TravelLink

Victim Location 91784

Total money lost $3,400

Type of a scam Travel/Vacations

We were initially contacted via email by Travellink, Ryan Diaz. Others on the document from Travillink, Jim Danielson (Agent) & Isabella Duncan (Secretary) asked if we’d be interested in selling/transferring out Timeshare/membership to them, an entity, and was offering a pretty handsome price…not unfair, just quite a bit considering in years past we could not "give" it away. We had 2 memberships, one week with Cabo Villa Beach Resort & 2500 points with Shell Vacations, now Wyndham Resorts. When I heard they were willing to pay $21,000 for the Shell points and $30,000 for the Cabo week, certainly my interest was peeked. They stated they had a law firm out of NY, Stephan David Robertson Law Group. A gentleman named Anthony from the firm at 1041 6th Avenue, New York, NY 10018, then contacted us and basically took over the dealings. The contract sent showed both timeshares, meaning they were both part of the same contract. They then sent the contract which both my spouse and I signed and sent back. They then went to work on getting the Cabo membership done first. We were contacted by "MEMBER SERVICES" and asked me to confirm my name, email address and phone. They don’t answer using the "Cabo Villa’s" name…red flag. Seems to be a theme among these other fraud claims. Then they came with the "10% transfer fee", meaning 10% of the sales price, needing to be wired to a bank in Mexico City, Banco Santander SA, which checks out online anyway. During this time, the "lawyer" stated he would send us a "Guarantee of the contract" by his firm that the funds would be dispersed upon us fulfilling our part. This really meant nothing to me as most of the people we were dealing with were in Mexico and my ability to go after anyone involved was slim to none. I asked Ryan Diaz/Travellink for any referrals they may have to help me feel better about this. They gave me one, a couple out of Kentucky. I called them and spoke to both husband and wife. They seemed legit but could’ve easily been pawns for Tavellink…who knows. They stated they received their money within a week of wiring their fees. Never mentioned any other fees like capital gains, etc. As stated, "member Services" said…we’d need to wire the fee of $3,000 and it had to come from us directly. Our Credit Union did not wire internationally so I went to Alaska Credit Union and they did take care of the wire. So now at this point we’ve given them $3000 plus a few hundred in wire fees from my two credit unions. At this point, I figured we were at least going to get proceeds for the Cabo Villa membership of $30,000. But they reminded me the other membership had to be dealt with as they were both on the contract. I asked them "why, since they were on the contract together, weren’t both deals moving along concurrently…they could not answer that. They had our $3K and after that was done, we then received another call, this time from "Shell Vacations" asking if we’d been contacted to sell/transfer our membership and if she could help answer any questions…basically giving me the impression she was disappointed we were considering selling it and wanted to stop us…couldn’t really tell honestly but I did feel better about the deal for time being anyway. But she did state, since we were transferring to an entity it would cost more…"maybe as much as $1,000-2,000 but not more than that". Then a week later we got the contract and the transfer fee was, again, 10%/$2,100. This bothered me and I asked for this person, Maria Baranda to call me back. She "danced" thru the conversation (3-way call with the lawyer rep, Anthony) but did not crack. This is where I currently am in the transaction…I’m writing this because after reading all these other horror stories I feel like I have now been duped. It sounds too familiar to these stories My guess is, as soon as I wire the $2,100 for the Shell membership, I’ll get the correspondence telling me I now have to pay "capital gains" to Mexico…that’s when I’ll know for sure but certainly don’t want to throw away another $2,100 to find out. Is there anyone out there that has gotten sales proceeds of this nature??? That’s what I’d like to know…any hope someone out there is legitimate???