[ 2012 ] Hi. I am a genuine timeshare scammer.

[kaio]

---Hi. I've been doing various telemarketing sca....

</thread>

 

[geekette]

Ride is part of his screan name the regulars have nick named him. He is a self proclaimed advocate for the causes he belives in. A core group of regulars on this site apparently do not think much of him and have pretty much driven him off this board.

I think you have that wrong. It's not that people "do not think much of him", it's more that his viewpoints are usually not held by the majority. I seriously doubt anyone has attempted to drive him away as that's not how it works here, and I do not think he is someone that can be driven away. I enjoy his comments and just consider the source - he seems to me to be immature and selfish and a pot-stirrer. He is not alone here in having some of those qualities, and all viewpoints are welcome.

 

[DeniseM]

Ride posted yesterday - no one has driven him away...

 

[AwayWeGo]

Not Just Bad PMs.

Could also be Steamboat Bill, but I sure liked him. He was a Disney fanatic like me.

I think he sent some really bad PM's to a few people, though, if I remember correctly.

Some of the bad stuff was out in the open, right there in various TUG-BBS discussion topics.

What was semi-shocking at the time was that Steamer's shenanigans were not done under his real TUG-BBS user name, but under various made-up fake identities. When it was revealed who was really slinging the insults, etc., & that he got 86d from TUG-BBS because of it, by me that was the shocker.

-- Alan Cole, McLean (Fairfax County), Virginia, USA.​

 

[AwayWeGo]

Who Says Spence Doesn't Write Well ?

Spence doesn't write well enough to fool anyone. But he is a smart guy.

I'll say he's smart.

Plus, Spence & I were rival HOA-BOD candidates a few years ago. A friend in common who is super-savvy in the ways of timeshares generally & who had good insight into that particular timeshare resort, said Spence thought I was going to win the election. Shux, I figured Spence was going to win. When the dust settled, we both lost -- bigtime. The guy who beat us is is not only still on the board, but became HOA-BOD president. Meanwhile, The Chief Of Staff & I no longer own at that timeshare. So it goes.

-- Alan Cole, McLean (Fairfax County), Virginia, USA.​

 

[DazedandConfused]

The real question is - Where is Mr. TSscammer now and why did he go all silent?

Oh I forgot, he must be enjoying his timeshare vacation. I wonder if he is at a place that does not have free wi-fi.

 

[wcfr1]

Even if this guy is for real, he hasn't posted a single item in this thread that we didn't already know.

It's naive to think he is going to post inside info. that might actually put him or his sources at risk.

Your first sentence implies what he writes is already known information to us, he doesn't have to be a scammer to know this- thus his explanations how it happens must be true.

Your second sentence implies he's not a real scammer. Who cares, what difference does it make? If he's fake or not, how it works is enlightning.

Many of us know the routine once we get the call from the scammer. But I am always interested in how things work. How they got my number and info etc has always interested me.

Lots of newbies come here asking questions. Now when a newbie finds this thread they will have a more complete picture how the scam works. They wont have to read numerous posts putting it all together, writing post after post asking the same basic questions.

Because of this I find his writings very interesting and probable.

Could he be lying how it works? Maybe. But at least I have a better understanding of how they got my name, how it works and how some people (many of us not just those suffering dementia) have fallen for it.

I want to hear more from him.

 

[DeniseM]

Your first sentence implies what he writes is already known information to us, he doesn't have to be a scammer to know this- thus his explanations how it happens must be true.

Your second sentence implies he's not a real scammer. Who cares, what difference does it make? If he's fake or not, how it works is enlightning.

Everything he has posted aligns with what we already know about TS scams. However, nothing he has posted has been NEW info. So it may be enlightening for newbies - but it's certainly not new info.

 

[BocaBum99]

Everything he has posted aligns with what we already know about TS scams. However, nothing he has posted has been NEW info. So it may be enlightening for newbies - but it's certainly not new info.

He posted information about how leads are recycled that I did not know. Can you explain to me how you already knew that information? I know many timeshare telemarketers from whom I could confirm his statements. But, the level of granularity of detail he provides suggests I don't need to do so.

