Unauthorized Soliciations:
Unauthorized Solicitations and Possible Scams are now joined together to reinforce the importance of being alert. We don't want to be paranoid, but we do want to be careful.Cold calling is fine. Sales personnel have to generate leads somehow, and sometimes, the cold call is the appropriate way to reach out.
However, there is a big difference between selling legitimate products and services and trolling for naive, trusting individuals. Taking advantage of a person's naïveté for money is unconscionable.
There is a fine line between wanting, trusting, releasing personal information on blind faith and conducting a meaningful level of due diligence. Sometimes, gut reactions are alright. But other times, paying money without proper due diligence could be lost forever.
Part of the service we provide is a database of sorts. This page provides a listing of alleged companies that, through their representatives, have presented themselves as legitimate parties who want to buy your timeshare. Interesting stories...yes. But very dangerous. Do not fall into temptation.
Please send us your experiences and company names so we can post them here and in the Possible Scam pages.
Thank you for your participation. Without it, this would be a blank page!
| 2025-12-01 |
A Note from grupovidavacation.com: "Dear valued Member, Reviewing your contract we noticed that you have 15 Certificate Weeks from your Vida Ambassador Program that you have not used and are about to expire, this weeks can be used on any Grand Mayan - Grand Master Suite 2 BDR unit paying a $965 dollar usage fee in advance for the full week on any season depending on availability. If you feel that you won't be able to use your Certificate Weeks, we implemented a new excellent rental program in which you can get $2,400 dollars per week by renting them. We will rent your weeks internally through travel agencies in which we are associated with and will be using them to bring more members into our new programs. The procedure is very simple, the only thing you have to do is decide how many weeks you want to rent, sign the Guaranteed Rental Agreement, pay the usage fee for the weeks you decided to rent and wait 30-45 working days to receive payment, Guaranteed. If you are interested in making a reservation or renting some weeks please reply to this email with the best time to call, so we can explain with detail any of the two options. NOTE : Usage Fee (Maintenance Fee) cannot be deducted from proceeds, they have to be paid in advance like any ordinary reservation. We will need to explain program with detail before sending documents. Member can only rent one time per year, as many weeks as he / she wants, but only once per year. PLEASE CONFIRM OF RECEIVING EMAIL. Sending you sunshine from Mexico, Customer Service Center Paseo de las moras S/N Fraccionamiento Nautico Turistico Nuevo Vallarta, Nayarit, 63735 Mexico U.S & Canada 1-877-211-9359 All other Countries 01-877-211-9359 Monday - Friday 8 am to 8 pm CST Saturday - Sunday 9 am to 3 pm CST customerservice at grupovidavacation.com Experience more with the Vidanta App Make spa, golf, and restaurant reservations, access resort maps, find activities, and more." Highlights:
Essentially, the sender wants to confirm your email is accurate and include it with other accurate email addresses to continue fraudulent schemes. Be very careful. Do not send anything to this company. | |
| 2025-11-19 |
Max sent this warning today. desarrollomarina-vallarta.com is not connected with Grupo Vidanta and is a scam.
The domain seeking rentals is for sale.
Vidanta DOES NOT solicit members for rentals or sales, even though the sales people will offer to trade weeks for income on the side to help make the sale. After all, if we can finance the purchase, receive income to cover the loan payments, why wouldn't we all just finance our purchases. Too many of us do, and then, years down the road, find out rental income does not appear as promised. There is no connection between these organizations and select sale personnel. As a Vidanta member, there is no corporate support from Vidanta if you accept oral promises that don't come true. This is true, even if the promise is backed up with numbers on a sheet. We are all very proud of our ownership in Vidanta. We also should remember that our contracts do not increase in value over time. The residual value is in the wonderful vacations available through use of your contracts. | |
| 2025-11-04 |
We were "informed" that our reservation is booked. The email appears to be sent by Vidanta. VidantaGroupMember.com
The first thing we did was check the domains and when they were created. The domain called vidantagroupmember.com was formed 75 days ago, according to VidantaGroupMember.com. The domain called rci-member.com was formed 439 days 75 days ago, also according to VidantaGroupMember.com. Neither of these domains are legitimate. Be very careful about following any instructions or requests issued by these two domains. | |
| 2025-10-08 |
Potential Scam Risk - "William A. Davis" - posing as a Licensed Real Estate Broker with the State of Florida at a firm called Bruner Investment Group LLC, supposedly located at Brickell City Center, 701 S. Miami Ave. Suite 500, 5th Floor, Miami, FL 33130. Why the high risk score?
