Episode 5 Council House Crackdown

I'm Michelle Ackerley.

My parents both grew up on Council Estates, and as a family,

we understand the difference social housing can make to people's lives.

But across the UK there's a chronic shortage of

Council and Housing Association homes.

I know so many friends, and so many people that just...

literally don't have anywhere to live.

Adding to the crisis, some tenants are abusing the system,

holding on to properties they no longer need, or even worse,

unlawfully sub letting them, and coining in a small fortune.

Sub letting social housing is wrong. It's wrong.

It's illegal, and it's wrong.

So every day we'll be with the

housing investigators as they crack down on those rogue tenants.

You haven't got a Bailiff!

DRILLING

Reclaim properties...

Anybody in?...

And give them to families in genuine need.

All of those keys are yours?

Oh, don't! Cos you'll start me off again.

This is Council House Crackdown.

Our reporter, property expert, Luke Doonan

also grew up on a Council Estate,

and for the last six months,

he's been working alongside dedicated housing investigators

who will stop at nothing to track down every

single tenant who's abusing the system.

Today, a fraudster who claimed she and her children were

homeless to get this council house,

is sentenced after being caught renting out her two private homes.

She's got this property that she's renting out at £400 a month,

and that money's going straight into her pocket...

The married man, who said he was single just so he could keep

his council flat, and then let his teenage son

and friends run riot in it.

And he was actually renting out this property to young people.

The address was nothing more than a dosshouse.

And the prisoner from East London who's been coining it

sub letting his social housing property, while still behind bars.

That is the bank account statement showing that the money was

going into that account.

The vast majority of those on social housing are law abiding,

responsible people, but there are some who use their council or

housing association property as a passport to making money.

Our first case involves a fraudster who claimed she

and her children were homeless in order to get a council

house in Solihull, while all the while, owning not one,

but two private properties in neighbouring Birmingham.

Luke's meeting Solihull Council senior auditor,

Sean Turley who is the lead investigator on the case.

Solihull council runs a fraud hotline,

and that's how they first heard about Dawn Hipkiss.

The perpetrator of Sean's biggest ever tenancy fraud case.

It's some audacity on her part.

In 2010, Miss Hipkiss contacted Solihull council saying she

and her two children were about to become homeless.

She completed a homeless application form with ourselves.

She applied with her two young children,

and so we allocated her a property.

-I guess she's going to go to the top of the queue?

-Yeah, most definitely.

The council acted quickly and housed her here,

in this substantial three bedroom home, on the outskirts

of Solihull. But in 2014, Sean's team received an anonymous call.

We had a really good tip-off from a member of the public -

They're phoning to our hotline - provided a number of details to us,

stating that our tenant Dawn Hipkiss actually owned

-a property in Birmingham...

-Right.

-..that she was renting out.

Sean immediately started an investigation.

In order to be eligible for council accommodation, it's a

condition that you cannot own another property.

So Sean contacted a colleague in Birmingham City Council.

We approached Birmingham to try

and substantiate the information that the hotline caller had

provided us with, and found out that she'd actually purchased

a property from Birmingham Council through the Right To Buy scheme.

It was this three bedroomed house,

and she'd bought this property in 2005, a full five years before she

told Solihull she needed a council house because she was homeless.

She was eligible to buy it

because she's been living in it as a council tenant.

She'd been a tenant with Birmingham for about five or six years, so she

was entitled to the full discount on purchasing that property.

The property she bought in Birmingham was valued at £70,000.

That's correct, yeah.

-She received a 35% discount, of £24,500.

-That's right, yeah.

So she ended up buying the property off Birmingham Council for £45,500.

-That's correct.

-That's some discount, isn't it?

-Yeah.

As Sean dug deeper,

he discovered that Miss Hipkiss was letting this property in Birmingham.

A fact that came to light because she was renting to housing

benefit claimants, and Birmingham Council had their records.

She's got this property that she's renting out.

