AMARILLO, Texas (KAMR/KCIT) – Three people from Amarillo have been named among 23 other defendants in California Federal Court accused of allegedly conspiring to defraud current and previous timeshare owners by posing as attorneys and officials processing legal settlements.
Ashley Molina, Ricardo Plascencia and Samuel Lopez were indicted Tuesday in federal court in the Eastern District of California, among a list of 23 total defendants. At the time of the indictment, eight names among the 23 defendants had been redacted and several other documents related to the case remained sealed.
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Molina, Plascencia, Lopez and the other defendants were indicted on a list of various charges, including:
- Conspiracy to commit wire fraud with telemarketing and email fraud enhancement;
- Conspiracy to commit money laundering;
- Wire fraud with telemarketing and email fraud enhancement; and
- Money laundering.
Court documents said between April 2019 and October 2025, the defendants allegedly knowingly conspired to communicate “in furtherance of a material scheme and artifice to defraud, and to obtain money and property, by means of materially false and fraudulent pretenses, representations, and promises,” people over the age of 55 who owned or previously owned timeshares.
The indictment said Molina, Plascencia, Lopez and other defendants allegedly contacted people who owned or previously owned timeshares “through phone calls, emails, and other means” while posing as attorneys, paralegals and government officials. They allegedly told the victims they were entitled to receive money from legal settlements concerning their timeshares; however, to receive the money, they would have to make initial payments amounting to a percentage of the expected recovery…