7 Timeshare Exit Offers That Cost Nevadans More Than Their Timeshare

A Las Vegas woman paid $12,000 for a Hilton timeshare. When she wanted to hand it back in 2024, Hilton’s answer was to have her buy $15,000 more instead.

She said no.

So, she turned to two companies that promised an exit, and nearly two years later, she still didn’t have it.

These are the timeshare exit offers that cost Nevadans more than the timeshare.

Note: This is general information, not legal or financial advice. Timeshare contract rules and company practices are subject to change, so confirm your rights with the Nevada Attorney General’s Office.

1. Michael Kroger’s Revolving Companies

Michael Kroger ran his timeshare exit pitch out of Las Vegas for a decade, and none of the 29 companies behind it ever sold a single timeshare.

Kroger and a partner, Michele Paonessa, built fake contracts telling owners a buyer was already lined up if they covered the closing costs first.

When one company drew too many complaints, they shut it down and reopened under a new name, running the same script for ten straight years.

If you’d called any of Kroger’s 29 companies about your timeshare, you’d have heard the same pitch every time, just under a different name.

None of it was real.

Federal prosecutors said the scheme ran from around 2000 to March 2010 and took roughly $782,090 from about 1,000 victims, some of them in Nevada.

A federal judge sentenced Kroger to 20 months in prison in 2019 and ordered him to repay $212,396, a quarter of what the scheme took.

2. World Travel Access’s Fake Transfers

World Travel Access promised Nevada timeshare owners a clean way out: A resale, handled for a fee, done fast.

Nevada’s attorney general indicted six people in 2016, saying they ran the company out of Las Vegas from August 2013 to July 2014.

The indictment named more than 15 victims, all of them over 60, who prosecutors said paid thousands of dollars each for transfers that never happened.

Their timeshares stayed exactly where they started, and the maintenance bills kept arriving.

That’s the whole cost.

3. Vacation Max’s Buyer Lie

Vacation Max’s telemarketers ran their exit pitch out of Las Vegas, telling owners nationwide that a corporate buyer was already lined up for their unit.

The company’s telemarketers asked owners for $2,000 to $3,000 upfront to cover the sale’s closing costs.

Vacation Max handed any owner who tried to back out to an in-house staffer whose entire job was stalling refund requests.

There was never a buyer.

Federal prosecutors said the ring took more than $11 million from victims nationwide between December 2006 and January 2012, working under names including Showcase Resorts.

Vacation Max’s owner, Michael Patrick Sullivan, got five years in prison in 2015.

Las Vegas telemarketer Elpenike Eddy-Aldava was sentenced to a year and a day and ordered to repay $647,015.

4. Daniel Boyar’s Fake-Buyer Scheme

Daniel Boyar’s telemarketing ring told timeshare owners a buyer was already lined up for their unit, and every one of those buyers was fake.

Owners paid upfront fees covering roughly half the fake sale price.

No sale ever closed.

Federal prosecutors in Las Vegas convicted Boyar and more than a dozen co-conspirators, who took over $3.3 million from more than 1,000 timeshare owners nationwide.

If you were one of those 1,000-plus owners who wired Boyar’s crew money, your fake buyer’s paperwork was never going to close.

The scheme ran from October 2010 to April 2012, and a judge didn’t order the $3.37 million in restitution until 2019, about seven years after the last fake sales call went out.

5. Bluwyn Management's Guilty Plea

Bluwyn Management ran a Nevada timeshare resale pitch built on the same lie as Vacation Max's: A buyer was waiting, and the fee had to come first.

Owners paid thousands of dollars upfront for sales that Nevada's attorney general said never happened, between January 2013 and December 2015.

The fees were real.

Nothing else was true.

Nevada's attorney general charged Bluwyn's operator, Louis Joseph Curto III, with securities fraud in 2018 over the scheme.

Curto pleaded guilty that February, admitting the buyers Bluwyn promised its customers didn't exist.

6. Claudia Benedetti's Cold-Call Ring

Claudia Benedetti and Richard Hughes worked a timeshare cold-call operation built on the same story told by nearly every offer on this list: A buyer already waiting.

Nevada's attorney general said the pair collected upfront fees during a three-month run from January to March 2012 and delivered nothing back.

If you were on Benedetti and Hughes's call list, you heard the same waiting-buyer story every other victim on this list did.

Nevada's attorney general secured guilty pleas from Benedetti, Hughes, and a third defendant, Carlos Barron, as part of a seven-defendant Nevada case working through the courts in 2015 and 2016.

Benedetti pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit theft; Hughes pleaded guilty to two counts of obtaining money under false pretenses.

The pleas came.

The money didn't.

7. Joyce Orecchia's Two-Year Wait

In 2024, Joyce Orecchia asked Hilton Grand Vacations to take back the Las Vegas timeshare she had bought for $12,000.

Hilton's counteroffer, according to NBC Bay Area's reporting on her case, was another $15,000 interest instead.

She turned down Hilton's offer and hired Consumer Edge Travel Solutions and Liberty Consultations instead, paying them a combined $6,700 to arrange the exit.

No refund followed.

The paperwork promised a transfer within 365 days.

Two years passed before the transfer finally went through, and only after a reporter started asking questions.

Orecchia still hasn't seen a refund on the $6,700 she paid Consumer Edge Travel Solutions and Liberty Consultations, the two companies she hired to do what Hilton wouldn't.