Certainly, the OP has knowledge he hasn't posted. I have knowledge that I don't post either. If anything, that further supports his claims of being real. The people who are pretenders to me are those who claim certain things cannot be done like "there are no secrets to timeshare rentals" when I know with 100% certainty that there are. Just because someone can't figure out how others do things does not mean they aren't doing them. As proof, here is an example that I don't mind sharing because it is no longer possible. Back in the hey dey of Wyndham rentals, it was very easy to get points from one owner and rent them to other owners without ever taking possession of them. I would transfer millions of points between Wyndham owners and earn a margin for doing it. What amazed me was that all these people were on the same message boards, they just didn't see each others messages. That was a secret that I didn't want to share at the time because it was easy profit. Nobody was hurt, but it was something that I didn't need to post about.

Back to the OP, moreover, he posted a level of detail that is just not known by pretenders. In fact, if you yourself off the top of your head concocted a story, I highly doubt you would be able to describe a credible story like the OP did. It would be very easy to point out the problem with your story. This is not a slam on your because I know that I couldn't fabricate a story either.

What I would like is for the OP to post more information. It's new to me and I learn from it. I may not use the information for scams because it is just not my style. But, I would be in a a better position to protect myself and others as well.

 

[wcfr1]

this is my sentiment exactly. In my former years, I have prosecuted thousands of people with this attitude, thinking they were smarter then the system and had all the angles figured out. Unfortunately for them, they aren't that smart. The OP will find this out soon enough, and when the wire fraud and tax evasion charges come down, among others, the OP will be singing another tune.

The most ammusing part of the post to me, is that the OP thinks that using basic software like Tor or even an anonymous proxy (probably a public one because he lacks the technical skills to hack and root his own box and set up his own proxy), as well as using a pay as you go cell phone (which fyi triangulates your position and can still be tapped to record your voice mid-scam), as well as using various shell companies liscensed out of state, and wire transfers (which by the way can and have been more actively monitored by our FBI since 9/11), is enough to cover his tracks. Let me tell you first hand, this is not enough. The only reason you haven't been caught yet, is luck. Luck that you've either stayed under the radar, or luck that they are frying a big fish before they get to you.

Now that I'm out of the prosecution ranks, and make my living defending idiots like yourself that thought they had all the moves planned out, let me give you some words of advice. I know for a fact that you are not stashing money overseas, quite frankly you don't have that much. So my advice to you(besides stop scamming) is to STOP spending all your money. Mark my words you will need every penny dearly for legal fees when(not if) you get caught. Most importantly, if you want to have any hope of being around for the family you supposedly love, you better have an ace up your sleeve. And the only Ace you have is where you get your leads from. That is the only thing(besides weak evidence) that would have prevented me from pursuing the Maximum sentences allowable (10 years each for tax and wire fraud charges). But even then, the plea deal you would get wouldnt be a drop in the hat, and fyi you are required to complete 85% of your federal sentence before you are eligible for parole.

I value your prosecution experience and insight on the law. But even you have to acknowledge a few things.

1. Some crooks are smarter than others. The really dumb ones get caught quickly.
   
2. The smarter ones can avoid capture and do their thing for quite a while.
   
3. Even the REAL smart ones slip up once and a while and that may be all it takes to bring them down. But unless someone is looking for them they can be as sloppy as they want.
   
4. In Florida alone there are TONS and TONS of these scammers. How many have been caught, shut down and prosecuted? Very small fraction. These people are very willing to take the gamble that they wont get caught, it will be the other guy.
   
5. Their actions may very well be federal offenses that include bank fraud, wire fraud, etc but do you really think the FBI is just waiting for that hot tip to jump in and shut them down? Maybe the County Sheriff, local Police, Attorney General? Every once and a while one of these agencies may make it the crime of the month and make a couple busts or something for the news, but for the most part, if you make a complaint they just take a report and file it away.
   
