This morning, in Federal Court in East St. Louis, IL, Aston Lloyd Davis, 32, of Orlando, FL, was sentenced to 18 months in prison for his role in the National Solutions timeshare re-sale fraud scheme, announced Donald S. Boyce, United States Attorney for the Southern District of Illinois. Davis had pled guilty on June 15, 2016, to a charge of conspiring to commit mail and wire fraud.
Davis was a telemarketer for National Solutions and related companies located in Orlando, Florida. National Solutions defrauded consumers using various fictitious business names, including Bluescape Timeshares International, Country Wide Timeshares, Countrywide Timeshares MA, Landmark Timeshares, Propertys Direct, Quicksale Propertys, Sun Property Networks, Sun Property’s, Universal Propertys, VIM Timeshares, Propertys DRK, Quick Sale Advisers, Quick Sale International, City Resorts, Resort Advisers, American Timeshares, Exit Week, and Resort Advisors International.
National Solutions and the related companies targeted owners of timeshares throughout the United States and Canada. Telemarketers working for National Solutions, including Davis, made telemarketing calls to timeshare owners. During these calls, the telemarketers falsely represented that they had located buyers who were interested in purchasing the victims’ timeshares. To complete the transaction, however, the telemarketers told the victims that they had to pay a fee of approximately $2,000 to National Solutions. There were no buyers interested in purchasing the timeshares, and the victims lost the $2,000 fees that they paid. The telemarketers earned a commission for each fraudulent sale they made.
In various court filings related to the National Solutions scam, the government has alleged that the overall scam bilked over 2,500 consumers out of at least $6 million, including eight victims in the Southern District of Illinois.
In addition to the 18 month prison sentence, the court also ordered Davis to pay $52,637.56 in restitution to the victims of his crime. After he is released from prison, Davis will be required to serve a five year period of supervised release.
The Federal Trade Commission ("FTC") investigated the National Solutions businesses and brought a civil complaint in the United States District Court for the Middle District of Florida in Orlando. Pursuant to a court order in that case, on July 13, 2011, the FTC seized the offices and records of National Solutions.
This prosecution is one of nearly one-hundred timeshare resale fraud prosecutions brought in the Southern District of Illinois over the past four years. The case is part of an ongoing investigation by the St. Louis Field Office of the Chicago Division of the United States Postal Service. The prosecution of this case was handled by Assistant United States Attorneys Bruce Reppert and Scott Verseman.