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A Mexican Drug Cartel’s New Target? Seniors and Their Timeshares
One of Mexico’s most violent criminal groups, Jalisco New Generation, runs call centers that offer to buy retirees’ vacation properties. Then, it empties its victims’ bank accounts.

First the cartel cut its teeth with drug trafficking. Then avocados, real estate and construction companies. Now, a Mexican criminal group known for its brutality is moving in on seniors and their timeshares.

The operation is relatively simple. Cartel employees posing as sales representatives call up timeshare owners, offering to buy their investments back for generous sums. They then demand upfront fees for anything from listing advertisements to paying government fines. The representatives persuade their victims to wire large amounts of money to Mexico — sometimes as much as hundreds of thousands of dollars — and then they disappear.

The scheme has netted the cartel, Jalisco New Generation, hundreds of millions of dollars over the past decade, according to U.S. officials who were not authorized to speak publicly, via dozens of call centers in Mexico that relentlessly target American and Canadian timeshare owners. They even bribe employees at Mexican resorts to leak guest information, the U.S. officials say.

The scam represents the latest evolution of the Jalisco New Generation, which is entrenched in both illegal and legal sectors of the economy. With little more than a phone and a convincing script, cartel employees are victimizing people across multiple countries.

And even those employees are vulnerable to the cartel’s ruthlessness.

Last May, the remains of eight young Mexicans who worked at a call center owned by the cartel were discovered in dozens of plastic bags in a ravine on the outskirts of Guadalajara, a city in Jalisco state.

The cartel typically preys on older, retired people who want to leave as much money as they can to their family by selling off assets. Several victims interviewed by The New York Times said the money they had lost to scammers exceeded the value of their initial investment in timeshares in Jamaica, California and Mexico.

“I’m old, just like these clients,” said Michael Finn, founder of Finn Law Group in St. Petersburg, Fla., which has represented thousands of people facing various forms of timeshare fraud. “We tend to be trusting when someone calls chatting us up and selling us these dreams.”

Mr. Finn realized how serious this type of fraud was becoming four years ago, when he received a call from a desperate woman whose mother had wired $1.2 million, her entire life savings, to Mexico to sell her timeshare.

The timeshare industry is booming, with $10.5 billion in sales in 2022, a 30 percent jump from the year before, according to the American Resort Development Association. Nearly 10 million American households own timeshares, the association said, spending an average of about $22,000 for their investment on top of annual fees of around $2,000. Most timeshares are beach resorts.

The sector’s growth coincides with a 79 percent rise over the past four years of timeshare fraud complaints received by the F.B.I. But for scams that originate in Mexico, the F.B.I. can investigate only if it gets the local authorities’ cooperation. And American law firms cannot file civil lawsuits in Mexico without retaining a licensed Mexican lawyer.

Over the past five years, American timeshare owners were bilked out of $288 million, according to the F.B.I., through various types of scams, including those run by the cartel. The real number is most likely larger, as the F.B.I. estimates about 80 percent of those defrauded never register a complaint.

“The victims don’t want to come forward because they are embarrassed and hide it from their families,” Mr. Finn said.

In October 2022, a retired couple — James, 76, and his wife, Nicki, 72 — said they received a call from a supposed real estate agent at Worry Free Vacations in Atlanta, offering to broker the sale of their timeshare in Lake Tahoe, Calif., to a wealthy Mexican businessman. They asked not to publish their last name as they were “very embarrassed” about being defrauded.

As their daughters grew older, the family had stopped using the vacation spot that it bought in the 1990s for some $8,000, so the couple jumped at the opportunity to sell.

The scam started with smaller fees, James said — a few thousand dollars here and there meant to settle Mexican government registration costs for “cross-border transactions.” The fees grew heftier as he was told he was being fined by the Mexican authorities for various violations and could be extradited for breaking the law unless he paid. At one point, James said, the scammers even persuaded him to invest in a new commercial property in Mexico.

About two dozen payments later, the couple have wired nearly $900,000 to various bank accounts in Mexico, according to bank records reviewed by The Times.

Scams that go as far as this are not that uncommon, according to the F.B.I. The agency says that, typically, victims like James and Nicki are wiring the money to bank accounts held by associates of the Jalisco New Generation cartel.

The couple said they had depleted their life savings and were now in debt. They said they even borrowed about $150,000 from one of their daughters and sold James’s childhood home, but have not seen a single cent in return.

“I’m sure that if I were asking them, they’d say, ‘How could you be so stupid?’” James said of his daughters. “And I asked myself that same thing. I used to think I was fairly intelligent.”

The scammers identified themselves as sales representatives and an official at Mexico’s Central Bank, emails reviewed by The Times show, and kept promising that if he paid only “one more fee,” everything would be cleared and his money released.

Yet after every payment, a new fee was piled on.

In a statement, the Mexican Central Bank said it was aware that timeshare fraud was being committed in its name and warned people away from falling for the scam.

Late last year, James started to receive desperate messages from alleged representatives who claimed their colleague was jailed in Mexico after trying to settle James’s case, according to recorded calls and emails reviewed by The Times.

“Please, do everything that you can, to get my friend/boss back home. He misses his family so much and hearing him feels awful, you’re the only hope for this to be resolved,” a recent email read. “The pending amount to be paid is: $157,786.61.”

James said he was considering taking out a second mortgage to pay the amount, until his daughters stopped him.

While the scam targeting timeshare owners is financial, in Mexico it can be deadly.

The eight Mexicans found dead on the outskirts of Guadalajara last year all worked at a call center in the heart of Guadalajara run by the Jalisco New Generation cartel, American officials said. Local prosecutors said when they searched the center, they found a mop with red stains, blackboards with foreign names and details of timeshare memberships.

When New York Times reporters recently visited the call center, they found it was closed, with a police vehicle parked outside. The building was in an upscale neighborhood, across the street from a park. Parents walked by, taking their children to school.

Héctor Flores, the founder of the Light and Hope Collective, which combs through Jalisco state looking for the bodies of the disappeared, said he knew of about 30 people who had disappeared from call centers since 2017. But there are most likely more, he said, as many families do not come forward out of fear.

Detienen a Sujeto por Fraude en Tijuana; Engañó Con “Traspasar” Casa
El sujeto engañó a la víctima, haciéndole creer que le transmitiría la propiedad en el fraccionamiento Villa del Real, por un monto de 310 mil pesos

La Fiscalía Regional de Tijuana ha logrado acreditar, respaldada por pruebas contundentes, la presunta responsabilidad de un individuo en el delito de fraude específico, quien también está implicado en 15 carpetas de investigación relacionadas con este tipo de ilícito.

El trabajo minucioso realizado por el personal adscrito a la Unidad de Investigación Especializada en Delitos Patrimoniales permitió llevar a cabo diligencias judiciales. Como resultado, se presentaron cargos penales contra Génesis “N”, el presunto responsable.

Según lo revelado por el expediente, el 16 de junio de 2021, el imputado habría engañado a la víctima, haciéndole creer que le transmitiría la propiedad de un bien inmueble ubicado en un conjunto residencial en el fraccionamiento Villa del Real, por un monto de 310 mil pesos.

Sin embargo, el trámite nunca se llevó a cabo, ya que ni el acusado ni la entidad que representaba tenían el legítimo derecho para enajenar la propiedad en cuestión. La víctima, en un acto de confianza, habría entregado un anticipo de 140 mil pesos, entre efectivo y transferencia, resultando en un lucro indebido para el imputado y un perjuicio económico para la parte afectada.

En la audiencia correspondiente, en el contexto de la vinculación a proceso del señalado, se determinó la medida cautelar de prisión preventiva justificada.