Two California retirees say they lost nearly $1 million after falling victim to a bizarre timeshare scam run by a notorious Mexican drug cartel known for its horrifying claims of cannibalism.
This rapidly evolving scam, run by the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG), extorts hundreds of millions of dollars each year from Americans, including James, 76, and his wife Nikki, 72, who tried to sell the lake. It is estimated that there are. Tahoe timeshare.
James, who bought the property in the mid-’90s for about $9,000 but only stayed there twice, received a call in October 2022 from a real estate agent named Michael offering to buy the timeshare. I jumped at the opportunity.
“He was good at pleasing himself.” James told DailyMail.com.. “He had an air of confidence about him. I thought, ‘This guy is the real deal.'”
The agent, who later noticed that James had a slight Spanish accent, claimed to have found a Mexican investor willing to pay more than $22,000 for the property.
The cartel is known for its drug trafficking, gruesome butchering of its enemies in public, forcing recruits to train in cannibalism in “terror schools,” and over the past decade has carried out similar schemes to target elderly Americans. They have made hundreds of millions of dollars by preying on timeshare owners.
A few days after the first call, Michael called again and said he needed $2,600 to cover the cross-border transaction, which he promised would be reimbursed to James.
Mr. James, who did not give his last name to the Daily Mail, acknowledged that his wife had concerns about the deal from the beginning, but said the buyer had given the cash to U.S. Commercial Escrow Corp., the company that owns the trademark. He said he was relieved when Michael told him he would send it. Address in Manhattan.
James also spoke with a representative from the company, who he said spoke with an American accent.
A second fee of $3,600 was then assessed.
“I felt OK,” James said. “I thought, ‘Now I can get compensation and everything will be fine.'”
The fees eventually reached $50,000, at which point James was contacted by a man claiming to be from Mexico’s UIF, a financial intelligence agency. The man claimed that James had committed several violations and would be extradited unless he paid a larger fine.
Throughout that time, James said, the funds were always showing up in an escrow account in New York, although they were never released.
He was then persuaded by the scammers to invest $32,000 in a sustainable housing investment in Mexico, ultimately making dozens of payments for various reasons.
James said she made her last payment in January, amounting to a staggering $890,000 in multiple bank accounts in Mexico.
To fund the payments, he had to borrow $150,000 from his daughter and sell his childhood home.
James soon revealed some worrying details, including that the website for the Atlanta real estate company Michael claimed to be affiliated with was taken down days after the initial call.
It was also discovered that the email address he had as a contact for the Bank of Mexico was registered in Arizona and, mysteriously, in Reykjavik, Iceland.
“None of them had addresses or locations in Mexico,” James said.
The U.S. commercial escrow unit’s office also did not exist, the newspaper reported.
So James contacted Mike Finn, an attorney who has represented thousands of people who have fallen victim to similar scams.
Timeshare owners are especially vulnerable to these scams, Finn said. Many timeshare owners are so desperate to ease their burden that when offers come in, “they get so excited that they don’t see the details,” he said.
Once money is sent to Mexico, it is much more difficult to recover, and the FBI can only investigate with the help of local authorities. American lawyers also cannot bring civil suits beyond their jurisdiction, Finn explained.
Timeshare owners in the United States have been defrauded out of $288 million over the past five years, including in a scam by Jalisco New Generation.
This “elaborate” scam cost James his life savings and left his wife furious with him.
“It was very elaborate,” he said. “That’s why I got caught up in it. I thought there were too many players involved for it to be a scam.”
He added, “My wife told me from the beginning that it wasn’t right. Obviously I should have listened to her. She’s disgusted about the whole thing. But she didn’t think I was stupid.” I feel a kind of resignation to the fact that
