A rogue letting agent has been ordered to pay over £16,000 and given a 12 month suspended prison sentence for defrauding landlords and tenants after a trading standards investigation.
Sanjit Alangh, 26, of Epping, pleaded guilty to 10 offences: nine were under the Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008 and one under the Companies Act 2006.
He was given a suspended prison sentence of six months for the CPUTR offences and another six months to run consecutively for the Companies Act offence. The sentence was suspended for two years. He was also ordered to do 120 hours unpaid work.
A judge at Chelmsford Crown Court ordered him to pay compensation of £11,005 to 11 victims and £5,000 towards the local council's trading standards' prosecution costs. Alangh was also disqualified from being a company director for five years.
Alangh, who at the time was a director of The Rent Team Limited, an agency operating in Harlow, is accused of deliberately defrauding landlords by failing to pass on rental payments and tenants by failing to deal with their deposits as required by law.
Councillor Roger Walters of Essex County Council says anyone renting from a private landlord should check your tenancy agreement for the Tenancy Deposit Protection Scheme that your deposit is meant to be registered with.
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Comments
Should have sent the spanner to prison. Mind you GLAD he got a huge fine.