This week on The Perfect Scam.

James, we cannot hesitate anymore.

We cannot hesitate.

But you're doing is hesitating, James, and I understand it.

You're skeptical.

I understand it's perfectly normal. This is the first time we have conducted a transaction like this and I can promise as soon as I get you your money back and I get you paid. You paid.

Welcome back to the perfect scam. I'm your host Bob Sullivan.

This is part two of a two-part episode.

If you haven't listened to part one yet, you might want to go back and listen to that first.

When we left James, he feels tantalizingly close to completing a real estate transaction, trying to sell his

timeshare in Lake Tahoe that he'd own since the 1990s. But, the company he's been working

with, has told him the buyer is in Mexico and there is a mountain of refundable fees that James has to pay.

After months of back and forths, the payment never quite makes it across the border.

James, he sent nearly 900. never quite makes it across the border.

James, he sent nearly $900,000 the other way

and received nothing in exchange.

So he calls a lawyer to get help.

The lawyer tells him he's in the middle of a common timeshare

resale scam and stop talking to these criminals. And then James takes a call from a New York Times

reporter working on a story who tells James that.

Well, he's in the middle of something much bigger and much more dangerous than the sale of a timeshare.

The people he thinks are real estate agents are actually members of a notorious

...