the defendants with violating the Federal Trade Commission Act and the FTC's Telemarketing Sales Rule by misrepresenting that they had buyers willing to pay a specified price for timeshare properties, that they would refund a fee when the property was sold and that the FTC would review and approve proposed sales.
The FTC said it wants to permanently end the defendants' deceptive practices and make them refund consumers' money.
Florida Shutting Down Timeshare Resale Scams 
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