6. If the OP is who he says he is, I just don't think anything anyone says here threatening the op actually scares him. He's not new at this. He has already weighed the risks and is more than willing to take them. He's made his risk benefit analysis. And I believe the numbers are on his side. If the state of Florida has shut down a couple dozen scammer companies and a hundred individual scammers, then why am I and so many others still regularly getting the calls? Because there are thousands more out there, new ones coming on line every day and very low risk of getting caught much less prosecuted.
   
   And if he is just a wanna be scammer with a little writing talent I beleive he is still accuretly portraying how the scam works and how they prey on us. Lets listen and learn. It's like the TV show "How'd They Do That?" or the web site "How Stuff Works". I mean if someone made an episode on Time Share Scams for "How'd They Do That?" and the host described all the things the OP did would you beleive it?
   
   But if they brought in a real scammer who you despised as the worst scumbag in the world would you turn it off because of the scumbag thing? Probably not. You would sit and learn.
   
   Because this guy admits he's a scumbag and has stolen from people like you and I, some of us don't want to listen to him. If he is telling us how he does it wouldn't you want to know so you could protect yourself in the future?

 

[DeniseM]

I don't know if the OP is genuine or a fake, but we know from the anecdotal stories of victims that have posted on TUG, that the "lead lists" are often recycled in exactly the manner that he described.

Once you are ID'd as an easy mark, you are shuttled through various companies, first offering to sell or rent your timeshare, and then, offering to save you from the first scammer, and then offering to take your timeshare off your hands for a fee. Sadly, many newbies have fallen for every step of the scam.

The poster may be the real deal, but my Spidey Senses tell me that he is also someone who is known on TUG, and in that way, he is putting us on.

 

[BocaBum99]

I value your prosecution experience and insight on the law. But even you have to acknowledge a few things.

1. Some crooks are smarter than others. The really dumb ones get caught quickly.
   
2. The smarter ones can avoid capture and do their thing for quite a while.
   
3. Even the REAL smart ones slip up once and a while and that may be all it takes to bring them down. But unless someone is looking for them they can be as sloppy as they want.
   
4. In Florida alone there are TONS and TONS of these scammers. How many have been caught, shut down and prosecuted? Very small fraction. These people are very willing to take the gamble that they wont get caught, it will be the other guy.
   
5. Their actions may very well be federal offenses that include bank fraud, wire fraud, etc but do you really think the FBI is just waiting for that hot tip to jump in and shut them down? Maybe the County Sheriff, local Police, Attorney General? Every once and a while one of these agencies may make it the crime of the month and make a couple busts or something for the news, but for the most part, if you make a complaint they just take a report and file it away.
   
6. I just don't think anything anyone says here threatening the op actually scares him. He's not new at this. He has already weighed the risks and is more than willing to take them. He's made his risk benefit analysis. And I believe the numbers are on his side. If the state of Florida has shut down a couple dozen scammer companies and a hundred individual scammers, then why am I and so many others still regularly getting the calls? Because there are thousands more out there, new ones coming on line every day and very low risk of getting caught much less prosecuted.

I completely agree with your post. As I mentioned earlier, the biggest reason they get caught it their uncontrollable desire to tell someone what they did. This thread is all about that personality flaw of criminals.

 

[BocaBum99]

The poster may be the real deal, but my Spidey Senses tell me that he is also someone who is known on TUG, and in that way, he is putting us on.

I don't think so. Ride is not smart enough to come up with this story. If he tried to post such a story, I would have easily poked holes in it. I can't.

It's definitely not Steamboat Bill. I know him well and this is not his style. Bill is not a criminal. He is an arrogant blow hard, but not a scammer.

I think this guy is just falling into the same trap of all criminals...... the uncontrollable desire to brag. It brings down more criminals than anything else I have ever heard about.

 

[wcfr1]

On the subject of possible darker motives, though, it's cool that people have gotten some information from the scammer's link, but personally I wouldn't have clicked on it myself. Who knows what he's doing?

Ouch- I didn't think of that. Time to run my virus scan.

