Four Defendants Charged in Federal Court for Participating in Nationwide Timeshare Telemarketing Fraud Scheme

United States Attorney James L. Santelle of the Eastern District of Wisconsin announced that earlier today, a federal grand jury returned indictments against Mark S. Parks (age 39) of Denmark, Wisconsin; Mindy L. Parks (age 34) of Denmark, Wisconsin; Ashley M. Conant (age 28) of Green Bay, Wisconsin; and Eileen M. Goltz (age 51) of Port Charlotte, Florida, charging each of them with one count of conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud.

Each defendant faces up to 20 years’ imprisonment, a fine of up to $250,000, a $100 special assessment, and up to three years of supervised release. In addition, pursuant to the Senior Citizens Against Marketing Scams or SCAMS Act, if the United States proves that at least 10 individuals over age 55 were victimized as a result of the conspirators’ telemarketing efforts, each defendant could face an enhanced penalty of up to 10 years’ imprisonment (added to the underlying sentence for the conspiracy to defraud).

According to a criminal complaint previously filed in the case, the defendants operated a fraudulent timeshare resale scheme in Green Bay, Wisconsin, which resulted in over a thousand victims in all 20 states and Canada being defrauded of over $2,300,000. The defendants operated from 2007 to 2011 under several different names, including Integrated Advertising Solutions, National Timeshare Resales, Administrative Timeshare Resales, and Midwest Timeshares. Victims were told that interested buyers were prepared to purchase their existing timeshares in exchange for upfront “administrative fees” ranging from a few hundred dollars to a few thousand dollars depending on how much the telemarketers believed they could collect. According to the complaint, many of the victims are elderly and had previously been victimized by similar schemes.

This case was a joint investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the U.S. Postal Inspection Service with assistance of the Brown County Sheriff’s Office, the Door County Sheriff’s Office, the Waupaca County Sheriff’s Office, the Better Business Bureau, and the Wisconsin Department of Agriculture Trade and Consumer Protection. The case is being prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorney Daniel R. Humble.

An indictment is only a charge and is not evidence of guilt. The defendants are presumed innocent and are entitled to a fair trial at which the government must prove each of them guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.

For further information, contact:

• Assistant United States Attorney Daniel R. Humble (920) 884-1066
• Public Information Officer Dean Puschnig (414) 297-1700