Timeshare M*fia (Part 1)The Bloody Feud That Rocked Tenerife 

January 2006, Tenneref, an unusually cool winter evening on the edge of Plyier Deas Americus. British expat couple Billy and Florence Robinson dine with their senior manager Chris Collins and his wife at a Japanese Teanyaki restaurant, tucked above the designer boutiques in the Safari shopping mall.

The Robinsons leave around 10:30 p.m. At 11:30 p.m., Florence is found dead beside her silver Mercedes, just 300 m from the couple’s luxury villa in the quiet hills of San Miguel de Arona. She’s lying in a pool of blood. Billy’s body is found the following morning, slumped across the back seat of his Porsche Cayenne, several kilometers away, near an industrial estate in Last Chafirus.

He’d been stabbed multiple times. His throat was cut. Nothing had been stolen. Billy’s 100,000 gold watch remained on his wrist. Florence’s diamond earrings were untouched. Whoever killed them wasn’t after money. This was calculated cold, personal. Spanish authorities said little. Theories range from business rivalries to long-standing personal vendettas.

It wasn’t the first time the Robinsons had been threatened. A previous beating left Billy hospitalized, but he refused to report it. Their home was fortified, protected by intercoms and cameras, but it hadn’t saved them. To the British public, they were the latest victims of a paradise gone wrong. But to those who knew the underbelly of Tenneref’s time share world, their murders were a chilling message.

John Goldfinger Palmer arrived in Tenneref in 1984, flying out as police in the UK prepared to arrest him as part of the ongoing Brinks Matt investigation. Though he would later be acquitted, Palmer wasn’t waiting to see how things played out. At the time, there was no extradition treaty between Spain and the UK.

Tenneref offered him time, distance, and protection. He wasn’t new to the island. He had visited before on a luxury holiday in the late 1970s and had already purchased an apartment. He liked that Tenneref wasn’t overrun with British criminals like the Costa dels and its proximity to West Africa made it a convenient staging post. He’d seen potential.

He wasn’t there to lie low. He came to build. After watching the time share boom take off in Florida with tourists queuing to buy shared holiday weeks, Palmer saw the model’s potential. in Tenneref. He took the concept and twisted it into something far more aggressive. His operation offered dream holidays. In practice, tourists were pressured into confusing long-term contracts, often for properties that didn’t exist or that they would never properly own.

It was polished fraud masked by champagne breakfast and smooth sales powder. Palmer brought in young men from all over Britain. Salesmen, exorman, bodybuilders, petty criminals. They came from Wolverampton, T-side, Darlington, and across the UK. Some pushed the sales, others enforced payments. Many drifted into drug dealing, protection work, and nightlife control.

The line between salesman and gangster blurred quickly. A hidden underworld began to take root on the island. Palmer hadn’t landed there by accident. Born in 1950 in Soihole, Birmingham, he’d come from grinding poverty. His father, reportedly part gypsy and tied to old peaky blender gangs, died homeless.

By his late teens, he was operating a jewelry shop, fronting a fencing ring. By 20, he was reportedly making six figures. He built his fortune further through VAT gold scams, importing gold, smelting it, and claiming back fraudulent tax rebates that brought him into contact with Kenny just before the 1983 Brinks Map robbery. Palmer became one of the key men trusted to move and smelt the stolen bullion, hence the name Goldfinger.

Now in Tenneref, with serious money and no authorities breathing down his neck, Palmer began constructing his next empire, one based not only on threats, but paperwork and dirty money. Behind the palm trees and brochers, a network of fraud, coercion, and control began to spread across the island. And as Palmer’s wealth grew, so did the number of men circling it.

Tenneref Miltoi says a dusty back street near Los Christristianos. A British expat lies blooded on the tarmac. His hands are broken, his legs too. Around him stand four men with baseball bats. One of them lights a cigarette unfazed by the blood. The message isn’t just for the man on the ground.

It’s for everyone watching. That same year, John Goldfinger Palmer had just established the Holiday Village, his flagship time share headquarters on the island. Florence Flo Robinson ran the front desk with her two Jack Russells, Sid and Nancy, but behind the sunny brochures and manufactured smiles, a more ruthless operation was unfolding.

Palmer had first met Muhammad Debar the year before in Libya while exploring gold and shipping routes via diamond contacts. The red carpet had been rolled out thanks to a Libyan civil servant named Charles Taylor, a name that would later become infamous in West African conflict zones.

Deba had been assigned as Palmer’s bodyguard. Tough, sharp, and disciplined, he stood out. Palmer took him back to Tenneref. It was a decision that would change everything. With Derber at his side, Palmer expanded rapidly. By 1986, they were laundering money through local banks, deals with Colombian cartels, and selling time share packages that never materialized.

