A person claiming to be a buy to let landlord managed to illegally lease a woman’s home to eight Romanians while it was on the market to be sold.
The owner Gretel Malcolm then found herself locked out of the house in Tottenham, London by the people who had moved in. She reported the matter to the police and eventually had to resort to cutting off the electricity and gas to force them out.
She said: “I'm pleased it's all over but it's terrible this person is going around ripping people off. I can't believe you can leave your house for a little while and someone else has moved in.
“People need to be aware that they must be careful if they own any property.”
Malcolm and her sister checked the house daily while it was up for sale but after a four-day break away they returned to find the locks had been changed and the eight strangers had moved in.
They claimed to have paid a man £3,000 for three months’ rent after he had approached them in a supermarket, giving them a one page ‘short-term lease’ to sign.
However Malcolm insists she does not blame the ‘tenants’, who have been left thousands of pounds out of pocket.
“They didn't cause any damage and kept the house tidy,” she said.
Bogus landlords have been at work in Tottenham before. In another incident a family returned from holiday in January to find Romanians had moved into their home and were evicted only after they had trashed the rooms and littered the place with soiled nappies. And in June another family faced a five-day stand off when they found ‘tenants’ in their home.
Malcolm’s solicitor Jonathan Frankel, of Gilbert Turner Coomber Law, said he deals with similar situations regularly, adding: “The best thing to do is make sure your house is secure.”
