My landlord hell: how a scammer took over my flat without paying me a penny in rent

So there I was, standing on the doorstep of my flat in Battersea, asking a stranger – a stranger who said his name was Otto – whether I could come in.

He looked every bit as bemused and suspicious of me as I most certainly was of him.

It all started about six months earlier. I own a few properties in London, but live more than an hour away on the Kent coast, so although I manage the properties myself I sometimes use a firm of agents to find me a tenant.

It saves me the hassle of advertising the flat and conducting viewings, and, having identified a tenant who appears to be a good fit, the time-consuming business of checking references (past rental history and employment), bank statements, passports, right to work documentation, etc.

I had experienced problems with agents before – a firm in south-east London had lumbered me with a gang of Romanian cannabis farmers – so this time I opted for a familiar name, a leading firm of high street letting agents.

When I explained my requirements to Julia, the agency’s young negotiator, when we met at the flat, and recounted the story of the Romanian cannabis farmers, she reassured me that her firm had first class reference checks and vetting procedures. I was not to worry about a thing.

After several false starts Julia contacted me to tell me that she had found a young woman who was relocating to England from Sweden.

She was a senior person in a company with offices in Victoria and a well-paid job (more than £90k per annum). She was divorced, with two children at private boarding schools, who would only stay with her during the holidays. She wanted a three-year agreement. She also wanted to make some cosmetic changes to the flat, which all seemed reasonable enough.

I was told by Julia that Nadia would be starting the tenancy as soon as she relocated from Sweden to London, so I wouldn’t have an opportunity to meet her before she moved in.

As soon as she did move in I started to receive unsettling messages from Julia to the effect that the tenant was not happy with the flat. It was at that point that Julia revealed that before moving in Nadia had only viewed the flat virtually.

She had signed a three-year agreement without having seen the place.

With some difficulty – she didn’t return calls, messages or emails – I contacted Nadia and arranged to meet her at the flat.

On that occasion she said that she had first arrived at the flat late at night, it had been raining and the empty flat had an unpleasant smell.

I explained that I have been letting property for a long time, and had no interest in letting the flat to an unhappy tenant.

By the time I left it seemed that she had got over her initial misgivings and as far as I could tell she seemed happy enough. I breathed a sigh of relief.

Her first rental payment was due on December 15. Just before that date I received a WhatsApp message from her complaining about the condition of the flat.

She said that damp in the flat had caused one of her sons – staying with her from boarding school – to suffer an asthma attack. Also, she had disposed of my sofa “as the condition of it was so dreadful – I wouldn’t even let an animal sit on it”.

I tried to contact her repeatedly to discuss the matter, but she ignored my messages.

No rent was paid on the due date and the agents received a message to say that she was returning to Sweden for Christmas.

Early in the new year I asked the agents to arrange to inspect the property to check the claims she was making about the condition of the flat, and to check that she had not disposed of any other furniture.

There then began a game of cat and mouse which lasted for three months, and involved me repeatedly trying to arrange inspections, as I was entitled to do under the terms of the tenancy agreement, and with Nadia, always messaging at the last moment, refusing to allow an inspection to take place.

On the first occasion in early January she emailed the agent to say: “The flat isn’t vacant I’m here and do not give permission”.

At the end of that month she said that she had been ill in hospital. “I would just like to rest without being harassed”.

On February 5, in an email that had more than a whiff of AI about it, she blinded us with a blizzard of legalese, citing the Protection of Eviction Act 1977, the Housing Act 1988, the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985, and even throwing in for good measure the Office of Fair Trading’s Guidance on Unfair Terms in Tenancy Agreements (OFT356).

On February 24 she replied to yet another request from the agent to inspect as follows; “Please stop harassing me. I’ve said no to your visit requests several times already”.

The agents, on the advice of their legal department, would not agree to accompany me on a visit to the property without the tenant’s consent.

The due dates for rent payments came and went and no rent was forthcoming. I issued proceedings for a possession order in January once the tenant was two months in arrears. My claim for possession was listed for hearing in the Wandsworth County Court on May 12.

As the date of the court hearing approached it seemed vital that I should visit the flat and find out what the hell was going on before the hearing took place, so I wrote to Nadia on April 22 to notify her that I would arrive to inspect the flat on Monday, April 28 at midday. “If you would prefer not to be there I can let myself in with my own set of keys”.

True to the usual pattern she replied to me on the day before the inspection was due to take place. “I do not consent to any inspection from you…You will not be letting in yourself anywhere. Stop your continued harassment…I am currently out of work so I will be there”.

I turned up at the flat at the appointed time and knocked at the door. The kitchen window was open which suggested that somebody was in.

After knocking several times, the door was opened by a young man in round spectacles who, when questioned, said his name was Otto.

When I told him that I owned the flat he seemed genuinely bewildered. He was renting the flat from Nadia. How could I prove that I was the owner?

I showed him the message I had sent Nadia to inform her of my visit, and her response. Was she living at the flat? He said that she wasn’t.

He explained that he had seen the flat advertised on the letting website Spare Room in December and was sharing the flat with two other young men who had also responded to the advertisement.

For months she had been receiving rent from these people she had recruited while paying nothing to me from the day she had moved into the flat. Nice work if you can get it.

He phoned Nadia to corroborate my story, explained the position to her (“Hi Nadia, there’s a man here who says he owns the flat”) and handed his phone to me so that I could speak to her.

Having been exposed as a liar I was intrigued as I took the phone to know how Nadia would react to the situation.

Contrition was obviously too much to expect, but she would be uncomfortable, surely, at being caught out in such a bare-faced lie. Not a bit of it!

“I told you I was going to be at the flat today and you came anyway,” she hissed with menace. “ I will bring that up when we go to court”.

In fact she did not appear at the court hearing in May, too busy, perhaps, cultivating the next victim of what appears to be a well-rehearsed scam. In her absence the court granted the order returning the property to me, and ordered her to pay rent arrears and costs.

I have instructed a firm of tracing agents to try to discover where she has been living, but even if I track her down the court will doubtless allow her to pay off the debt in instalments which will make the judgment all but worthless.

The letting agents have provided me with their file containing the reference checks which their referencing agents carried out when Nadia applied to rent the flat.

When I instructed letting agents to find me a tenant there were two main things I wanted them to do; firstly to find me somebody who could afford to pay the rent, and secondly somebody who could demonstrate a track record as a reliable tenant.

On the first (tenant’s ability to pay the rent) they had accepted a bank statement which showed all transactions other than the applicant’s salary redacted. This showed that the sum she claimed as her salary was paid into her account for three months in a row, and nothing else.

On the second count (landlord’s reference, or a proven track record as a reliable tenant) they had accepted a statement from her that she had been living in Sweden with friends and family for the last four years; a simple way for a serial defaulter to avoid the need to provide a landlord’s reference.

Perhaps the moral of the story is to check the letting agent’s homework more thoroughly, although if you need to do that why not save yourself a fee and just do the whole thing yourself?

Some names have been changed.