Two suspects in Boulder time-share transfer scheme facing dozens of new charges

Kristopher Chavez (Boulder County Sheriff's Office / Courtesy photo)

The two men  indicted in an alleged time share schemethat targeted elderly people across the U.S. have had dozens of new charges added to their cases.

Kristopher Chavez and Timothy Hatcher were both indicted on two counts of violating the Colorado Organized Crime Control Act as well as numerous other counts in December. Chavez also was charged with 47 other counts of theft and criminal impersonation, while Hatcher had 21 theft counts.

But police at the time said they believed there were more victims of the alleged scheme, and both Chavez and Hatcher were indicted by a Boulder County grand jury on new charges on Feb. 16, according to court documents unsealed this week.

Timothy Hatcher (Boulder County Sheriff's Office / Courtesy photo)

Chavez was indicted on 37 new counts of theft and criminal impersonation, while Hatcher was indicted on 11 new counts of theft.

Both men are due for arraignments on April 7.

The two COCCA violations — one for racketeering the other for conspiracy — are both Class 2 felonies punishable by eight to 24 years in prison.

According to the indictment, Chavez, Hatcher and "other persons unknown" to the grand jury operated a time share fraud scheme from 2014 through September 2016.

Investigators said that Hatcher would contact time-share owners across the U.S. — most of them elderly — and invite them to a seminar at a local hotel, where he would pitch a proposal wherein the owners would pay a one-time fee to transfer ownership of their time share. 

Hatcher claimed to be an account manager with a company called Immediate Acquisitions/Timeshare Transfers, or Properties Exchange, with headquarters in Boulder.

Once the payment was made, the owners would be referred to Chavez — operating under the alias Chris Culhane — to transfer the title out of their name as well as sign paperwork appointing a third party as the "attorney-in-fact" for the transfer.

But according to the indictment, the owners later discovered that their time shares had not been legitimately transferred and that they were still liable for homeowners association and maintenance fees. Because they had named a third party as the attorney for the transfer, many of these owners never received the notifications that they owed payments.

A search of Chavez's Boulder home revealed a computer on which investigators found thousands of emails he sent under the Culhane alias to time-share owners.

Officials are concerned that there still may be more potential victims who have not come forward. Anyone who may have been a victim is asked to call Boulder Police Detective Traci Cravitz at 303-441-3345.

Mitchell Byars: 303-473-1329, byarsm@dailycamera.com or twitter.com/mitchellbyars

The timeshare resale scams are just a symptom. They need to do something about the timeshare scam itself. An obligation 'in perpetuity' - that passes to your children? There is almost no legal way out of the obligation, even if you don't use the facilities and want to sell it back (they won't take them back). In other words, they hawk 'property' that you cannot resell, cannot give back, and has literally no value in the market - and tell you that you have to pay 'maintenance' forever... and that they can assess 'special fees' on in order to do repairs they *should* have been doing with the maintenance fees

If you own the companey and you are so honest, WHY HAVE YOU TAKEN MY MOM'S LIFE SAVINGS AND REFUSE TO CALL HER BACK (for 16 months).

I have not posted here but the complaints reported here are EXACTLY what happened to my mother almost 2 years ago.

Don't listen the this guy, he's a crook.

I work for a living and not his competor, or any other then one trying to sort out my mom's rip-off.  In the process of going to court currently.

I have a timedshare that somehow got moved from Timeshare Transfers, Inc to TSR - and now is MIA.

I have not been contacted by anyone and since the phone number is disconnected and the emails bounce, I am at a loss for what to do to figure out where my transfer is!

Does anyone have any info on legal proceedings, or suggestions for where to start getting more info?

Scott

INTERESTING COMMENTS BY "PRES/CEO" WE ARE INVOLVED WITH TSR. STILL WAITING FOR THEM TO TRANSFER TITLE SINCE 11/08. JUST RECIEVED MAINT. BILL FOR 2 YEARS.

OH YEAH!  JUST GOT LETTER OF CHAPTER 7 BANKRUPTCY FOR TSR FILED IN CO ON 7/23/2009.