The person who contacted Nino started out saying "Hi Nino, I’ll get straight to the point: I’m working with a serious investor who’s actively buying a small number of Vidanta memberships from owners who are ready to move on — no pressure, no sales pitch, thanks to the PGA tour in Mexico hundreds of clients are in ready to take advantage of this opportunity and get rid of limited flexibility and increasing usage fee." Nino suggested a virtual call with the alleged William A. Davis. Davis refused to take part in the conversation, stating security concerns. Nino saw through this excuse as a red flag and informed him his concerns were unsubstantiated. Nino's firm is a financial services firm that relies on tight security measures and engages in virtual calls all the time. In the end, Davis stated: "I’m not suggesting there’s an issue—these are simply protocols my firm has in place to protect everyone involved. Now, if I were to look into your company, can you guarantee there would be nothing but positive reviews and no red flags? If your assessment of us is based solely on a Google search, then I’ll have to respectfully decline the offer that was send to you as well. Nothing personal, Nino—I just value transparency, don’t believe in wasting time, and don’t deal in empty promises. If we were operating a scam, we wouldn’t have a registered FEIN with the IRS. Nonetheless, I appreciate your response—thank you. Regards, William" End of story. Be very careful. Scammers are hounding us every day! Thank you for your input Nino. You are helping other Aimfair members by offering your experiences, first hand. | |
| 2025-09-10 |
This morning we were greeted by an email from asesoria at profeco-denuncias.com. The sender claimed to be representing PROFECO, the Mexican Government Consumer Protection Agency. Looking at the domain profeco-denuncias.com clearly shows the sender is not representing PROFECO. Instead, it appears to be a Phishing expedition. We are working on a way to allow you to submit inquiries from questionable senders and hope to have it operational soon. In the meantime, if you receive something like the request that appears below, please be very careful. You do not want to provide anyone with your confidential information. Phishing Attempt - Not PROFECO
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| 2025-06-04 |
Bill is a long time Vidanta member. Like most, he would like to sell one or more of his contracts because he is not using all his available weeks. How we all get on the scammers list of people to call is a mystery hidden in the depths of the "Dark Web", that place on the Internet that is used by unscrupulous individuals and groups. The standard answer is our names are public records found in the Mexican government recording offices where bulk deeds are recorded by developers, landowners, issuers of timeshare contracts and other entities that record ownership transactions. Another less believable is exchange companies leak names and addresses of recent transactions. We don't know the real answer, but we do know our names are circulating through out the scammers web. This is the second of two offers that came after Bill made a purchase in March, 2025. Word travels fast on the Dark Web. In this case, the scammer's email is associated with a legitimate company - City.Travel. Travel is the domain name. It was created on October 5, 2007, and is over 17 years old. This is a legitimate company. Notice in the letter that appears below City.Travel is prominently displayed next to the name of the person called Erick, who contacted Bill by telephone. Erick provided an email address in his letter to Bill, and Bill responded. But the email bounced back. The reason is Erick is not associated with City.Travel at all. Instead, he is associated with a domain called cityfinancetravel.com. Cityfinancetravel.com was created 209 days ago on November 7, 2024. Not a good sign - bounced back email and association that is inaccurate and misleading. Here is Bill's letter: City.Travel vs CityFinanceTravel.com - The second name is the scammer.
This is a reminder that you must be very careful about sending personal and contract information to someone you do not know. These entities are very careful about receiving what could be viewed as anything sent by mail or email. That is the reason Bill's email was returned. Scammers do not want a trail that shows they improperly received confidential information. We all want to sell our contracts. But, please do not fall prey to the Dark Web scammers. Thank you for sharing with us Bill. Great catch and warning! | |
| 2025-05-17 |
Another scam arrived yesterday. It appears to be similar to the alert we received from Shirley. Assured Vacation Rentals claims to have been representing companies and doing business since 2007. That may be true, but It was not using the domain called assurevacationrentals.com because that domain is only 156 days old. According to whoisdomaintools.com, the domain was created on December 12, 2024 and expires on December 12, 2025. The company claims to work with a company to make arrangements for an annual celebration. Here is what the introduction says: Our company is working with a corporation that is interested in purchasing timeshare memberships to use for their annual corporate anniversary celebration. We have been provided your information to reach out to you and see if you would be interested in transferring your membership. Take a look at the prices offered: Too good to be true!
