A call saying a timeshare has finally sold, but a “tax” or “transfer fee” needs to go out by wire before the money can be released, is the setup federal prosecutors say drove an alleged $40 million scheme. On September 1, two defendants extradited from France, Christian Felipe Rodriguez Peraza and his wife, Brenda Tamayo Corona, made their first court appearances in San Antonio. They join two co-defendants already named in the same federal indictment. Nothing in this case is proven — all four are charged, not convicted, and are presumed innocent unless and until the government proves its case.
Two Defendants Extradited From France To San Antonio
According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Texas, Rodriguez Peraza and Tamayo Corona were arrested in France earlier this year and transferred into U.S. custody on August 31, appearing in federal court in San Antonio the next day. A grand jury indictment returned in the Western District of Texas names four defendants total: Rodriguez, described by prosecutors as the alleged ringleader; Tamayo, his wife; Michael Ian Hollands, a United Kingdom national; and Yorlena Alfonso Cuesta.
The Justice Department’s September 2 release is titled, pointedly, “Foreign Nationals Indicted and in Federal Custody for Alleged $40M Timeshare Fraud” — the word “alleged” is doing real work there. An indictment is a formal accusation, not a verdict, and every fact attributed to prosecutors below is what the government says it can prove, not an established finding.
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The Fake-Official Script Investigators Describe
Prosecutors allege the group targeted U.S. citizens who owned timeshares along Mexico’s Pacific coast, telling them their properties had already been sold to a buyer. The catch, according to the indictment, was that the “proceeds” could only be released after the owner wired taxes, transfer fees or other closing costs in advance. To make the pitch credible, the indictment alleges the defendants posed as U.S. and Mexican government officials and used the real identities of licensed American attorneys who had no involvement in the scheme, so a worried owner who tried to verify the deal could seem to find a real name attached to it. Court filings do not allege that any of the attorneys named were aware their identities had been borrowed, or that they had any role in the scheme.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office said many of the victims were elderly and, in the government’s words, “sent all the money they had and more.” That line, if it holds up, points to a pattern familiar to fraud investigators everywhere: once someone believes a sale is real and a deadline is looming, a second and third fee request often follows the first.
Six Named Victims, Five Of Them In Texas
The indictment identifies six victims by the government’s count, and court filings show five of the six lived in Texas, which is part of why the case was charged out of the Western District of Texas rather than elsewhere. The $40 million figure prosecutors cite is the alleged scale of the broader scheme, not a sum tied to those six people alone.
All four defendants are charged with conspiracy to commit wire fraud, conspiracy to commit money laundering, and conspiracy to engage in monetary transactions in property derived from unlawful activity. Each of those is a federal conspiracy count carrying its own potential prison exposure on conviction, but exposure is not the same as guilt — a conviction requires the government to prove its case at trial or secure a plea, and none of that has happened yet.
Why The Advance-Fee Timeshare Call Still Works
The Federal Trade Commission has warned for years about the exact mechanics prosecutors describe in this case: a caller claims to represent a buyer, an escrow company or a government agency, promises a fast sale at a good price, and then asks the owner to wire money before anything closes. The FTC’s guidance is blunt on the tell: a legitimate resale company collects its fee after a sale is finalized, not before. Any call that reverses that order — pay first, get your money later — is the pattern to distrust, regardless of how official the caller sounds or how real the attorney’s name looks on paper.
If you or a parent owns a timeshare and gets a call like this, the math matters more than the story. No legitimate closing requires the seller to wire “taxes” or “transfer fees” to a personal account or an unfamiliar company before receiving sale proceeds. That single fact is enough to end the call.
How To Check A Buyer, Agent Or Attorney Before You Pay Anything
Before wiring a dollar toward any timeshare sale, verify three things independently, using contact information you find yourself, not a number or link the caller provides. First, confirm the buyer or resale company’s business registration with your state’s Secretary of State or Attorney General’s consumer protection office. Second, if a lawyer’s name is attached to the deal, look that attorney up directly through your state bar association’s own lawyer-lookup tool and call the bar or the firm using a number you find independently — not one texted or emailed to you — since the indictment in this case alleges real attorney identities were used without those attorneys’ knowledge. Third, treat any request to wire money, send a gift card, or use cryptocurrency to pay a “fee” as a stop sign; those payment methods are difficult to reverse and are a hallmark the FTC flags in nearly every timeshare resale scam it tracks.
If you’ve already sent money or suspect you’re being targeted, the FTC’s ReportFraud.ftc.gov intake and your state Attorney General’s office are the two places to file a report, and doing so promptly can matter for any later restitution effort tied to a prosecution like this one.
This article was produced with AI assistance and reviewed by a human editor. Figures are linked to their primary sources; where a claim could not be verified from the public record, we say so.
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