Around £400 a month, is what she's charging the tenants

and that money's going straight into her pocket.

A land registry search confirmed that Miss Hipkiss is the sole

proprietor of the Birmingham address.

It was enough to bring her in for formal questioning.

She turned up on the first occasion with her solicitor.

We'd got an interview under caution planned,

a number of questions, possible defences that she could come

up with, a number of questions we wanted to ask her.

And she "no commented" throughout the interview

refused to answer any questions.

With Dawn Hipkiss giving investigators the silent treatment,

further investigations got underway, and they revealed a bigger surprise.

The next step was to get her bank statements,

to show that she was receiving a rental income for that property,

and lo and behold, that showed that she'd got this monthly rental

-income coming in for the property that we knew of in Birmingham.

-Right.

But not only that property, another property that she was renting out.

-No! Really? So she owns a second property?

-That's right, yeah.

She'd used the proceeds from the first one to then

finance the purchasing of the second property.

So Miss Hipkiss was raking in rent money from two

-properties in Birmingham.

-Her income is £800-900

-a month in rent from those two properties.

-Yep, yeah.

It turned out Dawn Hipkiss bought this house,

her second Birmingham property in 2007.

So when she claimed to be homeless, she in fact owned two houses.

-Absolutely disgusting behaviour on every single level.

-Yep, yeah.

Miss Hipkiss seemed to be building a property portfolio,

owning and renting out two houses in Birmingham,

while living in her council house in Solihull. But, there was more.

On being allocated the property in Solihull, she actually put in a

benefit application to the Council,

so she was paid full housing benefit against the rent that she

-should have been paying for that property.

-Really?

And full Council Tax benefits,

so she wasn't paying any Council Tax either.

Don't know what to say to that.

She completed a benefit application here,

and again on this form it asks for the applicants circumstances.

All details are provided, questions are asked.

"Do you own any other property?" And she has ticked "No."

The evidence was damning.

Sean and his team served a Notice to Quit ,and in September 2015,

Dawn Hipkiss was evicted from her council home here in Solihull.

It was the beginning of the end for Miss Hipkiss' property empire.

She stopped paying the mortgages on her houses in Birmingham,

and they were repossessed by the banks.

Dawn Hipkiss was prosecuted for two counts of fraud at Birmingham

crown court in November last year, and was given a six-month prison

sentence, suspended for 12 months, AND a 12-month supervision order.

The council is currently awaiting a hearing in the civil courts

to reclaim the proceeds Miss Hipkiss made from her crimes.

Meanwhile, the Solihull council house has been re-let.

-This is the house here, this three bed semi-detached.

-Wow.

-It's pretty impressive, isn't it?

-Very nice house, very nice area.

What's the situation with the tenancy of the house at the moment?

We've got a single parent family living in the property

and they're very happy in there. They moved in just before Christmas.

-Congratulations on getting the property back.

-Thank you.

The fraud in housing is just unbelievable.

It's reached such high levels now.

People see renting out their own council house

as a way of making money. How wicked is that?

One, they should evict them, two, they should not house them

at all, three, they should make them homeless.

Take it off them, without a doubt,

because they've profited long enough, and at the end of the day,

this is probably, I would say, is one of the largest

contributing factors to the problem that we have today.

I think the Government should send all those officers that

work in the councils to go out and find those people, prosecute them

for doing such things, and charge this exorbitant amount of rent.

They should give back all those rents that they paid for...

That they charged those people, and to get back that money.

As a deterrent, the social housing

fraud act of 2013 allows councils to

seek tough penalties against those

who knowingly deceive the system.

If convicted, tenants can be punished with up to...

In February 2008, a man obtained

a flat from Milton Keynes Council after claiming to be homeless.

In reality, he had an existing social tenancy with a housing

association in another area, which he

deliberately concealed during his application.

In 2014, he was sentenced to 11 weeks custody,

suspended for 12 months, 150 hours of community service,

and ordered to pay costs of £1,362

to Milton Keynes Council.

