Tag Archives: Antonio Flores

Place in the sun dreams turned into a nightmare

February 14th, 2011
Burton Mail
Punta Perla, Dominican Republic

Punta Perla, Dominican Republic

OCEAN View Properties was founded by buy-to-let tycoon Colin Thomas in 2001.

He is now facing criminal charges in Spain for fraud and misappropriation of funds in relation to alleged irregularities with his overseas property investment company.

He marketed the properties using celebrities while his then friend, convicted conman Sean Woodhall, searched for development opportunities on the Costa del Sol.

Ocean View was behind a number of successful enterprises but ran into difficulties when it became involved as an agent for Spanish developer Ricardo Miranda Miret.

More than a thousand British investors who paid £45 million for off-plan overseas property developments have lost their money after Ocean View was formally dissolved in 2009 with the appointment of liquidators Grant Thornton.

The purchasers each paid deposits, typically of between £85,000 and £120,000, four years ago for properties in Spain and the Dominican Republic, which were either never built or said to be sub-standard.

Some are alleged to have lost much more.

Two investors sank almost a million pounds each into schemes run by Miranda Miret, one being a 350 luxury apartment build at the Estepona Country Club on the Costa del Sol, the other marketed as a prestigious 6,000-property development, Punta Perla, in the Dominican Republic.

When the sector collapsed amid corruption scandals in the Estepona region, the venture started to fail. Thomas and Woodhall had turned their attention to the Caribbean development of Punta Perla in the Dominican Republic.

Woodhall, 43, went missing after his light aircraft crashed over Brazil in 2008 and, while his body has never been recovered, he has been declared dead.

Nick Wood, partner at Grant Thornton’s Recovery and Reorganisation practice, said: “We are investigating what happened to monies paid by investors. There is a black hole amounting to millions of pounds.

“We are looking to identify any claims which can be instigated to recover monies for creditors.

“Our investigation is focusing on Ocean View’s operations in the UK and overseas jurisdictions including Spain.”

Ocean View, which operated as a franchise throughout the UK, had an office at the historic country mansion of Longdon Hall in Rugeley.

Colin Thomas owns a luxury home at Town Hill in Yoxall, where he lives with his partner, Michelle de Havilland.

Both Thomas and Ms de Havilland are Friday night regulars at The Meynell Ingram Arms in Hoar Cross, where they helped to set up the charity madcap Hoar Cross Downhill Soapbox race.

Thomas and the former directors, or considered de facto directors, of Ocean View, which include David Stewart and Robert Parkes, were named in the criminal claim lodged in a Madrid court on February 4.

Those in charge of running Ocean View and Spanish developer Miranda Miret have previously strongly denied any wrongdoing.

Antonio Flores, the Spanish prosecuting lawyer from Marbella-based firm Lawbird, said: “I don’t believe Ocean View knew nothing about what was going on.

But they will be forced to talk in court.

“This was a scam of huge proportions. It has the potential of becoming one of the biggest property scams, as none of the developments will be built.”

Several celebrities were involved in the marketing of the company, but there are no suggestions of wrongdoing against any of them.

They included Martin Roberts, presenter of the BBC’s Homes Under the Hammer property programme.

He claims the company owes him and his partner around £200,000.

England international footballers Gareth Barry and Alan Smith also bought properties successfully from Ocean View.

BBC Inside Out North West Series 8, Programme 2

September 12th, 2005

The Inside Out team investigates why one Cheshire couple’s dream of buying a home in Spain turned into a nightmare. After paying a Manchester company a down payment of £20,000, their home is still a building site. Inside Out looks where things went wrong for the North West couple who dreamed of a new life in the sun.

Antonio Flores’ appearance.

Full Video

Links

El Mundo: Thousands of Timeshare owners victims of a real estate swindle on the Costa del Sol

January 13th, 2002
Story by Jose Carlos Villanueva | El Mundo

These companies are believed to have conned thousands of victims only last year. The scandal is already known in the Uk, where it has reached serious notoriety, and where it is believed that these fraudsters would have only during 2001 swindled victims for more than 12 million pounds. The facts of the swindle are being currently investigated by the judge in charge of Court of First Instance number 5 in Fuengirola, Antonio Vicente Férnandez. 

Speaking to El Mundo, Antonio Flores declared that he discovered the fraud by Internet, as his legal practice in Marbella operates mainly via the Web. Gradually, he began receiving hundreds of complaints by email, who he re-directed to the Timeshare Consumers Association in order to be able to mount a joint claim. The Timeshare Consumers Association has received also many hundreds of complaints. 

The first step in the nefarious operative mounted by the no less than 50 fraudster companies consists of the purchase of list of timeshare owners. These lists are purchased in the black market, and it is believed that 400.000 owners´ details are currently being used by the fraudsters. They then telephone the owners saying they have a buyer who is willing to make an offer for their timeshare. 

The tele-operators workers used by the fraudsters mainly operate from flats located in Mijas-Costa, Fuegirola and Torremolinos, with 20 or 30 people specially trained to be very persuasive and convincing. In exchange for the offer, and to make the deal possible, they request a sum of money, averaging 850 pounds (1.380 Euros), although in some cases victims have paid up to 2.000 pounds (3.245 Euros) upfront. 

Once the companies have received the payment in several accounts scattered in different banks along the Costa del Sol, the timeshare owner becomes a another victim and will only find dead telephone lines, and in the best of cases, promises that in short the deal will be concluded, after which the lines eventually become silent. 

The criminal gangs are believed to be run by British criminal organisations, and are normally operate in periods of six months during which they make thousands of telephone calls, fax communications and letter deliveries. In some faxes the fraudsters have used names of Notary Public lawyers in Marbella, and have falsified stamps of the Junta de Andalucia (Andalucia Regional Authority) and the Town Hall of Málaga. 

The lawyer Antonio Flores, who will spearhead the claim on behalf of more than 300 victims, together with his colleage Francisco García Ramírez, points out the effectiveness of the Fraud Squad of the Provincial Police Station in Málaga, who have already dismantled some of these organisations and arrested a number of poeple. 

Antonio Flores explains that the main obstacle encoutered by the judge Mr. Antonio Vicente Férnandez is that as of yet no victim has been properly represented in the court, and therefore there are doubts as to the size and importance of the fraud and the measures which should be imposed on the fraudsters.