Tenants who found a flat on Zoopla only to be ripped off by a fake landlord say that the property had been placed on the site by online agent OpenRent.
The agent had been unaware that it had been named in connection with the case until Eye forwarded on information yesterday, but quickly contacted police hunting the conman.
Director Daz Bradbury said that if the property had been listed on his site, he will be able to provide police with extensive information.
The conman, who told tenants his name was Mustafa Bhatt, tricked at least 12 people into parting with deposit money for a flat he did not own.
Tenant Olina Zajickova told the Mirror: “He advertised the flat on Zoopla via OpenRent as a one-bedroom flat in Popham Street in Islington.
“Myself and my boyfriend submitted our personal details via OpenRent as instructed by the site, and were contacted by Mustafa the same evening via text message.
“We viewed the flat the next day with another couple who were also interested.”
She said that she and her boyfriend were offered a contract the following day.
They put down a cash payment and as they later found out, lost all their savings.
They also asked for another viewing and were again let in by Mustafa while a young couple in the flat posed as the “current” tenants.
The evening before their planned move, they went back to the flat to check the keys worked and met the real landlord who was in the process of changing the locks as several couples had turned up, trying to move in.
Bradbury, who co-founded OpenRent with fellow Oxford University graduate Adam Hyslop, told Eye yesterday that the newspaper had not contacted the site before publishing its story.
He said: “The Mirror did not reach out to us so this is the first I’m hearing of this article. I have contacted the police now and am awaiting further information to see if we can match it to any enquiries via our system and help with any investigation.
“Our enquiry system ensures tenants go via OpenRent before getting in touch with the landlord for a viewing.
“Our security systems are state of the art, and are constantly evolving and improving as new threats are discovered. If this did come via OpenRent, we will be able to provide the police with extensive information on this bogus landlord.
“All agents, whether online or offline, have to combat fraud at some level.
“Anyone can walk into a high street agency and ask for advertising only and demand to do the viewings themselves – the level of checks that agency does on the landlord will vary from agency to agency.
“With roughly 50% of landlords using an agent for tenant find only, and a significant percentage doing the viewings themselves (because they want to meet their future tenants!) this affects us all.
“According to the article, this person then seemed to brazenly walk people to a cash point and steal their money after a viewing.
“As the largest letting agent in the country, we get a lot of people through our digital front door. As such, we’ve made sure our security is the tightest around. We’ve thwarted numerous attempts at rental fraud, or advance fee fraud, over the years and continue to do so.
“Part of that is educating tenants, and we tell all tenants arranging a viewing via OpenRent never to hand over cash directly to a landlord. Legitimate or otherwise, this is never sensible.
“Furthermore, our Rent Now system 100% protects tenant money – we make sure the tenants don’t have to pay the landlord any money directly until the tenancy is set up and they have been living there for a month. It is 100% free for tenants to use.
“This has been the case since OpenRent’s inception. Whilst you always hope never to have to deal with criminals, it’s common sense to make sure you have protection in place.
“Our defences over the years have proven to be robust, and we continue to strengthen them as attackers become more advanced.
“Hopefully the police can provide us with more details, and in the event the tenants went via OpenRent, we can aid them in bringing this criminal to justice and recover any lost funds.”
OpenRent claims to have overtaken Foxtons earlier this year in terms of properties let per month.
Anyone with any information can call 101 quoting 2721069/14 or Crimestoppers anonymously on 0800 555 111.
The Mirror story is here
Maybe we need a SINGLE goverment body that all deposits and first months rent is paid to. This body to hand the money over to the landlord/agent once the tenant has moved in and the landlords ID has been checked.
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Automatic jail for any agent/landlord that accepts the money directly, along with a cash reward for anyone that reports them.
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Make sure the agent is regulated by NARLS and is a Safe Agent. Never a good idea to give a large amount of cash to anyone. Wonder if they went private because it was cheaper as no agents fees? Landlords do the same and wonder why they dont get the same service as a high street letting agent with many years history and protection of NARLS, Property Omnibusman, Safe Agent etc.
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This clearly demonstrates the issue of dealing with robots and not humans. The landlords desperate to keep costs down, sign up to these portals to advertise “for free”. No checking of ownership or property details which creates the ideal conditions to allow con men to use the system. Problem is if they put humans in place they will require to pay wages, office rents etc which are not calculated into their cheap disruptive business models
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And this is the danger of using on-line agents. It is wide open to abuse by fraudsters if the on-liner doesn’t do the required checks, obviously they didn’t!
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