 

[wcfr1]

I for one would love to have seen our "here today / gone tomorrow" alleged "scammer" offer some concrete and specific assertions regarding the actual source(s) of the sucker lists contact info acquired and utilized by such scammers --- whether real or "just pretending". Alas, only very weak and entirely unconvincing "acquired presentation attendee info" seems to have been implied as a source, and I think we all know already that "from public records" is a lame and completely bogus (albeit easy and convenient) explanation. My unlisted, unpublished home phone of the past 35 years ain't in any "public records".

It's simply got to be more than that; I've never attended a "presentation" anywhere (...and I never will), but have still been contacted numerous times by phone in recent years (...at my unlisted, unpublished home phone number), including just today, from a number with an (alleged) 717 area code (likely just a "spoofed" number anyhow, but located in PA if it was actually legitimate).

Rogue RCI employee(s) remains my own primary suspect as a source, but I have no substantive proof; it's just a personal theory which I cannot substantiate with any supporting hard evidence.

Legit companies and their employees steal or sell the info they recieve. Here's my two examples.

I have had an AOL e-mail account for 15 years or so (since aol 3.0). I am allowed to have 5 e-maill addresses assigned to my account. I made one as my primary account but have NEVER, not once used that e-mail address. Never gave it to anyone, never sent an e-mail from it.

That account gets about 25 e-mail's a day. Howd that happen? Had to be AOL or someone from AOL.

I took over my mother inlaws finances. Her 3 accounts still have her real name on them but I added my e-mail address to them. All of a sudden I am getting 7 or 8 e-mails to that address a day addressed to her. Howd thay happen? Someone from those three institutions sold or stole them that's how.

All I'm saying be as safe as possible by not giving your info to strangers but even companies you trust cant be trusted.

 

[BocaBum99]

Check in manifests at resorts is another source that I can pretty much verify. Someone at the front desk is copying the list of people checking in and their contact information and selling it.

How do I know? Because when you do a lot of rentals, you can see the pattern.

At a specific resort in the Daytona Beach area, I rented a bunch of units. Over the period of a month, I kept getting calls from a scam company asking for my renter calling my telephone number. The only way they could have gotten that information was from the resort itself.

 

[rickandcindy23]

At a specific resort in the Daytona Beach area, I rented a bunch of units. Over the period of a month, I kept getting calls from a scam company asking for my renter calling my telephone number. The only way they could have gotten that information was from the resort itself.

Did you complain to that resort? I would have complained. You are smarter than other people. I have scam calls nearly daily, sometimes two or three in a day, and I cannot figure where they get my number. I would guess my eBay purchases are where the scammers get my number.

I am tired of all of the scammer calls and wish they would stop.

 

[T_R_Oglodyte]

That account gets about 25 e-mail's a day. Howd that happen? Had to be AOL or someone from AOL.

While that's not unrealistic, there's a more likely explanation. The e-mail spammers have bots that simply generate strings of e-mail addresses using common e-mail ISP addresses - such as fredj4569@aol.com. When they send out a barrage and get "undeliverable" responses the bot registers that as a bad address. But when they send out an e-mail and it doesn't get returned, they bot records that as a valid address. Using that process the spammers can sniff out lots of additional addresses, including those "trusted" addresses that many of us try to keep hidden or protected.

But I do know that resort staff harvest and sell personal information. When we stayed at Vila Vera in Puerto Vallarta recently, I was trying to address some issues related to our stay and gave them my business telephone number to call to discuss some matters. That's the only time I have ever given my business telephone number out in connection with a timeshare stay; I keep my business completely separated from my personal data in that sphere. Then about a month after we got back I started getting calls from spammers wanting to know if I was interested in selling my "Club Regina" membership.

That leakage of my business number had to come from the resort, as they are the only ones that have ever had the number and had it been a leak at the corporate level they would have been mentioning Raintree and not Club Regina.

 

[Beefnot]

I don't think so. Ride is not smart enough to come up with this story. If he tried to post such a story, I would have easily poked holes in it. I can't.