KRIS POSTED REBUTTAL IN SEPT. 09???   YUP, NICE GUYS!!! /SARC

ALLEN

If the owner says this is from a competetor then why is my mothers story identical, and why would they not simply answer our phone calls, or email/letters?

The only difference between this complaint and ours is the dollar amount stolen, and they have the deed to the unit.

Why are these people not behind bars?

Now we are paying atterny fees for law a CA sute, so the losses are adding up..

Screwed in Denver.

Hello. My name is Kris Chavez and I am the President and CEO of Timeshare Rescue. The above story is an attempt by a competitor of ours to harm our good name in the marketplace. This person on the same day did another completely different post on another website that the website owners took down as being a blatant smear campaign. The problem is that ripoffreport.com does not remove postings that people put on here. So all we can do is respond to the post and trust that those of you reading this post will understand the profit motive of the person writing the false story above.

Please consider the following facts before believing an anonymous post on this forum.

1) We are not in any active lawsuits at all. In fact, we have defeated both lawsuits from our competitors (neither of which had anything to do with our services but rather with competition with our competitors). The judge has dismissed them because they had no merit. The lawsuits were an anti-competitive action by our competitors to drive us out of business. However, over the course of their attacks, we have grown by over 1000% this year helping many thousands of people out of their timeshares. We have never been sued for not doing our services for a client, so that is another lie from the above post.

2) The above post is from June of 2007 and states that we had done business with her mother about a year prior to the post. That is impossible, because Timeshare Rescue was not in business until October 2007 (therefore, an impossibility).

3) We have never charged a customer $3,500.00 to take a timeshare. That is a blatant lie by our competitor above yet again. We have many programs to help timeshare owners, and not all of them require payment for every timeshare.

4) The owners of Timeshare Rescue are good people and do wonderful things for their community: The fact is to date in 2009, timeshare rescue has donated and helped raise over $220,000.00 to help causes like Melanoma Research, Male Breast Cancer, Battered Women and Children, The Children's Hospital, St. Jude's Hospital and more. We are a good company that cares about our community. Our competitors have not done a tenth of our community outreach.
5) The maintenance fees that our company assumes are paid and/or transferred to the new owner of the unit. This posting was in June so obviously there weren't maintenance fees due or late at the time of this post. The person trying to harm our reputation knows that timeshare owners hate maintenance fees and want to get rid of the obligation. That is another lie. Contact us for a list of references of many satisfied clients. We do what we say, and so do our competitors. We will not attack them, they should not be attacking us.

Please know that we will never say anything negative about our competitors because it is counter-productive and outside of the morals of us the owners of Timeshare Rescue. Malicious posts like this one have no doubt kept many dozens of people that deeply need out of their timeshare from contacting us and getting out. That was our competitor's goal, and they succeeded to a small degree. However, if you are interested in getting out of your timeshare I encourage you to do your own research by speaking to our representatives. Or, if you prefer you can contact me directly via email at Kristopher@timesharerescue.com.

Thank you for taking the time to read this post, and taking the time to make your own educated decision on the quality of our services and the values of the owners of Timeshare Rescue. You can visit the timeshare Rescue website by clicking here: http://www.timesharerescue.com

Hello Everyone,

I am the owner of Timeshare Rescue. The above report was filed by one of our competitors in an effort to discredit our quality services. We are currently in a lawsuit with this company in an effort to stop them from conducting these sorts of malicious attacks. They have already lost one of the lawsuits filed against us and we are coming back with more. If they were smart, they would stop these underhanded attacks.

As for us; we transfer hundreds of timeshares a month for people and it is a very competitive business. We are not the type of company that will ever speak poorly of our competitors because in the end, it is bad business and we are not that sort of people. We are family owned, and run our business with family morals.

If you are looking for a way out of your timeshare there are many good companies that do this. Timeshare Rescue is one of these companies. If you have questions or concerns of your own, please contact support@timesharerescue.com and our quality customer service department will answer your question.

Thank you for taking what you read with a grain of salt, and taking the time to educate yourself instead of believing anonymous postings like the one above. Thank you and God Bless.

We wish you and yours a very happy holiday season!