A Lowell man who created a series of California companies to milk unhappy timeshare customers out of $3.5 million through a cycle of lies and fraud has pleaded guilty to one count against him, setting him up for up to a 20-year stint in prison.

Michael McDonagh, 42, pleaded guilty in federal court for the Middle District of California on Tuesday to one count of wire fraud, though the April 28, 2022, indictment alleged a total of 29 counts of wire fraud each against McDonagh and his four associates.

The feds say that McDonagh, who is currently a resident of Lowell, was the ringleader and founder in a scheme in which he created numerous timeshare “exit” telemarketing companies in Orange, Riverside and Los Angeles counties in California that each lied to people desperate to get out of their timeshare agreements.

“In truth, during the scheme, the co-schemers had no intention of relieving the timeshare owners of their timeshare obligations for a fixed fee, but rather intended to obtain as much money as they could from the victims through fraud,” federal prosecutors wrote in the April 27 plea agreement document.

Co-schemers Antonia Duarte, Christopher James Vannoy, Frank Anthony Molina and Ruben Ortiz have also pleaded guilty to one count of wire fraud.

From 2015 to May 2019, according to court documents, “openers” from the companies — which included Global Transfer Inc. of Irvine, Global transfer SoCal Inc. of Costa Mesa, Nationwide Transfer Inc. of Santa Ana and Nationwide Exit Specialist Inc. of Signal Hill — would reach out to timeshare owners and promise not only that, for a fee, they would terminate the person’s unwanted timeshare interest but other fruits:

For a fee, in each case, they promised these customers settlement payments from their timeshare companies undergoing litigation, restitution from the timeshare companies for allegedly renting out the timeshare without the victim’s permission and that all these fees would be reimbursed when supposedly pending litigation was settled. It was the job of a “closer” to get these customers to sign on the dotted line.

Of course, in order to work these monetary miracles, the schemers told their victims that they couldn’t discuss any of this with their timeshare company for one reason or another, according to the plea agreement. None of the money actually went to anything promised, but “rather were used fo the purpose of personally enriching the co-schemers.

As each McDonagh telemarketing company racked up too many consumer complaints, he allegedly folded it and then started a brand new company with the same modus operandi.