The phone calls were coming on an almost daily basis. Lawyers, real estate agents and people with cash in hand, all looking to purchase Rod Pratt and Diana Paquette’s Mexican time-share at a handsome price.
It seemed like a godsend to the Edmonton couple. On their first trip to Mexico, for a 2016 wedding, they had made a snap decision to invest in a beachfront property in Nuevo Vallarta, on the Pacific coast, just north of the resort town Puerto Vallarta.
But nothing was as it appeared. Even after spending $95,000 US on the time-share and three upgrades, there were room charges, maintenance fees, bills for food, drink and airfare — meaning a week’s vacation still cost $5,000 or more. An amount they couldn’t afford.
“Anything you look at and touch, it’s got a dollar tag on it,” said Pratt, 65. “It’s definitely not all-inclusive.”
By the spring of 2019, they were desperate to unload the time-share. So when a broker from Atlanta cold-called and said he had a client willing to pay $155,000 US, Pratt pounced. A Mexican real estate agent and buyer joined the conversation, and a contract was signed. All that was required to seal the deal were a few, upfront payments from Pratt.
“They have, like, these fees and stuff they wanted for opening and closing… all kinds of little ones,” he said. “Anywhere from maybe $1,500 US to $10,000.”
Tourists are seen along the beach in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, in December 2015. The resort town on Mexico’s Pacific coast is the home of the notorious Jalisco New Generation Cartel, which officials say has been defrauding the owners of local time-shares. (Henry Romero/Reuters)
The supposed deal fell through when Pratt balked at paying as much $30,000 US for “taxes.”
But soon, his phone was again ringing with other lucrative offers. Over the next three years, Pratt entered two more sales agreements, and accepted a short-term rental offer. All the purported deals followed the same pattern — upfront demands for fees, costs and taxes, with the promised payout always a step away. In the end, he estimates he lost more than $200,000 Cdn to the scams.
“They were all saying they were lawyers, they were realtors. They were everything under the sun,” said Pratt. “But none of it was legit.”
Ultra-violent history
The Jalisco New Generation Cartel (known by its Spanish initials CJNG) has existed for only 15 years, yet ranks one of Mexico’s largest and most powerful criminal organizations.It operates in at least 27 of the country’s 32 states, with affiliates across the globe. Its home base is Puerto Vallarta.
Over its ultra-violent history, the group has expanded its activities from drug production and trafficking, to kidnapping and extortion, to less predictable turf like the avocado trade and, more recently, time-share scams.
The cartel “generates substantial revenue for its multi-faceted criminal enterprise through its time-share fraud network,” U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen warned last November.
Rod Pratt and Diana Paquette share a kiss during their initial trip to Mexico in 2016, when they bought a time-share in nearby Nuevo Vallarta — a decision they came to regret. (Submitted by Diana Paquette)
“CJNG uses extreme violence and intimidation to control the time-share network, which often targets elder U.S. citizens and can defraud victims of their life savings.”
Any doubts about Jalisco’s new focus on time-shares were put to rest by a horrific massacre in May 2023, when authorities recovered the garbage-bag-wrapped, hacked-up remains of eight young call centre workers from a ravine near Zapopan, Mexico.
No one is sure just how much CJNG is earning from its time-share frauds; just as it’s not known for certain if the cartel was behind the bogus offers made to Pratt. The FBI says it received more than 600 complaints related to such scams in 2022, with losses totalling almost $40 million US. But other estimates run to hundreds of millions each year — targeting Americans and Canadians who own time-shares in Cancun, Acapulco and Puerto Vallarta.
Jalisco’s diversification is a measure of its success, says Valentin Pereda, a University of Montreal criminologist who researches Mexican gangs.
“When a cartel is successful, the number of employees in its ranks increases and the more employees you have, the more money you need to pay them and to keep them loyal to you,” he said. “At the end of the day, these are business enterprises and they operate largely with that rationale, thinking ‘How am I going to maximize income and minimize costs?'”
The aftermath of an ambush by the cartel’s gunmen near El Aguaje, Mexico, in October 2019. Thirteen police officers were killed and nine wounded in the attack, which came during the gang’s push into Michoacan state’s avocado trade. (Marco Ugarte/The Associated Press)
Having a wide array of both criminal and legitimate business interests also helps insulate the cartel from the economic disruption of police crackdowns, or drops in the price of street drugs.