Clearly, this is not a legitimate offer. Recommendation: Stay Away! | |
| 2025-05-12 |
May has become Scam Month!
And May is only 12 days old. Look at the offers below that we received: These are just a few of the offers you will see in the near future. They are all false offers. They do not want to help you. They just want your money. We are very happy to learn that two Aimfair members used skills they learned on Aimfair. Shirley actually called the manager of the building listed as the address for the company making the offer. What did she find? The building manager said the company does not pay rent in the building. Yes, it is a scam. Another Aimfair member had his son in law visit the building where the real estate broker bringing a buyer for the member's contract. Yes, the $1.5 MM was deposited in the escrow account created for the benefit of the member. Yes, the buyer had great resume. He is wealthy, an art collector and very wealthy. So, his son in law visited the address given by the broker. What did he find? Nothing! No real estate company anywhere near the address. All this happened in May. There are many other examples out there. All very convincing and all fake! Just remember, if it sounds too good to be true, then it's not true. | |
| 2025-05-02 |
Chris received a call from a person called Victor Gonzalez. He claims to work for PROFECO, the Mexican government agency devoted to consumer protection. Her first contact was by phone. The caller then followed up with an email that explained the purpose of PRFECO and a form the caller asked Chris to complete. Supposedly, PROFECO is investigating fraudulent activities, and Chris' name is on a list obtained by PROFECO. All looked very official, as you can tell by reviewing the attached copy of the letter. Before we answered Chris, we checked out the domain name used by the email address of the alleged PROFECO representative. The domain name is "profeco-mx.com". Here is what we found: The "profeco-mx.com" domain is 320 days old. It was created on 2024-06-17. It expires on 2025-06-17. It was last updated on 2024-06-17. The website for the official PROFECO website is https://www.gob.mx/profeco. Clearly, Chris caught the eye of a phisher or scammer. Here is a copy of the email and the form she was to complete. There is a lot of confidential information on this form that should not be shared with anyone except those whom you trust. Phishing Form - Allegedly from PROFECO. Do Not Complete!
We all need to be very careful about providing people with information that is confidential. It is very easy to trust someone who claims to be looking out for your best interests. In today's world, it is very easy to fall prey to people who claim to be looking out for your best interests. The Timeshare Industry is filled with scam artists and fraudulent offers. Millions of dollars are lost each year, and the scammers don't feel they are doing anything wrong. In the words of one scammer, "...I don't make them pay me, they just do....". It's true, most people who pay money to people they don't know do so because they are misled. The value of our timeshare interests don't increase in spite of what we are told. So please be careful and do your due diligence before sharing anything with people you don't know. Thank you Chris for sharing your information with us. We all benefit from your contribution. | |
| 2025-01-20 |
Today, we received another call from Mexico. The person claimed to be a representative of FONATUR (Fondo Nacional de Fomento al Turismo) carrying out investigations into scam schemes allegedly perpetuated by resorts and developers in Mexico. The problem is the caller was not telling the truth. FONATUR does not have the mandate to investigate or handle complaints related to fraudulent phone calls, including scams involving timeshares. FONATUR's primary role is the planning and development of tourism infrastructure and projects, not consumer protection or fraud investigation. If you or someone you know has experienced such fraudulent activity, the appropriate authorities in Mexico to report these scams are:
FONATUR' s focus is on tourism development, so it does not address individual consumer issues like fraud. Instead, agencies like PROFECO and CONDUSEF are better suited to assist in such matters. The real reason for the call was to get information. Here is the letter and the accompanying forms: The letter from a scammer calling from Mexico.
This is the first page of the Phishing attempt.
This is the second page of the Phishing attempt.
The domain used by the caller is also a relatively new domain. Here are the statistics from whois.domaintools.com: Dates 496 days old Created on 2023-09-12 Expires on 2025-09-12 Updated on 2024-08-12 Be careful. | |