Here in Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire,

there are 2.5 thousand families waiting for social housing.

So the last thing that housing officers want is someone to

be using more than one home

and that is exactly what was happening in our next case.

This is a story of one man's selfish use of a 2-bed housing

association flat, letting his 16-year-old son

and his friends stay there while all the time living

with his wife in another social property elsewhere.

Not only that, but the man in question denied

he was married in order to get the flat in the first place.

In December 2012,

a 44-year-old man moved into this two bedroom flat in Aylesbury.

He claimed he was a single parent living with his teenage son,

but by January last year, neighbours were complaining about noise

and anti-social behaviour coming from the flat.

Vale of Aylesbury housing trust investigator

Craig was put on the case.

The initial report related to noise nuisance

and for young people using that property.

We didn't really know for what purpose.

Craig asked the neighbour who'd complained to keep a diary

detailing any disturbances.

So this is a diary sheet.

We encourage complainants to fill out these forms as and

when an incident would occur. Date, time, what occurred.

Now these forms become legal documents, so it's very

important that they get as much detail in there are possible.

The noise coming from the flat suggested it was being

used by a group of young people for socialising and late night parties.

The diary sheets were very detailed and I could see that she was

referring to a group of young people.

The report consisted of late night parties,

a high level of pedestrian traffic.

When Craig checked housing association records,

he discovered that the lawful tenant was a 44-year-old divorcee

who had a 16-year-old son.

Having carried out tenancy checks, I could be sure that there was a young

boy living there at some point with the dad, who was the lawful tenant.

The young boy, to our knowledge, he shouldn't have been living there,

he was living with Mum at another address, but, as families

do, they move around a little bit, and in all likelihood

it was probably the son that was living there.

Social media is often a valuable source of information

for housing investigators, and so it proved in this case.

Craig found a Facebook account for both the father and his son.

The information on the account led Craig to suspect that the son

was living at the flat, but that his father, the tenant, had moved out.

If this was the case, it would be a breach of tenancy,

and would be classed as unlawful sub letting.

I went on to Facebook, I found Dad, I found the son, I could come to the

assumption quite easily that the son was actually living at that address.

Individuals tend to use social media quite a lot,

and tell the world what it is they're up to on a daily basis,

and if perpetrators are silly enough to use social media,

then I'm going to be the one monitoring them.

Thanks to the Social Housing Fraud Act of 2013,

Craig was also able to look at his tenants financial records.

Some of the information that I could find out, is,

information relating to bank accounts, whether or not

they have any loan agreements, made any applications for a loan...

These financial checks provided another vital lead.

The official tenant had recently made a joint

application for a bank loan.

The second name on the application was that of a woman,

which suggested to Craig that the tenant may be in a relationship.

The female I hadn't heard of before, but I suspect that the female

was a partner, or maybe even ex-partner,

but I needed to find out who she was.

Craig decided to follow his hunch

and check the tenants name against marriage records.

I then applied for a marriage certificate, not knowing that he would be married,

but I wanted to see whether there was one that existed,

and I received a marriage certificate

and it came up with the same name that was on the application

that he'd made for a loan.

Craig had uncovered the truth about his tenant.

He wasn't single at all, but had in fact got married in August 2012,

shortly before he took over the tenancy at the flat.

In this case, the tenant had lied about being single,

when in fact, he was married.

We're just wondering why he's not told us that he's married,

when it's quite clear that he is. We feel that he's hiding something.

I want to know a bit more about the wife, who she is, are they

still together? And where does she live? Is she local?

Craig started to go through Council Tax records

and discovered the tenant's new wife also had a social housing

property just four miles away.

I managed to find out who she is through Council Tax.

I did a check with the local authority and she is paying Council

Tax and registered at another house in Aylesbury with her children.

So it looked as if between them,

this married couple had not one but two housing association properties.

Then Craig looked again at their marriage certificate and noticed

that on the certificate, they'd both provided yet another address.