Pereda says time-share scams may be particularly attractive because they are unlikely to provoke serious blowback from the U.S. or Canadian governments. Several gang members and businesses have been sanctioned over the frauds, but no one is forming a task force to tackle the problem. “It would be one of many competing priorities when it comes to the cartels and criminal activity,” he said.
Sophisticated scam
On one level the time-share fraud is familiar — with victims coerced into advancing funds on the promise of a big payday, throwing good money after bad. But where Jalisco’s scam differs from Nigerian princes, or inheritances from long-lost relatives, is in the backstory.
The cartel has established fake websites for U.S. lawyers and brokers, and provides official-looking forms and contracts. And once the victim has clued in, there are even follow-up calls from purported investigators, offering to help recover the funds.
Guillermo Cruz — a Toronto lawyer, licensed to practise in both Ontario and Mexico — receives five to 10 calls a month from time-share scam victims, looking to recover their lost payments.
“The number of cases is growing,” he said.
Toronto lawyer Guillermo Cruz holds up a copy of a document provided by a time-share fraud victim. Cruz says his office averages five to 10 calls a month from people who have fallen for the cartel’s bogus offer to buy time-shares. (Albert Leung/CBC)
The documentation provided by the cartel can appear convincing, says Cruz.
“I think that it is quite sophisticated. Unless you have a background in Mexican law and you’re familiar with time-share law in Mexico it’s very likely that you would believe that information that has been provided is accurate,” he said.
Pratt shared more than 60 pages of documentation with CBC News, detailing the purported purchase and rental offers he received. They list a half-dozen different corporate entities in Mexico, and several supposed brokers and lawyers in the United States, along with names, signatures, addresses and phone numbers.
Several of the companies appear in an online database of information gathered from other time-share frauds. Websites are still active for at least two of the firms.
A lawyer who claimed to practise in New York City, with offices in a ritzy Manhattan skyscraper, doesn’t appear in state licensing records. (Although there are three legitimate lawyers with the same name in the United States, none of them deal with real estate or Mexican time-shares.)
Pratt relaxes on the beach in Nuevo Vallarta, Mexico. He says he lost close to $200,000 to fraudulent offers to buy his time-share. (Submitted by Diana Paquette)
A purported El Paso real estate broker claims to be operating out of a historic downtown building that is currently being redeveloped into a hotel.
Cruz leafed through Pratt’s documents and picked out a supposed tax form related to the 2019 offer, which bears the seal of a previous Mexican administration; a small but significant red flag.
Cruz says the U.S. and Canadian governments need to put more pressure on Mexican authorities to crack down on the frauds, and create easier ways for time-share owners to validate whether offers are legitimate.
If such measures arrive, they will already be too late for Rod Pratt and Diana Paquette.
The couple have been busy packing up their Edmonton home, preparing to move and heading for a divorce.
“All I was really trying to do was get some money back for my wife and for my life,” Pratt said, tearing up.
“I would gladly trade the trips to Mexico for a life back,” he said. “I wish we would have never went to Mexico.”
Jonathon Gatehouse can be contacted via email at jonathon.gatehouse@cbc.ca, or reached via the CBC’s digitally encrypted Securedrop system at https://www.cbc.ca/securedrop/
OTTAWA – Liberal House leader Karina Gould lambasted Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre as a “fraudster” this morning after he said the federal carbon price is going to cause a “nuclear winter.”
Gould was speaking just before the House of Commons is set to reopen following the summer break.
“What I heard yesterday from Mr. Poilievre was so over the top, so irresponsible, so immature, and something that only a fraudster would do,” she said from Parliament Hill.
On Sunday Poilievre said increasing the carbon price will cause a “nuclear winter,” painting a dystopian picture of people starving and freezing because they can’t afford food or heat due the carbon price.
He said the Liberals’ obsession with carbon pricing is “an existential threat to our economy and our way of life.”
The carbon price currently adds about 17.6 cents to every litre of gasoline, but that cost is offset by carbon rebates mailed to Canadians every three months. The Parliamentary Budget Office provided analysis that showed eight in 10 households receive more from the rebates than they pay in carbon pricing, though the office also warned that long-term economic effects could harm jobs and wage growth.
