Complaint Review: First American Realtors

My family and I went to Cabo San Lucas, Mexico this past July for 2 weeks. It would have been the most memorable vacation if it was not for the horrible fraud/scam timeshare experience we encountered for the last 3 months while back in the U.S.

On 5 Aug 15, my wife and I entered into a contractual agreement with Rosewood Luxury Estates (RLE) for a dual-transaction. The sales/marketing person that we dealt with was Mr. Phillip Jack Atkerson, and their contracts reviewer was Ms. Daniela Lieras. RLE was purchasing a deeded US timeshare that we held (with Alfred Smith as their named buyer), and we were purchasing a membership into their Maria Mar Private Residences Collection along with a Signature Integrated Travel Systems membership.

RLE required for us to put down a $10,000 usd deposit (it was split across 2 credit cards), and the remaining funds transfers would be done at closing. They gave us paperwork to use First American Realtors (FAR) (aPhoenix, AZ company) as the intermediary company to complete all of the remaining sales transactions to bring these to closing.

Per RLE instructions that they provided to us, we proceded to deal with FAR(specifically with Mr. David Parker) to get the tranactions to closing. Over several weeks, FAR(Mr. David Parker)failed to bring the sales to a successful closing, demanding that we pay additional funds that we never agreed to pay. After further research, the address provided does exist however after speaking with security of that building she stated that this business has never been here since she has worked the past 10 years. The website went off line as we began questioning their shady actions. Further research of their website domain shown that the domain was registered by a person in Mexico; very uncharacteristic for a so-called US company.

A further slant of this scam is that the FAR company uses for their logo/letterhead, a US registered trademark  of a legitamate company with a similar name, First American Title Company (see uploaded image). The copying of this logo is by no coincidence, as First American Title has a solid reputation in the US real estate industry. In fact, we have used the real First American Title company for previous real estate and timeshare transactions, which led to our guard being lowered more than it should have here.

On one occasion, "Mr. Parker" called and left a message for us, stating, "Hello, I am calling for Mr. David Parker." After a brief pause, realizing that he was using the wrong name in this guise, Mr. Parker immediately disconnected the call. This man couldn't even keep his cover name straight during this call.

On 2 or 3 Sep 15, I contacted RLE and asked to speak to someone regarding the experience we had with FAR.  On the afternoon of 3 Sep, Mr. JC Balades called me; I informed him of the terrible experience that we had with FAR, citing the extortionist tactics taken to try and get more money from us to bring the sales to closing. He said he'd investigate with FAR and get back to me the next day. I did not hear back from LRE until 7 Sep, when he called and spoke to my wife and I. He said that he was sorry, that we should not have had to pay the $10,209 to FAR and that no additional funds should have had to come from us. He stated that he wanted to protect the reputation of the RLE company, and would take immediate steps to cancel the contract and refund our $10,000 deposit.

Many days later, no refund credit was received to our credit cards, and I tried contacting them several times. The only person that would answer their phone or emails was Ms. Daniela Lieras; she stated that Mr. Balades was still working to get our refund, which was the latest as of today, 14 Sep. But this stalling and failure to deliver promisses is a continued habit, raising strong suspicion that both LRE and FAR were working together to scam us of our moneys. We have paid a total of $20,209 to both as of today and are waiting for refunds which have not materialized.

As of 3 Nov 2015, RLE representative JC Balades & FAR representatinve Mr. David Parker are wanting us to wire them $3200 to "release the funds in the escrow account to us". This third attempt to get money from us did not deliver another cent to this scam program and now we are dealing with the loss and pursuing other legal recourses. An international lawyer was contacted and he basically said we will never see our money again. I want to help prevent others going through this so he suggested filing claim with FBI & Federal Trade Commision which we did. Also Mexico has an office called Profeco, the form is in Spanish so we are looking at hiring a translator to file our claim.