This time in Milton Keynes. And when Craig checked this address,

he discovered that it too was a social housing property.

Another point of the certificate is the address in Milton Keynes,

which they are connected to.

So I wanted to find out through Milton Keynes "What address is that?

"Is it a private dwelling? Do they own that property?"

I actually found out through Milton Keynes council that it's actually

a local authority property and he's still registered to living there.

What had started out as a routine noise complaint had now

become an investigation into a tenant with links to three

social housing properties.

It indicated to me that the

tenant actually had access to three social housing properties,

one of which is in Milton Keynes, and then two more in Aylesbury.

One of which is a property that he's living at with his family,

the other one is the address which he should be living at,

which we suspect his son is living in at the moment.

Later, we find out what happened when the police were called to help

clear the flat, that should've been home to a single parent and his son.

He was actually renting out this property to young people

aged between 15 and 17 years old.

The address was nothing more than a dosshouse.

I'm very grateful for social housing, I've been,

since I was 16...

I went to go apply for housing and was helped in various ways.

And if it wasn't for that,

I wouldn't be living near my family, or able to do what

I do for a living, which is... I'm a mini-cab driver.

I have friends who've been on waiting

lists for housing for more than eight years,

and I don't see that they have any other option but to wait.

It's quite distressing.

We've been waiting now for the past three years now.

For waiting to be moved, cos the house where we are is too small.

Yeah, and it's...

There is seven of us in the family, right,

and then we've got to live in a three bedroom house.

It's not really fair.

The Government also expects councils to give priority to former

prisoners, because it's been shown that ex-offenders are 20% less

likely to re-offend if they have stable accommodation.

But councils can decide for themselves which groups to

give priority to in their area.

With its vibrant mix of people,

and the Olympic Park and Canary Wharf on its doorstep,

it's no surprise that there are people queuing up to

live in the East London borough of Tower Hamlets.

MUSIC: London Calling by The Clash

You'd have to be incredibly lucky to get a social housing flat like this here though.

There are currently around 20,000 people on the waiting list.

But one tenant who lived here threw it all away,

by renting out his flat while he was in prison.

Luke's meeting up with Avril Drummond.

Avril is Counter Fraud Investigator for the Housing Association,

-Poplar Harca.

-Hi Avril.

-Hello.

-How are you?

-Very well, thank you.

Standing here, a lot of people looking at this block, you wouldn't even think it was

a social housing block. It's actually quite stunning, isn't it?

It's very nice, it's a new build, they're very nice properties.

-Lovely views, very close to Canary Wharf.

-Yeah.

Close to the city, good transport links, so, it's an ideal property.

The lucky tenant who did move in in 2012 was a former prisoner,

but 18 months later, he was back in prison and trying to make

a profit by illegally renting his flat out while he was behind bars.

How in demand are one-bedroom flats like this for people who're on the waiting list?

We've got thousands of people on the waiting list in this borough.

20,000 people on the list, but for one-bedroom properties,

I'd say up to about 9... 10,000 people.

After only three months in her new

job at the Housing Association, Avril was contacted

by a neighbour who said they thought the flat was being sub let.

So Avril started making enquiries.

We received a tip-off from a neighbour that the property

was being sublet by the lawful tenant, so started investigating.

At first, it seemed like the neighbour might have been mistaken.

I carried out some initial checks, and the lawful tenant,

to all intents and purposes, looked like he was living in the property.

He was on the electoral roll,

all his financial details linked him to the property.

But Avril is nothing if not thorough, and went back further.

She discovered that there had been allegations of subletting before.

I also looked back through the history of the tenancy.

There had been previous allegations,

and quite a lot of evidence that the property had been previously sublet.

The records show that the official tenant had contacted

the Housing Association two years earlier, to tell them

he was going back to prison,

and asking if his father could look after the flat while he was inside.

The Housing Association had agreed.