Winsley Clarkson writes that the island soon gained a new nickname, the White Island, not for its beaches, but for the coke flooding its party scene. Palmer was living like royalty, but he needed muscle to hold his empire together. Deborah brought in his brothers and assembled a fearsome team of enforcers. Names like Psycho Bill and the Sharks.

Rivals who refused to pay protection were allegedly tortured or disappeared. They weren’t just bouncers. They were a paramilitary unit in Nike tracksuits and designer sunglasses. That same year, pressure from the British government forced Spanish authorities to revoke Palmer’s passport. He fled through Lisbon, landing in Brazil, where he was arrested, the result of rare crossber cooperation between Brazil, Spain, and the UK.

But in 1987, Palmer walked free, charges collapsed, and he came back to Tenneref more determined than ever. According to Clarkson, trouble was brewing with London villains convinced Goldfinger had used some of the bullion money to build his empire. A feared North London crime family said to have links to the missing Brinks Matt Gold were putting pressure on Palmer.

Underworld rumors were rife of potential retribution, but Palmer just built his personal army and continued growing his wealth. As the ‘9s rolled in, cracks were starting to show. Behind the scenes, Derber was no longer just an enforcer. He was growing his own power base, backed, it said, by serious figures from Russia and the Middle East.

Clarkson suggests a cold war had begun between Palmer and his protetéé. Territory, money, loyalty. Everything was in play. Brutal attacks began to rise. Security firms aligned to different bosses clashed in clubs, car parks, and quiet villas. Sometimes it ended in warnings. Sometimes it ended in bodies.

Tenneref was no longer just a tourist haven. It had become a pressure cooker, and the heat was only rising. Tenneref was becoming a battleground. Palmer ruled with money. Dera ruled with fear. But when two men grow empires inside the same castle, the cracks don’t stay buried forever. By 1993, Tenneref, the island’s sun-kissed beaches, hedonistic parties, coke, and pale euphoria hit a darker underbelly of violent feuds erupting.

The time share boom was still in full swing. But behind the glossy offices and showroom smiles, tensions were rising. The money was good, so the rivalries were brutal. Among those carving out influence was Andrew Winder, a bodybuilder from Darlington, who had become a key figure in the island’s time share ecosystem. It would seem Winder had carved out a job as head of security, looking after hundreds of apartments in Tenneref.

What happened next remains murky. According to police and and press reports at the time, Winder was involved in a violent dispute with other British expats, all linked to the island’s increasingly militarized time share protection crews. A fight ended in an apartment in Port Royal Los Cristianos.

Richard Chalinor, a former rugby player who worked for Winder, did an exclusive interview from his Tenneref prison cell with the Sunday son, published September 11th, 1994. He suggested in the report that Winder had launched a frenzied attack on him and his co-acused and Chaliner was stabbed seven times. Winder, who had been brutally stabbed and shot, later died, and Steven Coats was released on bail after admitting shooting Winder in self-defense.

A number of other Northeast Bodybuilder enforcers were caught up in the charges, but were later released. The Spanish police publicly confirmed that the shooting was linked to a time share security feud, but the precise details may never be known. Back in the UK, local newspapers in the Northeast ran with a salacious twist.

They claimed Wender had previously clashed with the Newcastle security boss Viv Graham, who was brutally murdered in 199. Several stories did the rounds in local northeast newspapers. One that Winder had beaten Graham in a bloody bare knuckle fight, causing Graham to have plastic surgery. Another claimed Winder had badly beaten a friend of Graemes and Viv had been paid to cabbage Winder before his death.

The paper suggested Graeme had placed a £10,000 contract on Winder’s head and that Winder had responded with £30,000 of his own if he were to be harmed. There’s no verified evidence to support those claims. The supposed bounty war between Graham and Winder appears to be tabloid speculation. Another example of the media mythologizing real underworld figures without hard proof.

As the ‘9s rolled on and the power struggle between Derba and Palmer, intensified, what followed was described as tit for tat violence. Turf was contested. Offices were burned out. Enforcers were ambushed, slashed, or shot. It was the quiet start of a bloody cold war in the Canary Islands. played out in the clubs and bars and fueled by the millions pouring in from dodgy holiday scams and drug trafficking roots.

What is clear, however, is that Andy Winder’s murder marked a turning point. It sent shock waves through the expat community. It exposed the violent rot beneath the time share boom, and it signaled that control of Tenneref’s shadow economy was very much up for grabs. For Winders family, it was a tragedy they would never come to terms with.

It’s important to point out in news reports, friends of Winder called him a big friendly giant. A lovely guy who would help anyone. Far from a person who would launch a frenzied attack. Rest in peace, Andrew Winder. Tenneref, 2000. The sun was out, the clubs were packed, and the island was still running on the fumes of its chaotic heyday.

