A California man says he lost nearly $900,000 to a new scam being run by a Mexican drug cartel that's branched out into preying on retirees by offering to buy their unused timeshare vacation properties.
James, 76, told the Daily Mail that the Jalisco New Generation cartel conned him out of his life savings using fraudulent bank statements, a phony Mexican intelligence agent, websites registered in Arizona and Iceland, and an escrow company in New York City.
"It was very elaborate," James, who asked that his full name not be used, said in a report published Sunday. "That's why I was sucked in. I just thought there were too many players involved for it to be a scam."
The ruse began with an unexpected, October 2022 call from a man who claimed to be real estate agent in Atlanta and who offered more than $22,000 for the California timeshare James bought for $9,000 in the mid-1990s but only used twice in the past 20 years, he said.
But the deal supposedly hit a series of snags, all of which required James to wire funds to a bank in Mexico, and eventually led to another call from a purported agent with Mexico's financial intelligence service.
That man allegedly extorted more money from James to overlook what he claimed were violations of Mexican law.
James was even duped into investing in a bogus, sustainable housing project in Mexico, he said.
In addition to draining his savings, James said, he gave the scammers the proceeds from selling his childhood home and $150,000 he borrowed from his daughter.
"My wife said from the start that it didn't sound right. Obviously, I should have listened to her," he said. "She's pissed about the whole thing. But she's kind of resigned herself to the fact that I was the stupid one."
James first told his story to the New York Times, which last month revealed how Jalisco New Generation, one of Mexico's most violent gangs, has made hundreds of millions of dollars over the past decade by operating call centers that target older timeshare owners in various countries.
Some targets are identified by bribing employees at Mexican resorts to leak information about the guests, unidentified American officials told the Times.
The scam has also turned bloody, with eight call center workers found dead on the outskirts of Guadalajara last year.
When local officials searched the call center, they found blackboards with lists of foreign names and details of timeshare memberships, along with a red-stained mop, the Times said.
Michael Finn, a lawyer in St. Petersburg, Florida, said he's represented thousands of clients embroiled in various types of timeshare fraud and realized how serious it was becoming when he got a call four years ago from a woman whose mother wired her life savings of $1.2 million to Mexico to sell her timeshare.
"I'm old, just like these clients," Finn told the Times. "We tend to be trusting when someone calls chatting us up and selling us these dreams."