But then Avril found a statement that suggested the flat had

been sublet while the tenant was in prison.

There was an agreement that his father would look after

the property for him, but the father had sublet it.

The tenant denied he had knowledge of it

because obviously he was serving time.

-We've got a witness statement from the sub-tenant...

-OK.

..and it actually shows that he was paying rent of £800 a month.

He was giving the rent money to the lawful tenant's girlfriend.

Here it says payment would be made to - "the following day

"we met her at a venue in Shepherd's Bush, we did not

"have £1,600 so gave her £800 in cash and left a passport as security.

"A couple of days later, we met up with the young lady at this

"time at her business premises in E1.

"We signed an agreement and were given keys to the flat."

It's a very evidential witness statement, isn't it?

It's very, it's very clear. It's very black and white.

Just, the way the girlfriend is meeting them - she's taking

-someone's passport as security.

-Mm hm.

It's almost like they're running it as a - well,

they are running it as a business, aren't they, really?

Well, they were at the time, yes.

That is the receipt here, on the bank account statement,

showing that the money was going into that account.

-Oh, that's pretty clear, isn't it?

-That's the tenant's name.

-The tenant's account.

-So he was actually in prison and then...

-Yeah.

-You can see money going into his account.

-Yeah.

So he can't deny knowledge, he must have known why suddenly large

sums of money were being paid into his account.

So it was clear the official tenant had

a history of subletting his flat and pocketing the profits.

It wasn't investigated at the time, because before the

2013 Prevention of Housing Fraud Act, most housing associations

didn't have a dedicated investigations team.

Poplar Harca was no exception.

By this stage, the prisoner was due to be released from jail, so Avril's

next step was to go to the flat to see if he was back living there.

And if he wasn't, then to find out who was.

We decided to conduct an early morning visit.

Took me about a month before finally,

around about July we actually found someone in the property.

But it wasn't Avril's official tenant, the ex-prisoner.

It was someone she hadn't seen before,

who claimed he had a right to be there.

It wasn't our lawful tenant.

He invited us in, he said he had a tenancy agreement with out tenant.

Oh, dear.

The man who let Avril in said he'd been living at the flat with

his girlfriend for a year, although she'd now moved on somewhere else.

He was actually linked, financially, to the

property as was his, you know, girlfriend.

-They'd been registered there for nearly a year.

-Right.

And although he couldn't find me a tenancy agreement

at the time, he was pretty co-operative, and gave us

as much detail and information as we could get at that time.

Sure.

It turned out the ex-prisoner had been charging the couple more than

double the amount he was paying the Housing Association for the flat.

And he'd even put the rent up

since the last time he'd unlawfully sublet it.

Social housing rent was roughly about £500 a month.

The sub-tenant did say that he paid him £1,100 a month.

Right, so he's still making £600 a month.

They're still making quite a fair amount of profit, yeah.

After Avril's chat with the man living in the apartment,

it wasn't long before the official tenant was on the phone,

trying to explain himself.

The next day, I got contacted by our lawful tenant saying that it

had all been a misunderstanding, and it was a lodger's agreement,

he hadn't had a tenancy agreement.

Avril wasn't convinced by the tenant's claim that he'd

taken in a lodger.

He did bring in this lodger's agreement that looked like it

had been doctored with dates and amounts of rent changed.

And she wasn't convinced that the tenant was still living there.

He also said that he had not sublet the whole of the property,

but it's only a one bedroom flat,

so he then said he was sleeping on the settee, which I find it very

-difficult to believe that someone would sublet...

-Yeah.

..or allow the bedroom to be used by a couple,

-and then you're gonna be sleeping on the settee.

-Mm hm.

-Though I'll always, you know, listen to people...

-Mm hm.

..but with the weight of evidence that we had

I didn't believe what he was telling us.

The Housing Association's priority was to evict the tenant

and get the flat back as soon as possible.

He had no leg to stand on, legally,

-he had no defence with his case.

-Mm hm.

