Timeshare lawsuit news over the past two years has been dominated by four storylines: a $140 million federal judgment against a timeshare exit scam network, state attorney general settlements returning money to consumers, a Mexican cartel indictment tied to roughly $350 million in fraud against American owners, and class actions filed by owners against Wyndham, Hilton, Marriott, and Bluegreen. New laws in Florida and North Carolina, plus a pending federal bill, are beginning to reshape how timeshares can be sold and exited.
FTC Wins $140 Million Against a Timeshare Exit Network
In April 2026, a federal court in the Eastern District of Missouri granted summary judgment against Christopher Carroll, the last remaining defendant in a case the Department of Justice and the State of Wisconsin filed on behalf of the Federal Trade Commission in November 2022. The court ordered Carroll to pay more than $95 million in consumer redress and over $45 million in civil penalties, roughly $140 million in total, and permanently banned him from marketing timeshare exit services or engaging in deceptive door-to-door sales.
According to the FTC, Carroll and his co-defendants operated a cluster of companies that included Consumer Law Protection, Square One Group, Premier Reservations Group, Resort Transfer Group, and Timeshare Help Source. The complaint alleged they used high-pressure tactics and false statements to persuade consumers, many of them elderly, to pay between $5,000 and $80,000 for exit services that were often never delivered. The defendants falsely claimed affiliation with legitimate timeshare companies, told consumers they had no way out without paying, and refused promised refunds. The scheme also violated the FTC’s Cooling-Off Rule by blocking consumers from canceling within the required three-day window.
For anyone weighing an exit-company pitch, the case is a working checklist of red flags: five-figure upfront fees, claims of a special relationship with the resort, insistence that no other exit path exists, and pressure that prevents you from stepping back to think.
State Attorney General Actions
State enforcers have brought their own cases, and some are now paying money back to consumers.
Washington: Reed Hein and Timeshare Exit Team
The Washington Attorney General’s office sued Reed Hein & Associates, which operated as Timeshare Exit Team, in 2020. The state alleged the company charged for services it failed to deliver, deceptively advertised a “100 percent money-back guarantee” while routinely denying refunds, and told customers to stop paying their timeshare fees and ignore resort communications. That advice pushed some consumers into collections and credit damage. Reed Hein also claimed it could “force” or “compel” resorts to take back timeshares, which the state said was not true.
A consent decree required Reed Hein to pay $2.61 million for restitution and litigation costs, with an additional $19 million penalty triggered if the company violates the decree. The company must also set aside at least 20 percent of each customer’s payments for refunds, disclose potential foreclosure risks, and publicly retract statements it made about the attorney general’s lawsuit. Restitution checks began going out to affected Washington consumers in February 2025, and the claims process is still active.
Minnesota: Three Companies Settle
In January 2025, Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison announced settlements with three exit companies: Encore Law Inc., Last Resort Consulting, and Tradebloc. The state investigated all three for charging large upfront fees without the licensing required by Minnesota’s debt settlement services law and for potential misrepresentations. Combined, the settlements return $269,378 to Minnesota consumers.
Tradebloc, a Texas-based company run by Timothy Dwight Clark, agreed to pay $59,453 in three installments and is permanently barred from doing timeshare exit business in Minnesota unless properly registered. A $50,000 civil penalty is suspended unless the company breaches the agreement, and Clark signed a confession of judgment making him personally liable if Tradebloc fails to pay. Last Resort Consulting, based in Tennessee, agreed to $51,644 in payments, a permanent injunction, and a similarly suspended $50,000 penalty.
Cartel-Linked Fraud Aimed at American Timeshare Owners
A separate and larger fraud stream has drawn federal law enforcement and Treasury attention. In September 2025, the Department of Justice unsealed an indictment charging two senior members of the Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generacion (CJNG), Julio Cesar Montero Pinzon and Griselda Margarita Arredondo Pinzon, with conspiracy to commit wire fraud and money laundering. Montero Pinzon also faces a charge of conspiracy to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization. A superseding indictment in the Eastern District of New York in October 2025 added Carlos Andres Rivera Varela on terrorism and money laundering charges. All three are Mexican nationals and are not in U.S. custody.
The scheme is an advance-fee fraud. Victims are told they have a buyer or renter lined up for their timeshare and are asked to send upfront fees. After that first loss, they are contacted again by people posing as government officials or lawyers offering to recover the money for still more fees. Between 2019 and 2024, roughly 6,000 U.S. victims reported losses of about $350 million, according to the Justice Department. The FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center logged nearly 900 additional complaints with losses over $50 million in 2024 alone.
In February 2026, the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control sanctioned a network tied to the fraud, including the Mexican resort Kovay Gardens in Nayarit, its founder Carlos Humberto Rivera Miramontes, four other individuals, and 17 Mexican companies. Treasury described Kovay Gardens as a “vertically integrated fraud factory” where victims were lured, overcharged on credit cards, and funneled into secondary scams run out of CJNG call centers. OFAC has now sanctioned more than 90 individuals and entities connected to CJNG timeshare fraud, and FinCEN has received over 850 Suspicious Activity Reports representing roughly $330 million in suspicious activity.
