So I googled "Joy A Residence Club". What I found was interesting - or to be more precise, I should say that what I didn't find was interesting. And it raises the question ......
Does "Joy A Residence Club" Even Exist?
The only hits were from the Joy A Residence Club itself and comments from TUG and similar sites related to them buying up timeshare units. Nothing from the trade press, nothing from news stories, nothing from anywhere else. Nada. Zilch. Zippo. Nil.
The only presence of this organization on the web appears to be:
1. an amateurish website that would be an embarrassment to any legitimate business organization engaged in marketing and sales of a luxury item such as fractional ownership
2. message board discussions about them trying to assemble this bloc of timeshares that they are supposedly attempting to purchase.
Now, this is purportedly an ongoing, active, functioning fractional ownership company with well-established operations and that is marketing high end, "real estate" ownership opportunities to wealthy English-speaking North Americans. This Club supposedly already owns properties, has members, and is expanding operations.
So I tried googling their name in conjunction with the properties where they claim they do have ownership. Nothing. No hits at all. There is nothing on the web, apart from their own website, that indicates they have any association at all with those properties. If they actually do own anything at all at these sites, no one else apparently knows it. One could easily conclude that their ownership at those developments is entirely fictional - my web certainly yielded no information that would counter that suggestion.
******
It's staggeringly implausible that an operation of the type they claim to be would be invisible on the web, except for their own website and some threaded discussions at relating to one timeshare repurchase project. I seriously question that there actually is a real fractional ownership entity known as the "Joy A Residence Club". That entity, whatever it might be, seems to me to be nothing more than a website that was created as part of a scam operation that is the subject of this thread.
The next step in the operation will likely occur when the operators of the scam perceive that it has gone on long enough and they can't get any more money out of the people they have lined up. At that point they will disappear, and the money will be gone.
The escrow provisions discussed above will not help - as pointed out most of the money that has been paid in "escrow" has been marked for services that don't involve holding money in trust - per the breakdown provided, almost all of the payments into "escrow" are funds that are earmarked for various transactional costs that could occur and would likely be paid prior to any settlement. And that even grants that an escrow exists. The posters above who have paid money in as part of this setup know that their cards have been charged, but none of them have reported seeing any kind of an escrow statement.
When the scam finally unravels and the victims ask for their money out of escrow, they will likely find that at best a fraction of what they paid actually went into any escrow account.
******
Is This a "Sting"?
The major difference between this operation and most of the scams we hear about is that this one is being run like a sting.
It wouldn't surprise me if they have close to 500 owners who think they are one of the 52. With the mandatory AI and resort expenses and the total collapse of the resale market for the resort, there are probably a large number of owners who want to get out. The prospect of not losing their shirts would be extremely enticing. It's likely that Velas Vallarta was used for this very reason - lots of presumably easy marks.
If my suppositions are correct and this is nothing but a scam or sting, I estimate they would get about $1500 average per participant. All of them will be in for the original payment, and the perps will get some more money out of their followup pitch that taxes are due and need to be paid. But certainly some fraction of the participants will drop out at that point.
If they do reel in an average of $1500 from each of 500 participants, their gross is going to be $750,000. I would guess their costs of running the scam are about $50,000 (creating the website, operating the phones, setting up the escrow operation, paying off any needed officials in Mexico to maintain the front?).
If I'm in the ballpark on my assumptions, the operators of this scam are going to walk away with about $700,000 for one year of work. If there are two people running this thing that's $300,000 each.
And if they've got more than 500 people on the hook their take is going to be even higher.