Not breaking news as this happened Wed. July 13, but Orlando Florida police raided the office of H.E.S. Systems on East Colonial Drive in Orlando Florida. Police were able to seize evidence that consisted of cell phones, computers, printers, dozens of boxes and bags of company records and $500,000 in cash was found in the office. H.E.S Systems operated both a timeshare boiler room and credit card relief scam by charging people up front fees for services that were never delivered. At the time of the raid, almost 70 employees were in the office who were all forced out of the building at gun point and each of their ID’s checked. Police realized that 20 of the telemarketing employees were part of the State’s work release program for former inmates.
No arrests were made on the day of the raid and about two dozen employees could only stand and watch from across the street. New trainee’s were charged $25/per day for 3 days of training and those fee’s would be taken out of their future commission checks. H.E.S. Systems also operated under the name of Worldwide Marketing Management. Further investigation says that the businesses were not licensed even though employees tried to dispute the facts.
Florida public records show though that Worldwide Marketing Management is in fact a registered corporation in the state of Florida with both the principal business address and mailing address being that of 4401 E. COLONIAL DRIVE SUITE 203 ORLANDO FL 32803 which was where the raid took place. The registered agent for that business is that of H.E. Smith with Michelle Thieme being listed as the Vice President. Worldwide Marketing Management corporation paperwork was filed on 9/28/2010 and is still listed as active.
The company is accused defrauding $8.5 million through both timeshare resale and credit card relief services that were never delivered. On the timeshare resales side of the business, the sales pitch was your typical “We have a buyer lined up and ready to purchase your property, you just need to pay $xxx.xx”. The timeshare owners were cold called and of course their was never a buyer. The credit card relief side of the business would promise to help lower your interest rate on your current credit card(s) for a fee. Once the person was charged, no services were rendered and the company walked away with the money.
Investigators on this case think they may have cut the head off the snake of the timeshare fraud business in the Orlando, Florida area with this latest raid. They believe this office was the main headquarters for at least 20 other timeshare telemarketing businesses that have been either raided or under investigation in the past as all of the credit cards were processed at this location. If this is in fact the case, either this company had a lot of “throw away” companies they were using, or were acting as a third party credit card processor for other timeshare resale companies which is illegal by the terms of their merchant account agreement.
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