Timeshare Recovery Scams

Think you've escaped your timeshare nightmare? Think again. This episode of Scams, Hacks, and Frauds exposes a devastating timeshare recovery scam operation that targeted timeshare owners not once, but multiple times over — proving that falling for one scam can make you a target for many more.

What You'll Learn:

• The bait: How "Williams and Burns," posing as a real estate broker, lured timeshare owners with false promises of $2,100/week rental income — for a $1,899+ "membership fee"
• The false urgency trick: Fake conventions and fabricated deadlines designed to pressure victims into quick decisions
• Phase two of the recovery scam: How "Scam Collections and Sales" then targeted the same victims, posing as a legitimate recovery service to help them get their lost money back — for another fee
• The fake chargeback scheme: Why claiming an authorized charge is "unauthorized" doesn't work, and what chargebacks are actually for
• The final blow: A fraudulent FTC settlement scam demanding a $3,999 upfront fee for a payout that never existed
• The takedown: How New Jersey's 2021 civil suit and a 2023 federal case finally caught William Hanlon and his co-conspirators — and what happened when his bail was revoked

Key Recovery Scam Red Flags Covered:

• Promises of "something for nothing"
• Upfront fees for money you're "guaranteed" to receive
• Pressure to act before you've verified a claim independently
• Recovery services contacting you out of the blue

Chargeback Tips: Learn the real rules on when you can (and can't) request a chargeback — including unauthorized charges, undelivered services, and defective products — and why acting quickly matters.

We publish new content every other Monday. The short time our episodes save your wallet, and help protect your family.

If you like shows like "The Perfect Scam" or "Darknet Diaries" then this show might be for you.  

On our website you’ll find more computer hacking, identity fraud, impersonation, consumer rights and Romance Scams.  To find these and to access our transcripts, visit us at www.scamshacksandfrauds.com.

The transcript and spoken audio are available under the Creative Commons, Share Alike, With Attributions license. For more information on this visit creativecommons.org.  

Transcript

Last time we talked about timeshares, and how although they might not techncially be a scam, they can feel a lot like a scam due to the dubious sales techniques and questionable benefits they provide.  This week, we’re looking at scammers who target people who have fallen into the timeshare trap… they call them Timeshare Recovery Scams.  This episode I’ll tell you about three scams from one company, tell you some more about chargebacks and how they can be useful, and give you some tips on how to stay safe from any type of recovery scam, even if it doesn’t involve a timeshare.  I’m Cee, and this is the show that keeps you safe from Scams, Hacks and Frauds.

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Before we start, can you please share this with those you care about to help keep them safe, especially if they’re going on a trip or considering buying a timeshare.  Let's keep everyone safe from recovery scams.

Imagine you’ve bought a timeshare, and it's become a bit of a millstone around your neck. Every year, the costs go higher and higher, and all attempts you’ve made to get rid of it have failed.

Then the phone rings.  It's a real estate broker from a company called Williams and Burns.  There is a convention happening in the same city as your timeshare, and they are desperate for rooms… and they’ve heard that you have three bonus weeks on your timeshare that are about to expire.  They’ll offer you $2100 per week, for a total of $6300… and since they’re bonus weeks, you still have your normal time at the timeshare; it's like money for nothing, right?  Who wouldn’t make such a deal?

Well, not quite nothing.  You’ll need to buy into William’s and Burns’ membership scheme.  Its only $1899 per year, or $2899 for a lifetime - although they define a lifetime as 5 years.  But still, that's a profit of over $4000 a year on the annual plan…. and if you don’t make your money back in 180 days, there’s a money-back guarantee, so there’s no risk.  And if you don’t have the money now, don’t panic, they offer pay by installments…  Who wouldn’t say no?

Well, if you’re a regular listener to this show, you’re probably hearing a lot of alarms already.  There’s a promise of money for nothing, and if you heard our last show, you probably heard some false urgency in there - the convention that's coming to town… now that might initially sound like something that's real, but if there’s no convention - and there never was -  then it’s false urgency, just designed to pile on the pressure.

But this is just phase one of the scam.

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It's six months later.  After you’ve bought into Williams and Burn’s scheme you got an email titled “Fw: WAB Collections and Rentals with Tax ID# $2100 per week Guaranteed!”, and you’ve been looking at it every day, hoping to see your money arrive… Williams and Burns promised you it would arrive 45 to 60 days after signing up, so that money from your timeshare should arrive any day now.

You get a call from a website called ScamCollectionandsales.  They’ve discovered that you might be the victim of a timeshare scam, and offer to help you get your money back.  They ask for several months of your credit card statements, and a fee, so they can help you initiate a chargeback against these scams.

After looking through your statements, they set up a three-way call with the bank, and they tell the bank that your payment to Williams and Burns was unauthorised, along with some other timeshare-related charges, and you need to make a chargeback.  The bank asks you if you authorised the funds… You try to speak up to say that you did in fact authorise those funds, but they jump in to try to stop you.

But the Bank customer service employee hears you… They begin to explain that because you authorised the charge, they can’t consider it fraudulent because you allowed the charge to be made… but the call cuts off.

