Episode 2 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.

Millions of families across the UK are struggling to find affordable housing.

So this is my front room and my bedroom together.

Many are living in temporary or overcrowded conditions,

desperate for somewhere decent to live.

This is our room where we sleep and this is what we've got at the minute.

We can't really call it our home.

But some social housing tenants are abusing the system,

holding on to properties they no longer need.

When somebody applies for housing,

you expect them to live in the property and when they don't,

it does start to take the mickey.

Or even worse,

making a small fortune by illegally subletting them.

He was charging beyond £1,500 a month.

He exploited this completely to his advantage.

So I'm with housing investigators cracking down on tenancy cheats...

-What a waste.

-If you want to commit tenancy fraud,

don't bother coming here.

..reclaiming properties...

I need to speak to you, please.

They've seen an opportunity and they think they're not going to get caught.

..and giving them to families in genuine need.

That's how a council house should be.

It should be loved and looked after.

This is Council House Crackdown.

Tonight, an inside job, as a council executive -

earning more than £50,000 a year -

attempts to unlawfully purchase a council property.

I just cannot believe - even now, when I go through this with you -

that this guy really thought he was going to get away with it.

We discover how this woman swindled thousands of pounds

from the public purse by illegally subletting her council property.

This woman was just coining in money, wasn't she?

Well, there's a significant opportunity to make illegal profit, yes.

-And she really cashed it in.

-Yeah.

And subtenants help a fraud team bring down an illegal landlord.

Yeah, we're home now, so if you want, you can come around.

-I need to speak to you, please.

-Can you open the door, please, sir?

A total of 2,700 investigations into social housing tenancy fraud

have been carried out over the last 12 months.

Half of these cases involve illegal sublets.

The rest involve other attempts to cheat the system,

such as lying about your circumstances,

or making a false application for social housing.

Our first case exposes an executive earning more than £50,000 a year

but leading a double life to cheat authorities out of not just £23,000

in benefits, but a highly sought-after social housing property.

-This is him.

-This is Charles Hahn.

His deception began in the leafy suburb of Blackheath in south London.

Clive, this area looks really lovely to me.

You can see just from walking along this street.

These properties are amazing.

Beautiful houses.

Lovely, vast, open, green areas.

What about the properties over here?

So these are predominantly council-owned.

-They're council properties?

-Yeah.

They don't look like it at all.

Many of them have been bought by their tenants that have lived here

for any length of time, really, because they are so desirable.

People want to live in a part of town like this.

I can imagine the demand for a property like this when they become available is pretty high.

Yes. Oh, very much so.

I think if one of these is vacant, and it goes on to the council's list,

anybody on the waiting list will want to bid for this.

In June 2009, Charles Hahn was one of the hopefuls

desperate to upgrade to one of these Blackheath properties.

According to council records at the time,

43-year-old Charles Hahn was an unemployed father of two.

He was the tenant of a one-bedroom flat in Greenwich.

His family was growing in size and they needed larger accommodation.

Charles Hahn's circumstances seemed all too typical -

a struggling father trying to support a young family and needing help.

For the leader of the Royal Borough of Greenwich, councillor Denise Hyland,

it was a familiar story.

Talk me through how important it is for social housing properties in the

Royal Borough of Greenwich to go to those who are in genuine need.

I meet my constituents, you know, at least on a fortnightly basis.

And I would say 90% of the cases I deal with,

it's about housing need.

We have about 16,000 people on our waiting list and it feels like it's thus ever been.

But we work very, very hard to provide housing to those in genuine need.

Sympathetic to Charles Hahn's plight,

the Royal Borough of Greenwich considered his application.

And after nearly three years on the waiting list, in May 2012,

he was allocated a two-bedroom council property next to Blackheath's

highly sought-after Cator Estate.

After living in cramped conditions for years,

this apparently struggling father had finally landed the home he'd been dreaming of,

a more spacious family property in one of London's most

appealing areas.

A lot of the houses in this road are houses of £1 million-plus.

-Really?

-And all privately owned.

Um... And it's a really nice place.

People want to live here, you know?

It's a part of south-east London that is desirable.

But just one month after Charles Hahn moved into his property,

he sent an application to the council that immediately rang alarm bells.

Charles Hahn informed authorities that he wished to exercise his right to buy.

This would mean he could purchase his council flat at a huge discount

of more than £100,000.

We're selling our assets, if you like,

by our housing stock being diminished when people want to buy their own house,

which they have the right to do.

So it's very important that when a right-to-buy case comes in,

they're all scrutinised quite carefully.

Eagle-eyed officers spotted something unusual

in Charles Hahn's application.

During the right-to-buy process,

somebody has to produce evidence that they can get a mortgage,

their mortgage offer letter, if you like.

