U.S. Department
of Justice
United States Of America Vs. Jeffrey Tracy Fields United States District Court For The Southern District Of Illinois Southern District Of Illinois - Criminal No. 11-30183-MJR Southern District Of Florida - Criminal No. 11-8191-KLR
RECENT EVENTS: On March 29, 2012, in the Southern District of Florida, Fields pled guilty to a one-count Information charging him with conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud. Fields was sentenced on July 20, 2012 to 101 months in prison and 5 years’ supervised release to follow his prison term.
On October 25, 2011 an Information was filed with the U.S. District Court in the southern District of Illinois charging Jeffrey Tracy Fields with one count of Conspiracy to commit mail fraud and wire fraud. The Information alleges that between on or about the 14th day of September, 2007, through at least January, 2010, FIELDS, Jennifer Kirk, and others known and unknown, doing business as Universal Marketing Solutions (“UMS”) and Creative Vacation Solutions (“CVS”), conducted a telemarketing timeshare resale scheme collecting approximately $30 million and victimized approximately 22, 219 consumers throughout the United States and Canada, including in St. Clair, Madison, Bond, Clark, Calhoun, Clinton, Crawford, Cumberland, Edwards, Effingham, Fayette, Gallatin, Green, Jackson, Jefferson, Johnson, Lawrence, Marion, Monroe, Perry, Pike, Pulaski, Randolph, Richland, Saline, Wabash, Washington and Williamson Counties, within the Southern District of Illinois.
UMS and CVS falsely represented that they had found buyers for the consumers’ timeshare interests and solicited fees of up to several thousand dollars from each consumer in purported pre-paid closing costs and related expenses. The purported sales did not occur, closings were not scheduled as was often represented, and, in fact, UMS and CVS did not successfully sell any consumer’s timeshare interest. UMS and CVS failed to devote substantial resources to marketing their clients’ timeshare interest and simply pocketed the purported closing costs, with about a third going to the individual telemarketers who sold the timeshare resale services to the consumer and the balance kept by the owners of the telemarketing company.
The Information further alleges that UMS and CVS had several sales offices located in south Florida including offices at West Palm Beach, Belvedere, Boca Raton, Okeechobee, Green Acres and Lake Worth. Some of these offices resembled franchise operations in that they were owned and operated by others, but used the same business name, the same sales pitches and collected money through common credit card merchant accounts. FIELDS had a managerial role in UMS’s main office. He then became the owner of a franchise room for UMS known as Belvedere and latter for CMS at Belvedere, as well as two offices known as Lake Worth I and Lake Worth II. He was responsible for sales of approximately $11,529,876 to approximately 9157 victims. The offense occurred in connection with the conduct of telemarketing, in violation of the SCAMS Act, punishable under Title 18, United States Code, Section 2326(1).