British tourists poured in by the thousands. But beneath the surface, old tensions were close to boiling over. Among the holiday makers that year was London faced Dave Courtourtney over with his pal and their wives. Known from books and the tabloids, Courtney wasn’t low profile, especially not on the strip. One night they ended up at LK’s bar where they crossed paths with a group of lads from the southwest.

Loud, heavy set, full of banter. Nothing out of the ordinary. Later, the groups drifted to Bobby’s Bar, another popular Brit haunt. But things turned quickly. A man of Middle Eastern or North African descent, walked into the bar. Within seconds, he was set upon by a crowd of bodybuilder types, punched, kicked, stamped out cold. He was beaten so badly he slipped into a coma.

In the confusion, he reportedly named Courtney’s group as his attackers, despite Courtney only having met them that night. Word of the attack spread fast and the wrong people were listening. Within hours, it’s alleged Muhammad Duba, then a major figure in the island’s underworld, had deployed his men. Soldiers hit the strip hunting for Courtney and his crew.

They were soon found back at Bobby’s. What followed was brutal. One of Courtney’s friends had his head split open. Shots were fired. Chaos erupted. According to Courtney, they did what they could to fight back, but they were lucky to escape with their lives. Whether it was a misunderstanding or something deeper, the message was clear.

This wasn’t London and Derber ran Tenneref. Some insiders believe Derba suspected Palmer was behind it, using Courtney to stir trouble in one of Derba’s venues as tensions escalated between the former allies. By 2001, Palmer’s empire began to unravel. He claimed to have sold his time share interests, but Spanish investigators weren’t buying it.

Back in the UK, Palmer was brought to trial defending himself after sacking his legal team midway through proceedings. He was found guilty of running the largest recorded time share fraud in British legal history. Over 20,000 victims defrauded out of a staggering 30 million. Palmer was sentenced to eight years in prison, serving just over half.

Though his fortune was once estimated at £300 million, by 2005 he was officially bankrupt with debts of nearly4 million. Efforts by the crown to seize his assets were blocked in court. The king of Tenneref had fallen, but his story and the trail of bodies and blood money he left behind was far from over.

Billy and Flo Robinson had worked with Palmer. After his 2001 conviction for a 30 million pound time share fraud, they built their own company, Global World Travel, a lifetime holiday scheme branded as Time Links. A new name, a familiar model. They lived well, a mammillion pound villa in San Miguel Diabona.

Quiet routines, a close circle of friends, but they also lived cautiously. The villa was heavily secured. Billy rarely spoke of his past. In January 2006, they were killed within hours of a normal evening out. The crime scenes were brutal. Florence had suffered catastrophic injuries. Billy had been stabbed multiple times and his throat slit.

There was no sign of forced robbery. Their valuables were untouched. It was clearly personal. Police remained tight-lipped. Greco, Spain’s elite organized crime unit, was quietly deployed to the island. The theory, a professional hit, tied to an underworld falling out. Some suggested the killers left the island that night. Others believed they were helped, hidden, cleaned up, and extracted by insiders.

Within the expat time share community, fear spread quickly. Friends stopped speaking. Interviews were cancelled. One contact told British press they’d been warned off. The Robinsons were mourned, but their murders were never solved. The silence surrounding their deaths remains one of the darkest chapters in the island’s history.

Some link Palmer to the killings, but those closest to the Robinsons say that wasn’t his style. More likely, a rival time share business ran by deadly foreign gangs. John Palmer died in 2015. He was found in the garden of his Essex mansion. Initially ruled a natural death. But in the autopsy room, two bullets were discovered in his chest.

A silenced weapon. No suspects, no arrests. He had been awaiting trial for another wave of international frauds. Muhammad Derba outlived him. He rebranded bought hotels open cannabis clubs, founded a political party, held meetings with African politicians and Canarian officials. He was described by Spanish internal affairs as having tentacles in all institutions.

In 2017, he launched a memoir from the shores of Lebanon to the coasts of Tenneref. The event was attended by mayors, judges, business leaders, all clapping. In 2025, the law came knocking again. On May 1st, DBA was arrested by Spanish police. Charges, organized crime, moneyaundering, drug trafficking, bribery, and obstruction.

Internal affairs accused him of controlling cocaine and heroin operations behind the facade of legal cannabis clubs. In Tenneref, Paradise sells well, but what lies beneath power, betrayal, and blood rarely makes the brochure. Thank you for watching the Inquirer 2.0. If you enjoy this snapshot of the deadly 90s and 2000s tener time share wars, please smash the like, hit the subscribe, share to support the channel.

We do try our best to be as respectful as possible in the making of these mini YouTube documentaries. We understand how sensitive the content is and our thoughts go to the family of Andrew Wer, the time share victims Dave Cornney and of course John Palmer’s family as well. We’ve got loads of new content coming up.