When James, 76, received a call from an estate agent in Atlanta, Georgia, offering to buy his timeshare, he could have bitten his hand off.
James and his wife Nicki, 72, had bought the property in Lake Tahoe, California, in the mid 1990s for just shy of $9,000, but only stayed there twice in the last 20 years.
The agent gave a slick pitch and a few days later called back with ‘good news’: he had found a Mexican investor willing to part with upwards of $22,000 for the West Coast retreat.
James and his wife Nicki wanted out of their timeshare in Lake Tahoe
Around six months later, James and Nicki had lost almost $1million as part of a bizarre but sophisticated scam allegedly linked to a deadly Mexican cartel.
James told DailyMail.com about that initial phone call, purportedly from a man named Michael from Worry Free Vacations in Atlanta in October 2022.
‘He was good at ingratiating himself,’ James said. ‘He had an air of confidence. I thought ‘this guy’s legit’.’
In hindsight, he may have had a slight accent, possibly Mexican, James recalls, but it barely registered at the time.
Michael had wealthy clients who wanted to invest in US timeshares and James had four, with one, in Lake Tahoe, that he was keen to offload.
A few days after James was told of the Mexican investor, Michael called back. He had ‘ran into a little bit of a thing’.
A fee of $2,600 was required for the cross border transaction, but the buyer had promised to cover this.
James, who did not want to share his last name, admitted his wife had concerns about this deal from the get-go.
But he was reassured when Michael told him the buyer would send the cash to US Commercial Escrow Corps, an escrow company with a registered address in Manhattan.
James was given details for the account and when he checked it, the $2,600 reimbursement appeared to have been paid.
The scammers use forged bank statements that look authentic
He even made contact with a representative of the escrow company, who spoke with an American accent.
Convinced of its legitimacy, he wired the $2,600 fee to a bank account in Mexico, as requested.
But then the deal hit another snag. A different cross border registration fee would cost another $3,600, but the buyer would again reimburse James for his troubles.
He checked the escrow account and, as before, this payment appeared to have been made.
‘I felt alright,’ James said. ‘I thought ‘I’m getting reimbursed for this, all will be well’.’
About a week later, Michael called again. And so it went on.
The fee total soon hit the $50,000 mark, at which point he was contacted by a man who purported to be from the UIF, Mexico’s financial intelligence unit.
He demanded heftier fees for various violations James had supposedly committed, with threats of extradition if he did not comply.
All the while, his costs were seemingly being reimbursed by the mysterious Mexican investor, who clearly had no limits to his wealth.
The money always appeared in the New York escrow account, but no funds were ever released.
James was even convinced by the scammers to invest $32,000 in a sustainable housing investment in Mexico.
He received paperwork confirming the transaction that appeared to be from the Bank of Mexico, with detailed addresses and letterheads.
In total, James was required to make a dozen payments for a variety of reasons.
He made his last payment in January, with the grand total reaching a whopping $890,000, spread across various bank accounts in Mexico.
A little under a third of this was related to his timeshare, with the rest accounting for by fees for the sustainable housing investment.
The gun-toting Jalisco New Generation cartel is best known for drugs, but has also scammed US timeshare owners out of millions of dollars in recent years
To fund these payments, James had to borrow $150,000 from his daughter and sell his childhood home.
By the time he started to uncover some worrying details, it was already too late.
James discovered that the website for the Atlanta estate agency had been registered in 2021, but was taken down just days after his first phone call from Michael.
The email address he had for a man who claimed to be from the Bank of Mexico, alongside domain names for other ‘Mexican’ companies that had been involved in the racket, appeared to have been registered in Arizona and, inexplicably, Reykjavik.
‘None of them had any addresses or locations in Mexico,’ James said.
When DailyMail.com visited the address for US Commercial Escrow Corps in midtown Manhattan, it appeared that the suite number it had provided did not exist, and no one in the building had heard of the company.
For James, the scam cost him his life savings — and the respect of his wife.
‘It was very elaborate,’ he said. ‘That’s why I was sucked in. I just thought there were too many players involved for it to be a scam.
‘My wife said from the start that it didn’t sound right. Obviously, I should have listened to her.
‘She’s p***** about the whole thing. But she’s kind of resigned herself to the fact that I was the stupid one.’