And because he's got away with it for so long,

he maybe thought that he would continue to get away with it

-and he'd be able to pull the wool over the court's eyes as well.

-Yeah.

I've actually got the order for possession.

-£900 of rent arrears, plus our costs, as well.

-Right.

Just over £1,300 he'll have to pay back.

-It can be a very long process but to get that is worthwhile.

-Yeah.

-On every single occasion.

-Indeed.

With an order from the court for immediate

possession of the property, this desirable flat will soon be in

use by one of the 20,000 households on the local waiting list.

I don't agree with people that are illegally

subletting their council properties.

Um, again I just think it's - I mean, I'm a taxpayer,

and I think that that's wrong, and that it affects all of us,

working hard, paying into the system

and then there's other people that are abusing the system.

I think something should be done about the profit being made.

I mean, if people are gaining from illegally renting out social

housing and taking away from those that need it then yeah,

they should probably be held accountable for that.

It's fraud and they've forfeited their right to,

to, um, have that tenancy.

You know, that's what I believe, anyway.

..after Southwark Council Housing officers visited his home.

Checks revealed...

Earlier, we heard how one tenant was claiming to be a single parent,

living with his teenage son in a two bed Housing Association flat.

While in reality, he was actually married

and had links with two other social housing properties.

The tenant actually had access to three social housing properties,

one of which is in Milton Keynes. And then two more in Aylesbury.

To try and find out what was going on,

and where their tenant was actually living, Vale of

Aylesbury Housing Trust investigator Craig asked for police assistance.

I sent a quick request to the police,

and asked for the neighbourhood policing team just to carry out some

general patrols around the area throughout the evening

when in all likelihood the tenant would probably be asleep.

Now if it were to turn out that the car was

parked at the address of the wife then it would lead us

to assume that he's been staying at that address.

If that was the case, and the tenant was no longer

living at his two bedroom flat, he would be in breach of his tenancy.

The precinct team carried out routine patrols between 10 o'clock

every night and the early hours of the morning, and they found that the

vehicle that's registered to him was parked outside his wife's address.

It was actually parked in the driveway of that property.

It was quite clear to us that he was staying at that property.

As Craig suspected, it seemed the tenant had moved out of his flat,

and into his wife's home.

Nothing wrong with that, of course - but he should have notified

them of his change in circumstances, and given the keys back.

Instead, it seemed he had allowed his 16-year-old son to stay

there. And in the eyes of the law

this was classified as unlawful subletting -

regardless of whether or not his son was paying rent to stay there.

To find out exactly what was going on,

Craig decided to make an unannounced visit.

When I got to the address, there was

young people on the other side of the door who refused to open

but I could hear that there was young people living there.

Shortly after Craig's unsuccessful visit, the official tenant

contacted him and arranged to meet him at the flat.

A few hours later I received a phone call at the office

and it was the lawful tenant asking me if I wanted to go back,

wanting to know what I wanted, and I went back to the address.

He met me there and it was quite clear to me that he

wasn't actually living there.

He'd come back to the property, he'd quickly turned it

upside down to make it look like he'd been living there long-term.

But it was quite evident actually that he wasn't living there.

His toothbrush wasn't there for example,

he had no clothes, there was no clothes in the wardrobe.

There was no other footwear by the door, for example,

it was all footwear for young people - no adult sizes footwear.

It was quite clear to me he was not living there.

The official tenant was still trying to convince Craig

he was a single parent and needed the flat for himself and his son.

I asked him some rather challenging questions,

I said to him "Are you married?" And he told me that he wasn't married.

Little did he know that I already had managed to obtain

his marriage certificate so I knew he was married.

I interviewed him under caution,

so by law he had just incriminated himself.

To establish once and for all who was and who wasn't

living at the flat, Craig decided to make another surprise visit.

And this time, he had police backup.

A couple of weeks later we came back to his address again,

and this time we came with the police.

A young girl came to the door.

