MIAMI – A Miami couple and five other people were accused by the federal government of conducting a telemarketing ring that tried to sell timeshares to older people.
A news statement from the IRS on Wednesday said that William O’Hanlon, who is 58 years old, operated a number of firms that were part of the conspiracy, including Williams Andrews Burns LLC, also known as “WAB.”
His wife, Karen Stefanowski, was a bookkeeper and was 60 years old.
James Toner, 41, of Lake Mary, Florida, and William Chiusano Jr., 48, of Laguna Niguel, California, were also charged this week.
Authorities claimed that Alex Klemash, 30, of Williamstown, New Jersey, Michael Lambe, 43, of Mullica Hill, New Jersey, and La’Tresa Jackson, 57, of Lindenwold, New Jersey, all pled guilty in March to conspiracy to commit wire fraud.
The news release says that from 2016 to 2020, the ring came up with a plan to make money by selling fake services to timeshare owners, such as “renting or buying the owners’ timeshares under false and fraudulent pretenses or representations, and offering to recover money timeshare owners had already paid in connection with other scams.”
Prosecutors say that the ring got the phone numbers of people who owned timeshares and called them out of the blue to “pitch their various services in exchange for upfront fees.”
They said that during the conversations, the organization had lied to or misled timeshare owners.
Prosecutors noted that one of these lies was that “the timeshare owners had “bonus” timeshare weeks that WAB would rent for them in exchange for an upfront fee, falsely promising the timeshare owners thousands of dollars in rental income.”
The IRS said that after the timeshare owners joined up and paid fees for the company’s “phony” rental services, the accused scammers offered collection and recovery services, promising to get back money lost in previous timeshare scams if they paid another charge.
Prosecutors alleged that the ring informed people who owned timeshares that they had been scammed and should get money from the government. The corporation then said it would get that money for another charge up front.
Authorities said that the organization allegedly offered other fraudulent services, such as “timeshare buyouts/takeovers” on occasion.
In 2022, the state of New Jersey told WAB to pay $10 million because it had scammed people who owned timeshares.
O’Hanlon, Stefanowski, Toner, and Chiusano were all charged with several counts of wire fraud and conspiracy to commit wire fraud.
