A letting agent who was jailed for fraud has been ordered to repay her victims some £43,000, after cheating landlords and tenants out of over £240,000.

Heather Crabb, who ran Drake Homes in Plymouth, left over two dozen victims out of pocket.

She used the money to prop up her company, but also set up a tanning salon business, bought a home in Florida and drove a Land Rover and Porsche.

After cheating clients over four a half years, she was jailed for 42 months last March.

She has been been made the subject of a Proceeds of Crime hearing.

Judge Paul Darlow said she had cheated £241,223 from her clients and had assets of £43,612.

The judge ordered her to pay this sum in compensation to her former landlords and tenants.

The assets are made up of a £30,000 stake in a marital home, and she will have to sell three cars as well as hand over cash already held by police.

Crabb, who appeared at the hearing via a video link from a prison in Kent, will have to serve extra time in jail if she does not pay.

Financial investigations officer Simon Arscott: “Our priority is to return what money we can to the victims as quickly as we can, though it may take a couple of months.

“We would of course have liked to have recovered all of the money but that was never going to be possible as she had frittered it away.”

Crabb ran Drake Homes from 2005 until September 2016. It mainly dealt with student lettings.

A co-director, Jill Wood, 52, who was given a 22-month suspended prison sentence after pleading guilty to false accounting and fraud, is to face a Proceeds of Crime hearing shortly.

https://www.plymouthherald.co.uk/news/plymouth-news/crooked-plymouth-lettings-boss-heather-3873700