The young girl was about 16 years old, and she wasn't alone.

There were five other people in that property.

There were sleeping bags there, it looked completely different

to how it'd been in the property two weeks earlier.

The visit to the flat finally confirmed Craig's suspicions.

He decided to interview the tenant again,

and this time present him with the evidence.

In the early stages of the interview, he was denying our

case, he said that we'd got it wrong and that he had been living there.

However once I produced the marriage certificate,

once I produced the reports I'd received from the police

about his daily whereabouts

and where he'd been staying in the evening,

once I produced to him documents that related him

to another address, he soon backtracked.

And he admitted, under caution, that he no longer lives at this address.

Craig explained to the tenant that he could be

prosecuted for unlawful subletting, and if found guilty

he could be fined or even given a prison sentence.

As is normal in this type of investigation,

when you've proven a case the perpetrator will be quite

keen to get themselves out of as much trouble as possible.

And therefore he said,

if he handed his keys back in will we still take action?

And as is normal in this type of scenario

he handed his keys back in very quickly.

This flat has been redecorated and is now home to a young family,

and for Craig, it's job done.

I've heard it before where people say tenancy fraud

is not a serious offence.

Many people don't know it's a criminal offence, it is

a criminal offense, it carries a custodial sentence.

My message to residents of Aylesbury is that

if you are going to flout the law in relation to tenancy fraud,

or any aspect of tenancy fraud is that we are working very

hard to come and get you.

Social housing is extremely important, it's extremely,

more and more, an issue where people are homeless.

So I think we have to have a national responsibility for that

and I think we have to increase social housing.

It's one of the key things in a country,

or just a massive city like London.

I mean there needs to be, you know,

affordable housing for people who really can't afford it,

you know, considering they, I mean, the height in house prices.

There are lots of people who are never going to be able to

afford to buy houses. They need somewhere decent to live.

Human beings are human beings and should be treated fairly.

Local authority housing officers aren't just there to look

after social housing.

They also ensure private housing, which is

being rented out to multiple occupants, is being used safely.

And it was an inspection of a private property which was

the key to opening up this next case.

This is a story of lies and fake identity which enabled one man,

Ademola Lojede, to get a council flat and claim housing benefit

while all the time, owning his own house.

In the Royal Borough Of Greenwich in South London,

they take housing fraud very seriously.

Chief Investigator Nigel Brown has helped take back

over 1,000 properties in the 20 years since he's been in the job.

This case came to him

after a routine visit by a council colleague, who checked on this

privately owned house in Plumstead, in the east of the borough.

The council have a duty of care to make sure that tenants in

private accommodation are living in safe accommodation.

And one of the duties of the Residential Services,

they visit homes in multiple occupation to ensure just that -

that tenants are living in a safe environment.

Our residential services team visited this

property on September 14 to ensure

the tenants inside the property were living in good conditions.

The team made some routine enquiries about the landlord

and discovered he was a man named Joseph Adebayo.

As part of their enquiries,

residential services would obtain details of who the landlord was.

They found that the landlord of the property was Joseph Adebayo.

The council offices ran some checks on the landlord,

and when they looked into his bank accounts and investigated

his credit references, it seemed he had a second identity.

They made checks into a Joseph Adebayo,

and they identified that he also had another name of Ademola Lojede.

As the landlord seemed to have two identities,

Nigel and the fraud team got involved.

They then referred the matter to us, as we deal with all criminal

investigations, and they passed the case to us at that time.

Nigel ran the second identity through local authority records,

and found the name Lojede cropped up on Greenwich Council's radar.

He was one of their council tenants.

First of all, Nigel needed to find out

if the two identities belonged to the same man.

Once we had the information from Residential Services,

we looked much deeper into Mr Lojede.

We made sure and established that it is one and the same person,

which would involve name checks, identity checks

and so forth, enquiries of all different agencies.

They established that the two names did belong to one person,

because they both had the same date of birth

and were connected to the same addresses.

