A Scarborough couple were conned into buying a tim

A Scarborough couple were conned into buying a timeshare which had not been built, the Old Bailey heard.

Greta Bowers and husband Tom paid nearly pnds stlg 6,000 for the apartment in Tenerife on the understanding their old timeshare would be sold for pnds stlg 13,000.

But a year later they were told a buyer had not been found and they would have to wait for their new timeshare to be sold before they could get their money back.

And the new apartment in at the Club Flamingo resort was not completed until two years after they paid for it.

It is claimed the pair were one of up to 16,500 victims snared in a pnds stlg 30 million scam operated by tycoon John Palmer.

The victims bought new timeshares on the promise their old one would be sold for them at a handsome profit.

But thousands of customers were left lumbered with properties they no longer wanted or could afford.

Mrs Bowers told the jury: ‘We were assured the whole deal would be completed within nine months and if it hadn’t then, we would get our money back.

‘They didn’t tell us the new timeshare would have to be resold before we got the money back.

‘

The sales company, Timeshares Resales USA, which the prosecution say had no intention of finding a buyer, blamed their failure on the Gulf War and adverse exchange rates.

Mrs Bowers said: ‘Two years after we bought it, it was ready and we used it.

Until then they offered us alternative accommodation but we had to pay a charge.

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The couple’s original timeshare was never sold for them as they had been promised.

In 1992 Mrs Bowers, of Holbeck Avenue, South Cliff, Scarborough, appeared on the BBC1 programme ‘Watchdog’ which featured the timeshare scam at John Palmer’s resorts.

Palmer claims police are trying to set him up because they failed to convict him in 1988 for handling the proceeds of the pnds stlg 27 million Brinks-Mat gold robbery.

John Palmer, of Battlefields, Bath, his nephew Andrew Palmer, 31, from Meadow Cottage, Meadow Lane, Solihull, and his lover Christina Ketley, of Foxdown Cottage, Sandpit Lane, Brentwood, Essex, all deny two charges of conspiracy to defraud between 1989 and 1997.

The trial continues.

ends