Not long after that call, you get an email that reads:

Your (sic) not supposed to talk to the bank without us.  This is why you paid

us to represent you. The merchant account is frozen for that company

exactly for this reason- refunds. That means the credit card company

doesn’t take a loss. So now your (sic) the first person this year didn’t get

your money back (sic), not to mention [an employee] spent hours on the

phone with [the credit card company]. All that work for nothing. Why

would you do that to yourself? You must be rich and have money to throw

away.

But there’s still hope.  They tell you that if you file a complaint with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, they can use it to pressure the bank into refunding those charges. 

But the scheme still isn’t over.

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Its several months later, and you’ve gotten a call from someone claiming to be a law firm.  The Federal Trade Commission has apparently been interested in timeshares and has reached a settlement with the company you bought your timeshare from… and your share is $15,640.  All you need to do is pay a one-time upfront fee of $3999… Yes, its our old friends Williams and Burns again.

It probably won’t surprise you to learn that there’s been no verified case of anyone ever getting their money back from a williams and burns scheme, and they were the ScamCollectionandsales site too. … but if you thought that Williams and Burns couldn’t get any lower… well, you’d be wrong.  Williams and Burns did get complaints filed against them with the Better Business Bureau… And since Williams and Burns targeted the elderly, they had a perfect cover story.  They would tell the BBB that they had, in fact, obtained funds for people who’d complained, and that their victims were just senile.  In one case, they claimed they’d collected over $10k for one of their… Customers… and that they simply didn’t remember…. and perhaps most concerningly, in another case they published personal information of one complainer on their Facebook page, including their date of birth, credit card number, and answers to security questions.

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In May 2021, the state of New Jersey struck back, filing a civil suit against the companies behind this scheme, and a year later, the court came back with its ruling, finding hundreds of legal violations, preventing them from operating in New Jersey, and requiring them to pay over $10 million in fines, restitution and other costs.

But the scam did not end.  The federal government got involved and charged William O’Hanlon and six of his co-conspirators in April 2023.  William O’Hanlon, seemingly the head of the operation, was granted bail… which he used to operate other telemarketing companies also engaged in scams targeting Timeshare owners, running a variation of the FTC fraud we discussed before.  In August 2023 his bail was finally revoked and he was stopped.  In May 2025, O’Hanlon, himself aged 60, plead guilty to some of the charges; his wife plead guilty the month before.

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So, before we talk about some of the lessons, I want to talk about Chargebacks.  A part of this story focused on Chargebacks and left on its own might give a false impression about when you can, and can’t do a chargeback.

In the examples in this story, the Chargebacks were denied as they were initially framed as unauthorised, and that is certainly grounds for a chargeback.  An unauthorised charge occurs when someone who isn’t you or authorised by you places a charge on your account, but the process was stopped because the cardholder actually authorised the purchase.  It's absolutely true you can’t claim that a charge was unauthorised if you know it was in fact authorised - that would be fraud.  But there are other reasons why you can request a chargeback.

You can also request a chargeback for services you have not received, where services are not as described, and for defective products - so if you paid someone to do some work around the house and they don’t show up or you buy a product and it falls to bits on the way home, you are fully entitled to do a chargeback.  We recommend trying to resolve it directly with the retailer or service provider first, as it may be quicker, simpler, and just fair. But if you’re not getting anywhere or they’ve gone out of business, a chargeback is the way to go.

Different card networks and countries have different rules on how long you have to file a chargeback, so don’t delay.

So in this situation, had the charges been disputed on different grounds, that might have been successful, but it would have potentially raised a red flag about the initial scam.  Chargebacks are a very powerful tool against scammers and dodgy retailers - if they get too many, as we discussed in our episode on tech support scams, they can get cut off from the financial world completely.

But as for this scam, the biggest red flag is that something for nothing.  Take a breath.  If this rent is really as guaranteed as they say, why do they need my money?  They can take it from the rent they’re collecting.  If this FTC settlement really exists, why do I need them?  Why can’t I claim directly myself, for free?  If there’s a real FTC refund scheme going you’ll find it, and how to claim on their website.   If you’re in the UK and you’ve seen those ads for car loan complaints, the same principle applies to them - why do you need a claims company when you can make a complaint yourself, to the bank, for free?

If you ever get a call offering you part of a settlement, just hang up, search for the case online yourself, and contact the organisation dealing with it directly.

Although this scheme is over, it's not the only one.  The UK’s Serious Fraud Office has many cases open against companies running similar schemes there, and in April 2026 a court in the US ordered Christopher Carroll of a firm calling itself “Consumer Law Protection” in Wisconsin to pay $140 million after running similar operations.  There is nothing unique about this case.  Although it's true to say that you can’t get caught up in a timeshare recovery scam if you don’t buy a timeshare, these operations run for all other types of scams too.  Once you’re identified as someone who might fall for a scam, your name gets circulated around the scammer community as a possible mark, so if you do fall for a scam, you need to be extra vigilant.  If you know someone who has, make sure you send them this show.

I’ve been Cee, and this has been Scams, Hacks, and Frauds.  Please share this show with the people you care about, especially if they’ve fallen for a scam… and if you have, please share your scam story with me; a link is in the show notes.