A Springfield, Missouri, business owner has been indicted by a federal grand jury for a timeshare fraud scheme and for failing to pay more than $333,000 in federal taxes withheld from his employees’ paychecks.
Brian Scroggs, 52, was charged in a six-count indictment returned on May 14, 2024, by a federal grand jury in Springfield.
Scroggs owned several businesses focused on the timeshare exit industry, claiming to provide services that would release clients from their timeshare contracts.
Scroggs owned Vacation Consulting Services, LLC, and The Transfer Group, LLC, both located in Springfield, from 2014 through February 2019. He also began operating Real Travel, LLC, on June 5, 2018. Although Real Travel was registered in Arkansas, it conducted business from the Vacation Consulting Services office and utilized the same employees, effectively making it another name for Vacation Consulting Services.
According to the indictment, Scroggs employed sales teams who traveled the country hosting seminars, during which Vacation Consulting Services/Real Travel presented to timeshare owners that they could get them out of their timeshare contracts for a fee. If they failed to release clients from their timeshare contracts within a year, they claimed they would either buy the clients’ timeshare contracts or refund the fee paid by the clients.
By January 2019, the indictment alleges, Scroggs knew the timeshare industry was no longer negotiating or working with timeshare exit companies like Vacation Consulting Services/Real Travel or The Transfer Group. Despite this, Scroggs allegedly continued soliciting new clients throughout January 2019 by falsely claiming to be able to release people from their timeshare contracts.
The federal indictment charges Scroggs with three counts of wire fraud related to three clients who allegedly were defrauded by this scheme. These clients paid over $32,000 to Scroggs’s companies but were not released from their timeshare agreements and never received a refund.
The indictment also charges Scroggs with three counts of failure to pay federal employment taxes. Scroggs allegedly failed to pay $333,483 in federal income taxes and FICA taxes withheld from his employees’ paychecks for the third and fourth quarters of 2018 and the first quarter of 2019.
The charges in this indictment are accusations and not evidence of guilt. Evidence supporting the charges must be presented to a federal trial jury, whose duty is to determine guilt or innocence.
This case is being prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Patrick Carney. It was investigated by IRS-Criminal Investigation and the FBI.
