The Story of Scammers Ltd

[A special post from regular guest blogger Ben Reeve Lewis.  Ben is a tenancy relations officer at a London Local Authority – here he describes problems he is experiencing with dishonest agents in his area.]

Setting the scene

Regular readers will know that Tessa and I strongly believe that letting agencies should be licensed and regulated.

Not as a punishment but just because the private rental sector suffers from amateurism, which affects tenants, landlords and decent agents who get tarred with the brush used by the dodgy ones to paint pictures that make Francis Bacon’s nudes look glamorous.

Let me tell you about a case I am working on at the moment that will give you an insight into what is really going on out there. Names have been changed to protect ‘Me’, but the details of the case are hard-core facts.

Let’s call them Scammers Ltd.

Mohammed rents a room

A shop front opens up locally as a letting agent. The usual stuff, desks, photos of properties in the window, nothing to separate them from the thousands of others currently in business.

I get a guy in called Mohammed, who paid Scammers Ltd £1,000 up front to move into 1 room in a vacant 3 bedroom flat. The receipt he is given for his money bears the name of a reputable local estate agent, not Scammers Ltd. For the purposes of this article we shall call them ‘Reputable Agents Ltd’.

A day after he moved in, the front door opens and in walks a different agent with 2 prospective tenants looking to rent the whole flat. When Mohammed makes himself known the agent makes himself scarce.

Mary rents the flat, Mohammed gets locked out

A day later up pops Mary, a tenant with a written agreement for the entire flat, signed by a third letting agent in Brixton. Mary goes back to her agents to remonstrate.

Mohammed senses something is amiss and goes to Scammers Ltd to ask for his money back. They tell him there has been a cock up and that if he moves out they will refund him in full. He wisely says he won’t move out until they give him his money back. The next day he returns from the shops and finds the locks changed.

A refund is promised

So he goes to the office and meets Maria (more on her in a bit) who tells him that they have already paid his money back into his account but it will take 3 days to clear. Meanwhile, not knowing his rights he sleeps in his car, £1,000 lighter and waits for the funds to clear……as if!

I call Reputable Agents Ltd and tell them what Scammers Ltd are up to. They are furious and send someone down to my office to get a copy of the receipt bearing their name.

Ben does some research

I track down the website of agent number 2 and see the site is down for construction purposes but with a contact phone number. I call it and it turns out to be a hotel in Blackheath who haven’t a clue what I am talking about.

I do a company search of Scammers Ltd and find it to be a defunct company owned by a local guy who remembers employing Maria some years ago but has long ceased trading.

I also start making a few calls to some ‘contacts’ in the business for a heads up. The information I get back is that Maria is well known to people of certain leanings and that she is actually Marguerite Proudfoot, who previously ran a dodgy agency in South East London and was deported to Jamaica a couple of years back and subsequently came back into the UK under her sister’s name Paula Donaldson where she met up with a Peter Sessin and started Scammers Ltd.

Further info tells me that she made a deal with the owner of the take away next door to her office and signed up a new business owner for £5,000, none of which made it to the landlord, who subsequently put a contract out on Marguerite/Paula’s life, which is why I am finding it difficult to track her down.

Trading standards tell of other similar cases

Next stop for me is a call to the council’s trading standards team, who tell me that coincidentally they have just taken a statement from a woman called Imelda who paid £2,500 up front to move into property at 35 Benishaw Rd. When she turned up she couldn’t get in and returned to the office to be told the same as Mohammed, that her money had been returned but would take a few days to clear.

They also tell me that a bunch of students looking to rent a house together also stumped up £2,500 for 35 Benishaw Rd, rather foolishly without viewing it. Needless to say they didn’t get reimbursed either.

Imelda’s story

So I go and interview Imelda and she tells me that whilst waiting in the office of Scammers Ltd she got talking to woman bouncing a baby on her knee who had also paid £2,500 for 35 Benishaw, with the same result. The problem is, the father of the baby she was comforting was none other than Peter Sessin, the boss of Scammers Ltd.

But Imelda tells me more. She went to the property to view it and met a middle aged Asian couple who said they were the landlords. I was discussing this with a colleague who recognised the address and told me that he has been involved in a harassment case there since early this year and the actual owners are a West Indian couple he has met before, not an Asian couple.

Scammers Ltd plan new offices

Back to my contacts who tell me that Scammers Ltd have another office under a different name in Croydon and are about to open a third office somewhere in East London. I really want to stop this happening.

Mohammed has taken a letter from the place he was renting and it gives me information on an office supply company who Maria went to for furniture. I give them a call and they tell me that she bought £1,000 worth of desks and filing cabinets and paid with a bounced cheque for a company that was dissolved 2 years ago. They are furious and out for blood too.

Trading standards do a raid

Trading standards have enough to go on and do a raid with the police. They find an office behind the shop front with a 2 way mirror so that Maria can presumably scrutinise complainants as they come in. A search of the filing cabinets shows pretty much empty drawers, apart from a business lease contract between her and the landlords for the office. Her given address turns out to be fictitious.

This is just where I am at right now with this. I have visited the Croydon office but nobody is ever there. I don’t know where the intended East London office is going to be or what name it will open under. The 2 way mirror prevents me from making contact and Maria and Peter use a variety of alias’s that make decisive action impossible at present

Scammers Ltd are not the only ones  …

Now this may seem rather scandalous and unusual until you understand that I currently have around 6 or 7 other local agents under my microscope at the moment, all of whom involve addresses that don’t add up, missing deposits and lettings of properties that the agent doesn’t actually have the right to let.

I work in one local authority out of 300+ and yet still the government doesn’t see the need for regulation.

Ben Reeve Lewis

Do you know of any similar cases?  Have you any suggestions as to how this problem can be dealt with.  Leave a comment in the box below.

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Ben has started Home Saving Expert, to share his secrets to defending people’s homes from mortgage repossession Visit his blog and get some help and advice on mortgage difficulties and catch up with him on Twitter and check out his free report “An Encouraging note on Dealing with your Mortgage Lender” and have it sent right to your inbox.

Picture by Images of Money