Victim Location 77520
Total money lost $78,485.67
Type of a scam Travel/Vacations
In February, 2018, my husband and I were contacted by Mr. J. Garcia of Getaway Travelers, Inc. in Atlanta, GA with an offer from a Mexican citizen, Francisco Vidal Servitje, (buyer) to buy our vacation club membership at Secrets Aura Resort in Cozumel, Mexico. Escrow Holding Management (EHM) in Iselin, NJ works hand-in-glove with Getaway Travelers Inc. (GT) in this scam operation. Barbara Powell is the CEO of GT. Neil Thompson is CEO of EHM and Richard Harris is Senior Escrow Officer.
My husband and I thought very carefully before entering this contract and were promised no upfront fees. We eventually signed the contract (March 5, 2018) and felt that we were dealing with two reputable United States companies. Soon EHM began insisting that we pay fee after fee which were supposedly demanded by the Mexican “corrupt” government. Each time we were guaranteed that we would receive our money as soon as the fee was received in Mexico. Eventually we were told by EHM that the only way we could cancel the contract and get our money back was to pay more fees. They assured us that the buyer would reimburse the fees to us at closing. We received a signed guarantee of this reimbursement from the buyer as well as other written and notarized guarantees from EHM.
On May 8, 2018 we notified Mr. Neil Thompson, CEO Escrow Holding Management, to terminate our contract immediately and that $25,870.61 be reimbursed and delivered to us via certified check. Mr. Thompson, as well as Mr. Richard Harris, said we had to pay the fees to close the contract. Eventually we were told that Mexico was investigating the buyer for money laundering and all we could do was wait for the investigation to be completed in a year or 18 months. At this point we accepted the fact we had been scammed.
In October, 2020, Mr. Ethan Williams, GT operations manager, called to say that
Getaway Travelers, Inc. wants to restore its good name. He was very sincere and very convincing as was Barbara Powell. Hiring a Mexican attorney to assist Getaway Travelers, Ethan Williams supposedly spent most of February in Mexico trying to resolve the situation. I cannot stress to you how convincing this man was. In Mexico he was attempting to get the buyer to pay half of the $38,614.84 cancellation fee. The buyer’s partner would pay the buyer’s half of the cancellation fee in the amount of $19,307.44 USD. Our previously paid $12,440.00 “good faith deposit” (which was supposedly outside the contract) would be used to partially cover the cancellation fee with a balance of $6,867.44 USD which we paid Jan. 30, 2020. I have recently read online complaints from other victims about these 2 companies.