A bogus letting agent has conned members of the public out of thousands of pounds, making some of them homeless in the process.
Police believe there may be as many as 17 victims of the man, who claims to work for ‘Red Bricks Estate’.
Prospective tenants were caught after seeing an online advertisement for a flat in Slough.
They handed over deposits, admin fees and the first month’s rent and were given a moving-in date of around the beginning of last month.
When they arrived at the flat, they found they could not move in.
Case investigator Kevin Clingham said: “This scam has had a devastating impact on so many people and their families as they were promised a rental property in Slough which never materialised.
“Instead, they lost thousands of pounds by making upfront payments to a man they trusted to be an estate agent.
“Working with Slough Borough Council, we have been able to identify some of our victims as they rendered themselves homeless as a consequence of being scammed, with some being temporarily accommodated since.
“Through our inquiries, we know that there are other victims of this scam who have not yet contacted us. This could be as many as 17 families or individuals.
“I believe that there are victims of this scam living in areas of London, not just Thames Valley, so I would urge these people to come forward as a matter of urgency.
“As part of our ongoing investigation, we are liaising with Action Fraud and other agencies.”
He added: “I would like to reassure residents and victims that we are doing all we can to progress our investigation and to track down this bogus estate agent who is responsible for committing such despicable crimes.”
* There are perfectly legitimate agents with similar names to Red Bricks Estate. There is no suggestion whatever that any are involved in any way with this scam.
Can you imagine the frustration I have, I’ve built a system that can detect this particular criminal activity. The system works in beta testing and is now only being help up by a lack of cooperation by organisations who ought to have an interest in preventing criminals obtaining money by deception.
Yesterday one official who is very well placed to assist told me to ” go and tell the police, we’re not going to help”
(Before anyone bangs on about this being an advert, it isn’t. Those involved and knowledgeable of the project’s progress will hopefully testify that I’m not asking for money, this is a spin off benefit from the other stuff I do.
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Robert, can you ask Ros to send me your contact details? I’m working on a different project at the moment and the two may tie up nicely
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Action Fraud is anything but Action. I had a tenant who went on holiday and told the neighbour below they would be away for a couple of weeks. The two maisonettes share a common porch. The tenant from the other flat immediately asked the council to register him as the council tax payer on my property (immediately he knew my tenant was out of the country!). As it is a shared porch all post was accessible. When my tenant got back they asked why the council tax had been change to another name and I asked for the papers. The council tax department co-operated and confirmed the person named on the new council tax bill had the same mobile number as the the other tenant ( a number I had been given in case of emergencies). A false name was on the new CT bill. The other flat’s tenant was from a notorious African country and he was clearly setting up a fraud (a council tax bill being an identification). No one was interested including ActionFraud. The council said it appreciated the problem was was not a fraud against them so of no interest (yet I suggest they are assisting a crime by not checking the new council tax payer was legitimate). The council concerned say they have made a file note to advise me if council tax payer request changes. I also notified the utility companies in order prevent him changing them to a false name as well!
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Having just had a very long and interesting conversation with Robert May and being from a background that would be interested in what he is doing, I have to say that the project he is currently putting together is something this industry needs.
Without this tool, the criminals will continue to get away with their fraudulent activities and we will have more tenants/landlords out of pocket, and we will still be talking about this in 10 years time.
No system will stop everything but this project Robert is working on will, no doubt in my mind, go a long way towards improving the public perception of agents.
No I’m not getting paid or have any financial interest by writing this and if I didn’t believe what he is doing was worthwhile, I wouldn’t be wasting my time writing this.
Every agent on this site should be getting in touch with Robert to find out what he is doing, you won’t be dissapointed!
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Thank you for those very kind words.
The sad thing is there will be agents reading EYE who will not appreciate me sending an 18/23 report to HMRC, there will be agents who think it’s OK for their clients not to pay tax on their property income. The reassuring thing is there are many more good agents than there are bad and together we can put a brake on their activities.
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Is there a website interested agents can go to for more information on your project, Robert?
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Not at the moment, we are in beta at present and not ready to do a full demonstration of what’s possible. Some of the people involved in the development have only found out today how lots of seemingly unconnected development fits together.
Ros has my details if you would like to know more or would like to get involved with detecting & closing down characters like this.
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The issue is the power of the internet …. riddled with making fraud easy peasy. On-line only lettings companies should be outlawed.
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You might be shocked at quite who is up to what. It isn’t something that can be laid at the door of any particular business model. The internet is an easy facilitator of fraud but it is also the greatest uncensored ally of a solution.
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I do not say this lightly, (and receive no incentives or payment for saying it) but the system Robert is currently Beta-testing has the potential to revolutionise estate agency and will go a very long way to eradicating rogue agents.
If Beta testing goes well, the system will be able to detect live occurrences of ‘rogue lettings’, to the point where it should be possible to create an ‘HPI’ style check for tenants considering rental accommodation. (Why haven’t Shelter diverted their apparently inexhaustible PR budget on developing something like this instead?)
Robert has already produced a live and updated register of all properties available to buy or to let which can be cross checked against the redress and tenancy deposit schemes in real-time. Additionally the ‘portal-juggle’ detection technology allows detection of repeat occurrences of individual properties and therefore shows properties offered to let outside of the constraints of an AST (No more sub-letting by rogue tenants or negotiators on Air B&B!)
In simple terms Robert can identify, likely rogue agents or those not complying with basic legislation in real-time. I understand his intention is also to provide a report back to the redress schemes as a lead for enquiries and, supply HMRC with a comprehensive Paragraph 18 Section 23 of the Finance Act report, of agents who are letting property. (No more dodgy cheap and cheerful fly-by-night letting agents!)
It is a genius system that the industry has needed for far too long. Consequently it, along with Robert, will be rubbished and derided; predominantly by the large minority of rogue/ lazy agents it will expose and by the organisations who have failed to act before now.
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Robert are you selling shares, I’m in.
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We are a long way off that at the moment, what is being developed is a convenient extension to some other stuff that can probably afford to subsidise a clean up in the industry. There are some influential people who need to be convinced of the worth and integrity of what is being proposed.
What is interesting is the stuff I have been able to spot on Gumtree as a result of this story. Where we have concentrated on the main property sites I suspect legislation might need to be extended to cover the like of Gumtree. There is stuff on there which in isolation looks fine but collated together looks….. confusing; identical flats and descriptions but different rental prices?
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Thank you for that Chris. This is a big challenge and I’m personally grateful to everyone who has shown faith in my ability to attempt this so far. The support and motivation to carry on when faced with challenge has been invaluable.
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So… I bang away like the Duracell Bunny for months on end about Robert and his marvelous (credit: Julian O’Dell) creation – and I takes two days off-site and all this recognition of his achievement kicks off.
I need to take more holidays, clearly…
Your time to shine is approaching fast, Mr May.
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smile please – note that I told you that you should speak to this guy… ;o)
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