Gould accused Poilievre of ignoring the rebates, and refusing to tell Canadians how he would make life more affordable while battling climate change. The Liberals have also accused the Conservatives of dismissing the expertise of more than 200 economists who wrote a letter earlier this year describing the carbon price as the least expensive, most efficient way to lower emissions.
Poilievre is pushing for the other opposition parties to vote the government down and trigger what he calls a “carbon tax election.”
The recent decision by the NDP to break its political pact with the government makes an early election more likely, but there does not seem to be an interest from either the Bloc Québécois or the NDP to have it happen immediately.
Poilievre intends to bring a non-confidence motion against the government as early as this week but would likely need both the Bloc and NDP to support it.
Gould said she has no “crystal ball” over when or how often Poilievre might try to bring down the government
“I know that the end of the supply and confidence agreement makes things a bit different, but really all it does is returns us to a normal minority parliament,” she said. “And that means that we will work case-by-case, legislation-by-legislation with whichever party wants to work with us. I have already been in touch with all of the House leaders in the opposition parties and my job now is to make Parliament work for Canadians.”
She also insisted the government has listened to the concerns raised by Canadians, and received the message when the Liberals lost a Toronto byelection in June in seat the party had held since 1997.
“We certainly got the message from Toronto-St. Paul’s and have spent the summer reflecting on what that means and are coming back to Parliament, I think, very clearly focused on ensuring that Canadians are at the centre of everything that we do moving forward,” she said.
The Liberals are bracing, however, for the possibility of another blow Monday night, in a tight race to hold a Montreal seat in a byelection there. Voters in LaSalle—Émard—Verdun are casting ballots today to replace former justice minister David Lametti, who was removed from cabinet in 2023 and resigned as an MP in January.
The Conservatives and NDP are also in a tight race in Elmwood-Transcona, a Winnipeg seat that has mostly been held by the NDP over the last several decades.
There are several key bills making their way through the legislative process, including the online harms act and the NDP-endorsed pharmacare bill, which is currently in the Senate.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 16, 2024.
GENEVA (AP) — Two former Olympic champions are in the race to be the next IOC president. So is a prince of a Middle East kingdom and the son of a former president. The global leaders of cycling, gymnastics and skiing also are in play.
The International Olympic Committee published a list Monday of seven would-be candidates who are set to run for election in March to succeed outgoing president Thomas Bach for the next eight years.
Just one woman, IOC executive board member Kirsty Coventry from Zimbabwe, entered the contest to lead an organization that has had only male presidents in its 130-year history. Eight of those presidents were from Europe and one from the United States.
Coventry and Sebastian Coe are two-time gold medalists in swimming and running, respectively. Prince Feisal al Hussein of Jordan is also on the IOC board.
Juan Antonio Samaranch Jr. of Spain is one of the four IOC vice presidents, whose father was president for 21 years until 2001.
David Lappartient is the president of cycling’s governing body, Morinari Watanabe leads gymnastics, and Johan Eliasch is president of the International Ski and Snowboard Federation. Coe is the president of track’s World Athletics.
All seven met a deadline of Sunday to send a letter of intent to Bach, who must leave the post next year after reaching the maximum 12 years in office. Bach declined at the Paris Olympics last month to seek to change IOC rules in order to stay in office longer.
A formal candidate list should be confirmed in January, three months before the March 18-21 election meeting in Greece, near the site of Ancient Olympia.
Only IOC members are eligible to stand as candidates, with votes cast by the rest of the 111-strong membership of the Olympic body.
The IOC is one of the most exclusive clubs in world sports. Its members are drawn from European and Middle East royalty, leaders of international sports bodies, former and current Olympic athletes, politicians and diplomats plus industrialists, including some billionaires like Eliasch.
It makes for one of the most discreet and quirky election campaigns in world sports, with members prevented from publicly endorsing their pick.
Campaign limits on the candidates include a block on publishing videos, organizing public meetings and taking part in public debates. The IOC will organize a closed-door meeting for candidates to address voters in January in its home city Lausanne, Switzerland.
The IOC top job ideally calls for deep knowledge of managing sports, understanding athletes’ needs and nimble skills in global politics.
The president oversees an organization that earns billions of dollars in revenue from broadcasting and sponsor deals for the Olympic Games and employs hundreds of staff in Lausanne, Switzerland.
