Buying a timeshare is a real estate transaction that provides partial ownership of a vacation property. Owners can visit their timeshare a set number of days a year when others who share ownership in the same property are not using it. It usually comes with a maintenance fee owners must pay, ranging from hundreds to thousands of dollars a year, indefinitely, unless you sell the timeshare.
If owners don’t use their timeshare, they still must pay the maintenance fee. But as they get older, some owners are eager to stop paying that fee by selling the timeshare.
The Department of Justice says Jess Kinmont and John P. Wenz, Jr. took advantage of more than 8,000 people nationwide, many of them elderly, who wanted to sell their timeshare.
The two operated a Florida-based timeshare resale scam business, scamming victims out of more than $18 million based on false promises that they could help timeshare owners sell or rent their timeshare properties.
“The defendants monetized their clients’ trust to commit a multi-state fraud scheme that enabled them to steal millions of dollars from more than 8,000 victims, including many seniors who were particularly misled by the defendants’ false promises,” said U.S. Attorney Ryan K. Buchanan said in a statement. “Kinmont and Wenz solicited hefty up-front fees based on fraudulent representations that they would sell and rent the victims’ timeshare properties.”
On Oct. 12, Jess Kinmont, 57, of Port Orange, Florida, was sentenced by Chief Judge Timothy C. Batten Sr., to seven years in prison to be followed by three years of supervised release and ordered to pay restitution of nearly $12 million. The sentence was imposed following Kinmont’s guilty plea to wire fraud conspiracy on April 5, 2023.
Telemarketing Operation
“For years, Kinmont and Wentz ran the scam without once selling a timeshare interest, only a series of lies,” said Keri Farley, Special Agent in Charge of FBI Atlanta, in a statement. “Exploitation like this has a crippling effect on victims. The FBI and our partners will continue to pursue financial fraudsters who exploit anyone for personal and financial gain.”Between January 2012 and December 2016, Kinmont and Wenz operated Pro Timeshare Resales, a timeshare resale business. They hired callers and wrote scripts for those callers to use in a telemarketing scam targeting timeshare property owners, according to U.S. Attorney Buchanan.
The telemarketers called timeshare owners and falsely claimed that Pro Timeshare Resales had a buyer or renter ready and willing to buy or rent their properties for a specific price. Then, they promised to sell the timeshares quickly, sometimes within a specific time period. But Kinmont and Wenz’s representations and promises were false. In reality, they never sold a single timeshare interest during the five years of the scheme’s operation, Buchanan said.
They charged timeshare owners up to $2,500 as an advance fee and in some cases, after the timeshare owners paid the advance fee, Kinmont and Wenz strung them along with more false claims, Buchanan said. For example, the defendants assured owners that they would soon receive proceeds from a sale or rental, and often convinced the owners to pay additional purported closing costs or other fees as a part of these fake transactions. Requests for refunds were typically denied or ignored.
The district court judge noted at sentencing that the defendants’ fraud scheme was “breathtaking” in scope. The two have been permanently banned from timeshare resales and telemarketing,
This case was investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Federal Trade Commission.
In 2018, the FTC ordered them to surrender their assets, including $1.84 million in cash held by a court-appointed receiver, property worth $600,000 owned by Mr. Kinmont, along with his Range Rover, Ferrari, Bayliner Boat and a Rolex Watch.
Mr. Wenz surrendered $215,000 in brokerage and bank accounts, two homes, two trucks, silver coins and a diamond ring.
