Description

My parents initially received phone calls from Realty Advisory Group, LLC offering to sell their timeshare in Mexico. They asked me to handle the call because my English is better. The initial caller identified himself as Robert Drake, and gave a real Individual Real Estate Broker License number, which I verified on the official government website at https://appext20.dos.ny.gov/nydos/selSearchType.do. I did not have a way to check whether the person I was speaking to was actually this Robert. He said that he had a buyer for the timeshare for around $100,000, and needed my parents' signature on an Escrow application, to become the beneficiaries on an Escrow account. The Escrow company, Trustway Services, and the address, 28 Liberty Street in New York, really exist. My parents signed the application and emailed it to him. Next, Robert transferred me over to the "senior broker", Jason Moore. Jason gave me a Broker License number (***********) that really exists and is not expired, but upon some internet research, was associated with Moore Realty, not Real Estate Advisory Group. In fact, apart from the website "https://realtyadvisorygroupllc.com/", I was not able to find a Realty Advisory Group, LLC in New York either on Google Maps or anywhere else on Google. That made us a bit suspicious. Jason told me about a fee that my parents would need to wire to a legal representative in Mexico, Alvaro Garcia Rodriguez, to open an Mexican Tax ID number, because it was required by the Mexican government due to the timeshare being located near the Mexican border on the coast. He said that the amount would come directly from the Mexican Government, and it would be emailed the next day. In the meantime, I researched about a Mexican Tax ID number, and learned about the RFC number, which is the ID number used for taxes in Mexico. I learned that there is no fee for an RFC number, and that to apply, one has to be have Mexican citizenship or temporary or permanent residency, which my parents don't have. Also, it takes months to get an appointment with the SAT office of the Mexican Government to get this number, and one has to come in person and provide biometric information. I asked Jason if this was the number that he was talking about, and he said that it was a different number for foreign transactions. I asked if he could refer me to an official source to learn more about this number, but he did not provide any more information or send me to an official source. The next day, he sent my parents a sales contract, and the "SAT Registration Number" fee on it was $5,703. That's how much he wanted my parents to wire his agent in Mexico, promising that we would have our money, $98,995.00, in 20-25 days. Because he could not answer our questions about official information regarding the SAT Registration Number which I couldn't find anywhere on the internet, we did not sign the sales contract. Besides that, he emailed my parents a "statement" allegedly from Citibanamex, to show that the money had supposedly already been transferred by the seller to this account in a Mexican bank, before it would be transferred to the Escrow account. However, the phone numbers on this statement were different than the one given on the official Citibanamex website, and when I asked Jason to refer me to a page on the official Citibanamex website that would show me that these phone numbers were legitimate, he did not do so. He just said that Citibanamex really does have a "cross-border division", and that I should call that number. He said that after I send him a screenshot from a forum that said that Citibanamex doesn't even have a "cross-border division", and that this is a scam. Jason was not able to provide any more information to us, so we did not continue with the transaction.