There were also links between the bank accounts of the two identities,

and both names were linked to the same mobile phone number.

There was actually no doubt in our minds at all

that this was one and the same person.

Ultimately they found his passport details and discovered

his full name was in fact Ademola Akingbade Akintoye Lojede.

Joseph Adebayo was a fake ID.

Now they needed to know how a homeowner came to be

occupying a council flat.

Lojede had first applied for a social flat back in 2003.

My inquiries found that Mr Lojede had applied for housing in 2003,

because he was overcrowded with his family.

Mr Lojede was eligible for a social housing flat

because the house he was in was overcrowded.

He had to wait six years.

But eventually in 2009, this flat became available in Greenwich.

In 2003, Mr Lojede had come to the Royal Borough Of Greenwich

and basically said that he needed somewhere to live because

he was living with his family, with his siblings -

it was all overcrowded.

In 2009, some six years later, we gave him a tenancy

and offered him a one bedroom flat in the premises here.

But the investigation reveals that by that time,

Mr Lojede had already bought a home of his own, in Plumstead -

a fact he failed to mention to the council.

Instead, he moved into the social housing flat and began letting

out his own house to tenants.

So on his housing application,

Mr Lojede failed to declare that he actually owned any other properties.

And on his form, which I have here, there's a question that asks

"Do you, or anyone moving in with you, own any other residential property?"

And to that, Mr Lojede ticked "No."

Had we known that he owned a property,

we wouldn't have given him a council flat here.

Or anywhere.

And not content with fraudulently occupying a social housing flat,

Mr Lojede then made an application for housing benefit.

He basically got the tenancy, and in 2011, two years later,

he then started to claim housing benefit from that address.

Once again, didn't actually mention that he owned any property.

It wasn't until the routine check of his house in Plumstead

in 2014 that officers began to suspect Mr Lojede of wrongdoing.

Our enquiries identified that he was the owner of the address,

and that was done via a Land Registry check, which I have.

It basically says that he's owned this since the 16 December 2005,

and that he purchased it for £160,000.

None of this was told to us at all,

and it was completely kept secret from us.

Once the fraud team had the evidence that Lojede was both a social

housing tenant and a homeowner, they called him in for an interview.

We put to him about the fact that he owns a property on Reidhaven Road,

and he denied that he was the owner.

He said that although his name was on the Land Registry,

it's actually his brother that owns the property

and he simply put his name down on it

because his brother couldn't get a mortgage because he lives abroad.

None of the evidence supported that, simply

because Mr Lojede was also the landlord of the property

and receiving the rent, there was no indication that any rental

money was being paid to his brother - it just didn't stack up.

Just didn't seem to be true.

The investigation team had all the documentary evidence

they needed that Mr Lojede was defrauding the council,

and they brought a case against him.

Mr Lojede was summonsed to appear at Bexley Magistrates' Court,

and he did attend,

and he pleaded "not guilty" to all of the five charges against him.

The matter then was passed up to a Crown Court

and the matter went to Woolwich Crown Court,

and there Mr Lojede pleaded "guilty" to all five charges.

Thus, our case against him was proven.

When he appeared at Woolwich Crown Court, Mr Lojede was

jailed for 16 months, but as far as Nigel

and the fraud team are concerned that's not the end of the matter.

As a result of his fraud against us,

Mr Lojede was sentenced to 16 months in prison.

He's currently serving his time now.

However, the debt that he needs to pay us back hasn't been repaid.

We are now pursuing him for the £70,000 that he owes us,

and the £20,000 for the benefit fraud.

The good thing - Mr Lojede does own a property on Reidhaven Road,

it's got equity, therefore he's got enough to pay us

our money back - the whole £90,000, we are

now going to pursue that through the civil court.

Tenancy cheats are abusing one of our nation's greatest assets

- our social housing stock.

But one by one, those cheats are being stopped in their tracks,

thanks to housing investigators pounding the streets

and knocking on doors across the UK.