It's definitely not Steamboat Bill. I know him well and this is not his style. Bill is not a criminal. He is an arrogant blow hard, but not a scammer.

I think this guy is just falling into the same trap of all criminals...... the uncontrollable desire to brag. It brings down more criminals than anything else I have ever heard about.

It is not Ride. Although...

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 land lines. 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.

There are four of them. Ride is also 31 and college educated. He has been one of the most prolific TUGgers the last couple years and after a 2 week period of zero posts, conveniently appeared with a couple posts when folks started wondering about Ride being the OP. He has posted more since, but it is not the same in my opinion. And he has never poked around into this thread to chime in when, like me, he normally pokes his nose everywhere.

Ride once said he was a "property claims adjuster" and then later said he was not an actual adjuster. As previously referenced, Ride was accused on the site of being an owner of a scam outfit. That Ride is one of this gang of four would make for a fabulous conspiracy theory.

 

[Patri]

And he has never poked around into this thread to chime in when, like me, he normally pokes his nose everywhere.

:hysterical: :hysterical: :hysterical:

 

[Margariet]

It's not a game of Cluedo. No use in naming and shaming. The persona has left because he didn't get what he want. There are similar stories of timeshare sellers and scammers to find in older blogs and boards. Don't know why. Could be a way to attract new victims.

 

[ampaholic]

[/thread]
[/thread]
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Damn [/] command still not working

 

[TSscammer]

Wow. My last few posts were ridiculous. I usually refrain from writing while I'm under the influence of Ambien. I try not to send text messages or make phone calls either. Nothing ever turns out well on Ambien. I would never write a book about scamming. I can't believe I wrote that.

I had a wonderful stay at the timeshare. It was a two bedroom unit on Disney property, although I do not think it was owned by Disney. I'm not sure. I don't think anything about the experience justifies the permanent financial burden on the timeshare owner, but I enjoyed myself nonetheless. If staying in a hotel is comparable to eating McDonalds, the timeshare experience is Panera food at steakhouse prices. Like a lot of people in Florida say, "it's better to have a friend with a boat than to have a boat yourself."

I'll knock off the analogies. I don't know if they're perfect fits or even close.

I have not been able to stay away from scamming. I relapsed less than three days into "retirement." The word irony gets misused a lot, and I don't know the exact word to describe the fact that I was staying in a timeshare while pulling a resale scam, but it was a surreal experience.

I'm rededicating myself to quitting again, but I don't have a lot of faith in myself. It's not so much about the money anymore, although the money is certainly nice. Ripping people off gives me a rush. I'm sure that sounds twisted. It's true though.

To clarify a few things I've already said: 1) I am a legitimate scam artist and 2) I am not the alter ego of a regular (or even a sporadic) poster here. To make sure that the second point isn't parsed the wrong way, I've never posted under any other name at any time except for TSscammer2 when I incorrectly thought my account was banned.

The main question that keeps coming up is how scammers get ahold of your information in the first place. I don't know. I have no idea where the original data comes from. It wouldn't make sense to set up a room full of phone reps to call phone numbers at random strictly for the purposes of identifying potential timeshare owners. I do know that the leads I get are years old. They're often over five years old.

The leads go from one telemarketing room to another. It's not uncommon for me to be the fifth person to end up with your information. It wouldn't shock me to find out that I would be the tenth person to get it. Like I've said before, these rooms open and close all the time.

Have you ever seen the movie (or read the book) Contact? Jodie Foster's character travels through an extremely sophisticated intergalactic highway of wormholes (or something--I'm not really sure, I saw it in middle school). When she finally talks to one of the aliens, she asks him how they managed to set those wormhole highways up. He says something along the lines of "oh these things? I don't know. We didn't make them. We found them."

I just broke my promise to knock off the analogies. Oops. All I'm saying is that I have no idea where the original leads came from. They've been around for a long time though. The fact that somebody who has been through the scam wringer for years and still has a current credit card on their lead sheet means that they keep falling for scams. That makes them ideal to fall for another scam.