If you own a timeshare and receive an unsolicited offer to buy, rent, or help you recover money already lost, treat any request for upfront payment as the scam it almost certainly is.
Class Actions Against Timeshare Developers
Owners are also suing the developers themselves. Wyndham has drawn the most complaints, but Hilton, Marriott, and Bluegreen are also in active litigation.
Wyndham
Bedgood v. Wyndham Vacation Resorts, filed in 2021 in the Middle District of Florida, seeks class certification to cancel timeshare contracts on the ground that Wyndham’s arbitration clauses are unenforceable. The Eleventh Circuit affirmed the trial court’s refusal to send the case to arbitration, finding that Wyndham’s own failure to comply with American Arbitration Association rules disqualified it from compelling arbitration. As of late 2025, Wyndham Vacation Resorts, Inc. remained the sole defendant after two related Wyndham entities were dismissed.
A related case, Kirchner v. Wyndham Vacation Resorts, filed in Delaware in 2020 on behalf of owners without arbitration clauses, ended less favorably. The court denied class certification in September 2024, and the remaining plaintiffs settled individually under confidentiality agreements before dismissal in November 2024.
Yorks v. Wyndham Vacation Resorts, filed in the Middle District of Florida in March 2024, is newer and still pending. The complaint alleges Wyndham hid information about limited booking availability, near-zero resale value, interest rates as high as 15.99 percent, sharp annual increases in maintenance fees, and the availability of the same destinations on public booking sites for less. It proposes classes of buyers in South Carolina, Maryland, and Nevada, plus a separate class of active-duty military personnel allegedly denied the 6 percent interest rate cap required by the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act.
After the Delaware certification denial, plaintiffs’ attorneys have shifted toward mass arbitration, filing 25 or more individual claims at once through the American Arbitration Association and JAMS.
Hilton Grand Vacations
A class action filed in Washington state court in September 2025 by plaintiff Kelley Rice alleges Hilton Grand Vacations violated Washington’s Commercial Electronic Mail Act and Consumer Protection Act by sending spam emails with misleading subject lines designed to create false urgency. The suit seeks an injunction and treble damages of $500 per violation for Washington residents who received the emails. An October 2025 data breach involving Social Security numbers and financial account information is also under investigation by plaintiffs’ attorneys.
Marriott and Bluegreen
Heller v. Marriott Vacations Worldwide, filed in Texas in October 2022 and still active in early 2026, alleges the company violated the Telephone Consumer Protection Act by making unsolicited telemarketing calls to numbers on the National Do Not Call Registry and by using automated dialing systems without consent.
Bluegreen Vacations has faced multiple suits. Nodal v. Bluegreen Vacations Unlimited, a Military Lending Act class action filed in New Hampshire in May 2025, was dismissed in January 2026. In Boyd v. Bluegreen Vacations Unlimited, filed in the Western District of Missouri, the court certified a class in 2020 on an unauthorized-practice-of-law claim tied to alleged sales misrepresentations, and the case remained pending as of 2022.
Developers Are Suing Exit Companies Too
Timeshare developers have gone on offense against exit firms. In 2019, a federal court in Florida granted summary judgment to Westgate Resorts against Mitchell Reed Sussman & Associates, finding that letters Sussman sent to owners claiming a successful exit were “objectively deceptive” and that “stopping payments does not effectuate a timeshare exit.” That last point matters for owners: an exit company that tells you to stop paying is not exiting you, it is exposing you to default and collections.
The conflict has escalated. Wesley Financial Group sued Westgate in the Middle District of Florida in 2023, alleging antitrust violations and false advertising, while Westgate had sued Wesley Financial in Nashville federal court, calling its operations a “timeshare cancellation scheme.” In August 2024, the Florida court ruled largely in Westgate’s favor, finding Wesley Financial violated the Tennessee Consumer Protection Act through the unlicensed practice of law and dismissing Wesley’s antitrust and tortious interference claims.
New and Pending Laws
Florida, home to over 275,000 timeshare units and roughly 1.5 million owners, enacted CS/HB 897 with unanimous House support, effective July 1, 2025. The law updates the state’s Vacation Plan and Timesharing Act to require annual conflict-of-interest disclosures from management firms, set minimum standards for board meetings, and impose a duty of “care, honesty, and good faith” on licensed community association managers.
North Carolina modernized its timeshare laws in 2021 through House Bill 531, its first update in nearly 40 years. The law requires developers to provide a comprehensive public offering statement before a contract is signed, mandates escrow protections for buyer funds, and for the first time regulates timeshare resale and exit companies, treating violations as unfair or deceptive trade practices enforceable by the state attorney general.
At the federal level, the proposed Timeshare Transparency Act, introduced by Senator Adam Schiff of California and Senator John Curtis of Utah, would require a single document itemizing all acquisition and maintenance costs, mandate disclosure of exit options, give buyers a 14-day penalty-free cancellation period, and authorize the FTC to enforce these rules. As of early 2026, the bill remains a discussion document and has not been voted on. The American Resort Development Association, the industry’s main trade group, opposes it, saying it interferes with states’ authority to regulate real estate.