St. Frances Timeshare Fraud

Barclays and GE Money were sued by a group of 300 people due to an alleged fraudulent timeshare investment scheme that costs £6 million of loans that they refused to cancel.

The money the group members borrowed were between £10,000 and £20,000 each to invest on timeshare points that they were promised they could exchange to luxury holidays on all the different places around the world. The timeshare investor responsible for this fraudulent scheme, which has since gone bust, that left about 2,500 people with promises and sizeable debts, is the St. Frances Marketing formally known as Easysave Finance Ltd.

St. Frances Marketing had made the sophisticated scheme that allowed customers to obtain loans from Barclay and GE Money during the sign-up process. St. Frances has been now placed in liquidation by the Trading Standards and other five former staff because of trading standards offenses and the two banks insisted on timeshare investors to pay their debts in full. The lawsuit that is filed in the High Court in London suggests that banks should cancel the loans made by the group members because it was taken out in concurrence with a fraudulent scheme. The group claims that the two banks acted as agents for St. Frances and should reimburse them as well as cancel the loans.

On a statement made by Barclays, they said that they are aware of the proceedings and will prove false of the claims of the group. GE Money also said that they will defend its position on the said lawsuit. The group demanded that the two banks should not give them negative credit ratings to other banks.

According to the scheme that St. Frances is offering, clients have the chance to travel to all the luxury resorts in the world by buying timeshare points. These include the places like Australia, Dominican Republic and other Mediterranean hotspots. The company guaranteed their buyers that they will buy back unused points and that the scheme is risk-free.

In a case study that was conducted, Sarah Barnes discovered St. Frances Marketing when she received a phone call from the company stating that she had won a holiday package. They were then introduced to a timeshare scheme that gave them luxury holidays and bought 60 timeshare points that costs £10,495. They signed a credit agreement with GE Money but as time passed by they had realized that they were duped. The interest was never paid and it amounted to about £14,000.