I was getting uncreditworthy applicants approved for mortgages back when most of the timeshare resale fraud was running rampant. I was vaguely aware of timeshare resale fraud, but I was making a lot more money from the real estate bubble back then. The two most inflated real estate markets in the country were Jacksonville and Orlando. Guess where I was getting loans approved for.

I didn't really dip my toes into the timeshare scams until after the housing market crashed. I was doing other telemarketing scams before I was doing mortgages. A lot of it was timeshare related, or fed by timeshare leads, but none of those scams were as blatantly dishonest as "hey--I have a buyer for your timeshare. You just have to pay $2,500 up front."

It's funny how similar the timeshare resale scam is to the Nigerian I-have-a-fortune-that-I-need-your-help-to-move scam. They're conceptual carbon copies of each other, albeit with different pitches.

The timeshare resale scam is, by far, the most dishonest of all the telemarketing scams I know. Almost all the rest of them have some kind of legalistic silver lining that can seem borderline honest if you tilt your head and squint at them hard enough. Timeshare resale is just the worst though. It's all a lie.

Like I said, I don't do a lot of timeshare resale scamming and never have. Pulling one off while staying in a timeshare seemed irresistible though. I could try to find out where the ORIGINAL timeshare owner lead sheet information came from. I can't promise I'll be successful. I have somebody in mind that I can ask.

Actually, you know what--writing this post has jogged my memory. I even touched on it in a previous post. Most of the information on these deal sheets was fed into the telemarketing machine before you ever owned a timeshare. A huge chunk of it came from the fact that you signed up for a vacation package that you saw on a banner or pop-up ad or agreed to take after you got a cold call.

If you ended up being one of the people that bought a timeshare, your lead sheet was updated accordingly. And yes, most of the resorts run their own vacation packages telemarketing rooms. If they don't, they will essentially sponsor telemarketing rooms to pitch their resort as part of their package. If one of the customers from said room ends up buying a timeshare, the room owner would get a bonus. So the resort would tell the telemarketing rooms directly who ended up buying timeshares.

This perhaps doesn't account for all the timeshare leads out there, but I know it counts for almost all the people who are scam victims.

I would go back and edit out the middle parts of this post with the science fiction references if I cared more about coherence. I care more about sleeping right now. Goodnight.

 

[TSscammer]

Luxury Capital Group

On another note, I just read the post (currently) below this one about Luxury Capital Group. The scam sounds extremely like something I would do. Talk to people on the phone for as long as I needed to to gain their trust. I would then tell them that they had to make a payment for something or other. If the person pays me in cash, our relationship ends immediately.

If they pay me with a credit card, I'll continue talking to them for whatever period of time makes sense based on which bank issued it. Citi doesn't let customers dispute after 60 days. Discover will give their customers 180 days. Capital One and Chase pretty much stonewall customers after 60 days as well, although people who are annoyingly persistent and get the right rep can file disputes for up to 120 days.

I won't even touch American Express. American Express is like scamming kryptonite. They'll refund somebody's card two years after the fact.

Either way, once somebody gets past their dispute period, they will never get me on the phone again.

Why would I talk to them? They're just going to be angry. I don't really like dealing with angry people. I understand why they're angry too, which is why I will never talk to them. If I do talk to them, what I'll say is something like "oh yes, I see what happened here. I know that we got your [whatever] fee taken care of a few weeks ago, but now, looking through my computer system, I see that we forgot to take care of this [other fee]. Let's go ahead and get that taken care of so we can get you a check in the mail!" Or something along those lines.

After I've squeezed every potential dollar out of them, I'll pass the file one of the people I work with and he'll contact them in a few weeks about a recovery process that will also cost them money up front.

I'm just regurgitating some of my own previous posts here, but reading the Luxury Capital Group thread is a perfect example of what somebody on the scammed end of my process goes through. It's worth checking out if this thread is interesting to you.

It's almost 3am. I really do need to sleep now. I have to figure out how to make an honest living tomorrow.

 

[Margariet]

:zzz: Kill your darlings ! :zzz: