More evidence has emerged of fake tenants trying to con letting agents.

Letting Agent Today has been contacted by Paul Endacott, managing director of 1st Avenue, a London agency specialising in the Docklands area.

He’s written a detailed piece about the problems caused by fraudulent tenants.

He writes:

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London’s letting agents face a crisis of confidence and a developing problem from the fake tenant, the collecting of accurate information, a growing city population and mushrooming rents.

Like an episode of Scooby Doo, the Mystery Machine is in full swing and the imposter is yet to be unmasked.

At least eight tenant fraud cases in one London office alone were caught in the past six weeks. Tenants supposedly with impeccable references and a story to match are calling up for viewings, and so in love with what they’ve seen on the internet they want to secure it on the spot.

A viewing must take place before the references begin, but in principle it covers off the legal obligations a letting agent must meet upfront. Then the person who rang up is rarely the person who turns up, both claiming to be the same person or in some cases a trusted friend sent along instead with all apologies..

References start and remarkably the fraudster passes quickly and with flying colours. In most cases they’ve been living with family and friends, have an e-mail address of a legitimate firm to qualify the salary and ID in the name of the person they are claiming to be.

It would be comforting to play down the risks and allow the referencing companies to get on with it, but what we see at first glance is not what we see with further investigation. Where once there was confidence, now there is only doubt.  

Referencing can be beaten and it’s not that hard to do.

Agents have to be resilient and protect the interests of the landlord, doing so prevents the landlord from a gloomy outlook and frayed nerves from mortgage payments they now struggle to meet.

We had a couple of fraudsters slip through the net a few months back, it’s not that we were not on alert, but the fake tenants methods of acquiring flats fraudulently are suddenly more sophisticated and have changed everything.

The premise is simple: use fake ID and references to gain access to a property, then re-rent the property out to those who would otherwise not be able to get a flat.  

A recent visit to an apartment in an upmarket complex yielded 10 delivery drivers living in a two bedroom one bathroom flat, all working for well established brands who likely deliver you food or groceries a couple of times a week for a small fee.  No sign of the actual tenant and no sign of the rent.  

In another similar case, the person who opened the door claimed to be a relative of the tenant who was just on holiday, the lie was as pungent as the smell of weed emanating from the property.

We’ve coined this as “Cuckooing”.   

Although definitions vary depending on who you speak to, in the lettings industry Cuckooing is a practice where people take over a landlord’s home legitimately and then use the property to facilitate tenancy exploitation.  It takes the name from cuckoos who take over the nests of other birds.

This new phenomenon of loading flats with gig economy and undocumented workers also causes a problem that suddenly the agent and the landlord find themselves unwittingly falling foul of HMO, right to rent, and/or blanket licensing regulations, which can lead to a criminal prosecution and large fines for landlords and the managing agent from heavy handed local authorities.

Forged passports and drivers’ licences are just one element of the scam, there is growing concern that the fraudsters are using Linked In to take information they find on a person’s profile to dupe the HR department the mark works for into giving out a salary and employment references to the letting agent or referencing company.  

Another theory is that Linked In is being used by the scammers to contact agents who work for referencing companies and offering them £1000 for every reference they push through, no questions asked.

There is no evidence to support either theory right now, but to solve the mystery of the fake tenant, questions must be asked.  As Sherlock Holmes once expressed “How often have I said to you that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth?

There is work to do