CAMDEN, N.J. – A Florida woman was sentenced to three and a half years in prison for her role in a $3 million conspiracy to scam customers by offering phony consulting services to owners of timeshares through the New Jersey-based Vacation Ownership Group LLC.
Genevieve Manzoni, 50, was previously convicted in September 2013 of one count of mail fraud and one count of conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud. She was convicted following a seven-week trial before U.S. District Judge Noel L. Hillman, who imposed the sentence today in Camden federal court.
According to documents filed in this case and the evidence presented at trial, Manzoni and her codefendants were part of a scheme to defraud hundreds of timeshare owners by offering fraudulent consulting services through Vacation Ownership Group (now VO Financial). Adam Lacerda, the company founder, devised the company’s fraudulent sales pitches, telling customers that VO worked with the banks holding the customers’ loans, would use money sent by customers to pay off the customers’ loans on their timeshares, and could cancel customers’ timeshares with money back.
Manzoni was a top VO sales representative who falsely told one victim she worked with a bank, another victim that she worked with a timeshare developer. All four defendants were convicted at the same trial. The 14 victims who testified – including business executives, veterans, senior citizens, a lawyer and a professor – were defrauded out of tens of thousands of dollars by the defendants’ sophisticated scheme.
In addition to the prison term, Judge Hillman ordered Manzoni to serve three years of supervised release and pay restitution of $174,842.13.
The investigation was led by the FBI’s Atlantic City Resident Agency, under the direction of Special Agent in Charge Richard M. Frankel in Newark, and special agents from the Department of Labor, Office of Inspector General, Office of Labor Racketeering and Fraud Investigations, under the direction of Special Agent in Charge Cheryl Garcia, New York Region.
The government is represented by Assistant U.S. Attorney R. David Walk Jr. of the U.S. Attorney’s Office Criminal Division in Camden.
Genevieve Manzoni, a 50-year-old woman from Lake Worth, Florida, was sentenced to 42 months in prison for her role in a $3 million conspiracy to scam customers by offering phony consulting services to owners of timeshares through the New Jersey-based Vacation Ownership Group LLC. Manzoni was convicted in September 2013 of one count of mail fraud and one count of conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud.
The scheme, which was operated through Vacation Ownership Group (now VO Financial), involved hundreds of victims who were defrauded out of tens of thousands of dollars. The defendants, including Manzoni, Adam Lacerda, Ashley Lacerda, and Ian Resnick, were convicted at the same trial.
Related Federal Cases
- Lissette Delarosa, Mail Fraud Conspiracy, New Jersey 2010 · Florida
- Abdelrahman Ahmed-Elkilani, Wire Fraud, New Jersey 2024 · Florida
- Georg Ingenbleek, Mail Fraud Scheme, New Jersey 2020 · Florida
- James Franklin Hill, Wire Fraud, New Jersey 2017 · Florida
- Michael Blanc, Wire Fraud, New Jersey 2023 · Florida
Key Facts
- State: New Jersey
- Category: Fraud & Financial Crimes
- Source: DOJ Press Release â†â€â€
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