Timeshare fraudster facing up to five years in prison.

Vladislav “Steven” Zubkis, a businessman from San Diego, has admitting to defrauding investors of more than $1.8 million in two different investment schemes.

Zubkis, a Ukrainian-born immigrant, has been in the business of swindling others for several years. In 2001, a federal judge imposed a $21.5 million judgment against Zubkis, and banned him from being an executive or officer in any public company, after he sold stock in what turned out to be a bogus chain of coffee houses. Zubkis ignored the ban and has been hard at work on other fraudulent schemes, one involving the purchase of a Las Vegas casino and another, the proposed construction of a storage facility. For his efforts, Zubkis now faces up to five years in prison; $250,000 in fines; and $1.8 million in court-ordered restitution, to be followed by deportation from the United States.

And what’s the good news here for the timeshare industry?

One more timeshare fraudster is out of business. At the time of his arrest, Zubkis was promoting a luxury timeshare housing development in Baja, California. He was promising investors, that for their $13,000 investment, they would see profits between one and three quarters of a million dollars.