Timeshare telemarketer pleads guilty to mail fraud
WEST PALM BEACH – Michael Ferrari, a 27-year-old manager of a timeshare resale firm in West Palm Beach, has pleaded guilty to engaging in a scheme to defraud timeshare owners, the U.S. Attorney’s office just announced.
On May 22, the office of Wifredo A. Ferrer, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida, announced that a guilty plea had been reached in the Ferrari case, and that the defendant would be sentenced on July 30.
Ferrari pled guilty to conspiracy to commit mail fraud, in violation of Title 18, U.S. Code Section 1349. According to the plea documents filed with the court, Ferrari and his co- conspirators created a scheme to defraud timeshare owners throughout the United States and Canada between July 2009 and February 2010.
The U.S. Attorney’s office said the scheme involved telemarketers who contacted more than 2,000 timeshare owners, offering to sell their property as long as they first paid an upfront fee.
This has been a frequent complaint among timeshare owners, who have told state and federal authorities that they had been ripped off: that agents who claim to be working for legitimate timeshare resale firms contact people who have a vacation unit on the market. The telemarketers not only promise to sell their unit, but often claim they have a buyer waiting to purchase it – but first they need to pay an advance fee.
Once the fee is paid, the owner never hears from the resale firm again.
Ferrer’s office said Ferrari and his cohorts collected more than $3.3 million in advance fees for so-called “timeshare marketing and sales services” — which never got provided.
The telemarketers were operating under the name International Resort Solutions LLC, doing the calls from what the U.S. Attorney’s office called “six boiler rooms” in locations in Palm Beach County. The callers solicited clients by making false and misleading representations to the timeshare owners regarding IRS’s services, Ferrer’s office claims.
Among the false representations cited by the U.S. Attorney’s office was the telemarketers’ pledge that the firm had buyers lined up for their timeshares. IRS even bragged to potential customers that it had a closing scheduled for their timeshares, and would continue to actively market their unit on the timeshare market.
That never happened, Ferrer’s office said.
The plea deal contract says Ferrari was a manager of one of the IRS boiler rooms, responsible for overseeing the day-to-day operations and supervising the telemarketers.
Earlier in May, six other IRS boiler room managers also pled guilty: Jeffrey Fields, Thomas Ford, Bryan Bergeron, Joshua Holmes, Colin Van Nest Talmage, and Joseph Eichenlaub. They had also been charged with conspiracy to commit mail fraud. All of the defendants are facing a maximum term of 20 years in prison, followed by up to three years of supervised release.
Three other defendants, Michael Franzenburg, Kenneth Foote, Jr., and Joseph Grizzanti, were charged separately in connection with the IRS fraud case. The U.S. Attorney’s office said
Franzenburg was the owner of IRS, while Foote and Grizzanti were managers of an IRS boiler room.
Foote recently got sentenced to six years’ imprisonment, while Grizzanti got a five year sentence.
The case is being prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Adrienne Rabinowitz.
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