Coe has been widely considered the most qualified candidate. A two-time Olympic champion in the 1,500-meters, he was later an elected lawmaker in Britain in the 1990s, led the 2012 London Olympics organizing committee and has presided at World Athletics for nine years.
However, he has potential legal hurdles regarding his ability to serve a full eight-year mandate. The IOC has an age limit of 70 for members, while Coe will be 68 on election day. The rules allow for a special exemption to remain for four more years, but that would mean a six-year presidency unless those limits are changed.
Coventry, who turned 41 Monday, also has government experience as the appointed sports minister in Zimbabwe.
The only woman ever to stand as an IOC presidential candidate was Anita DeFrantz, a former Olympic rower from the United States. She was eliminated in the first round of voting in a five-candidate election in 2001, which was won by Jacques Rogge.
Lappartient also is president of France’s national Olympic body and has carried strong momentum from the Paris Summer Games. He leads a French Alps project that was picked to host the 2030 Winter Games and was picked by Bach to oversee a long-term project sealed in Paris that will see Saudi Arabia hosting the Esports Olympic Games through 2035.
Eliasch is perhaps the most surprising candidate after being elected as an IOC member in Paris less than two months ago. The Swedish-British owner of the Head sportswear brand got 17 “no” votes, a notably high number in Olympic politics.
TORONTO – Ontario is proposing to further expand pharmacists’ scope of practice by adding to the list of minor ailments they can assess, allowing them to administer more vaccines and order some lab tests.
But while pharmacists see the proposal as an overdue solution to easing the burden on other aspects of the health-care system by leaning more on their professional expertise, doctors are raising concerns.
The government in early 2023 granted pharmacists the ability to assess and treat 13 minor ailments, including pink eye, hemorrhoids and urinary tract infections. In the fall of that year six more were added to the list, including acne, canker sores and yeast infections.
Now, the government is proposing to expand the list to include sore throat, calluses and corns, mild headaches, shingles, minor sleep disorders, fungal nail infections, swimmers’ ear, head lice, nasal congestion, dandruff, ringworm, jock itch, warts and dry eye.
As well, the Ministry of Health is looking for feedback on what lab tests and point-of-care tests might be required for pharmacists to order and perform as part of assessing and treating those conditions.
The government is also considering funding pharmacists to administer tetanus, diphtheria, pertussis, pneumococcal, shingles and RSV vaccines for adults, in addition to COVID-19 and flu vaccines. The province is proposing to allow pharmacy technicians to administer the same vaccines as pharmacists.
“Our government is focused on improving access to care in communities across the province and we have seen the success of our minor ailment program, connecting over 1 million people to treatment for minor ailments,” Hannah Jensen, a spokesperson for Health Minister Sylvia Jones, wrote in a statement.
Justin Bates, CEO of the Ontario Pharmacists Association, said the minor ailments program has been going well so far, and further expanding pharmacists’ scope can help avoid visits to family doctors and emergency rooms.
“We want to build health-care capacity through looking at pharmacies as a health-care hub and the pharmacists’ trusted relationship with their patients and to leverage that, because they are underutilized when it comes to what scope they can do,” he said.
But doctors are pushing back on the scope expansions.
“The bottom line here is that pharmacists are not doctors,” said Dr. Dominik Nowak, president of the Ontario Medical Association. “Doctors are trained for years and thousands of hours to diagnose and treat conditions.”
Nowak said that sometimes the symptoms that would seem to suggest one of those minor ailments are really a sign of a more serious condition, and it takes a doctor to recognize that.
“When I look at a lot of the minor ailments list, I think to myself, there’s nothing minor about many of these,” Nowak said.
“Many of these ailments rely on the patient … one, knowing the diagnosis themselves, so the patient’s own opinion. And last I heard, most of my patients haven’t been to medical school. And then two: it also relies on the patient’s own opinion about whether this is something minor or something serious.”
Bates said he has been “disappointed” at some of the messaging from doctors, and added that any notion that there is an increased risk to patient safety is “misinformation.”
“I want to support OMA and primary care, and I do – in hiring more doctors, solving some of their issues – but it shouldn’t come at the expense of other health professions gaining their … appropriate scope of practice,” he said.
“So it’s not a zero sum game here. We want to have physicians be comfortable with this, but … the way that some of these doctors are responding, it’s almost like hysteria.”
The government’s proposal on its regulatory registry is open for comment until Oct. 20.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 16, 2024.