And Mr Hahn's mortgage offer letter, when it arrived at the council,

was addressed to him at an address in South Ockendon in Essex.

The authorities immediately became suspicious.

Officially, Charles Hahn was supposed to be a council tenant living in Blackheath.

So, why did his mortgage provider send him a letter to an address in Essex?

Later...

The full shocking story behind Charles Hahn's deception is exposed.

We were astonished. I mean, we couldn't believe it.

And the effect of his crime on those waiting for social housing hits home.

Yeah, I could cry for them, you know? Because I don't...

Oh, sorry.

-Isn't that ridiculous?

-No, not in the slightest.

According to research,

nearly 100,000 social housing properties are being unlawfully sublet

and in a time of unprecedented demand, and so many people desperate for somewhere to live,

most agree this constitutes a drain on a precious

resource that we can ill afford.

This two-bedroom flat in Kilburn was one of those properties being

illegally sublet.

66-year-old fraudster Ingrid Schultz should have been living there

but Brent Council discovered that instead, she was making thousands of

pounds by illegally subletting the property.

I've joined Dave Verma, head of the fraud team

that uncovered her deception.

So, Dave, tell me a bit more about this area of London.

So it's very up and coming.

This is north-west six, so it's very sought after.

The house prices are escalating at a rate of knots round here.

Outside London, the average monthly rent for a two-bedroom flat is less than £700.

But in the capital, it's over 1,700,

so there's an acute demand for affordable social housing.

So let's talk about Ingrid Schultz.

When did she first get a property with Brent Council?

That was in January 2003.

Everything seemed absolutely in order and there were no suspicions

for many years.

But in 2015, 12 years later,

Brent Council received an anonymous tip-off that Ingrid Schultz

was no longer living here.

So off the back of that tip-off,

you paid an unannounced visit to this property, is that right?

Yes, the wrong person opened the door.

So there was a lady who opened the door and she seemed to be quite evasive

and was saying that the genuine tenant, Ingrid Schultz, was away.

Friends, family members can, you know, can open doors.

What was it about that that made you think, "Hold on a minute"?

She didn't come across quite right.

She definitely seemed to be hiding something.

Off the back of that, some more detailed intelligence checks were done.

Brent Council's fraud team quickly discovered through credit checks

that Ingrid Schultz was linked to a second address,

six miles away in the borough of Hammersmith and Fulham.

So where was she really living?

In Brent or Hammersmith?

What did you do next?

We felt confident to work in partnership with

Hammersmith and Fulham to organise some joint visits,

whereby we'd visit simultaneously this address in Brent and also that

one in Hammersmith and Fulham.

A double door knock, basically, isn't it?

That's the bottom line, yeah.

So you knock on the door of this property

where Ingrid is supposed to be living, at the same time as

the property you suspect that she is actually living at?

We can get an immediate snapshot view as to what the reality of the

matters are and we can speak to whoever we find at both properties to get

their view on why they are living where they're living and what the real situation is.

-What did you find?

-Ingrid Schultz was actually residing,

or appeared to be actually residing,

at the Hammersmith and Fulham address.

The fraud team's double door knock had caught her at the second address,

but she claimed to have a legitimate reason for being there.

When pressed, she was telling us that one reason she was often in

Hammersmith and Fulham was to look after her cats.

She had four cats and she was telling us that they lived there because it

was a ground-floor property.

What did you think when she told you that?

Surely you thought, "The game's up, Ingrid"?

Yeah, it just doesn't hold together,

it's not logical and we knew she was trying to fob us off.

Ingrid Schultz's assertion that her cats had to live in Hammersmith

while she lived six miles away in Brent might have seemed ridiculous,

but the investigators had to treat her claim seriously.

In this instance, she was so adamant that she was actually residing in

Brent that we thought we'd give her the benefit of the doubt and arrange a visit here

to see her in this property.

So a few days later,

the fraud team visited Ingrid Schultz at her social housing flat in Brent,

which she claimed was still her permanent address.

She had created the facade that she was living here,

but it was very strange because she was in the front room with a double bed in the front room.

-So she was saying that she was living in the front room in a double bed?

-Yeah.

-Why?

She said she didn't like the rear of the property, for some reason,

and that she preferred to be in the front room.

To me, honestly, it sounds quite comical, like,

what was your reaction when she said that?

It made us feel even more suspicious.

What are you thinking that the actual situation is?

It appeared very much to us that this premises had been sublet in its entirety

and that the different rooms had been made into bedrooms

that could be let out.

It was a two-bedroom flat complete with a living room,

so Ingrid Schultz had three rooms she could rent out separately,

all while living in another borough a few miles away.

She seemed to be very industrious in maximising the rental potential from

the social housing we'd awarded her.

Later, the full extent of Ingrid Schultz's deception is revealed.

So she's had 19 different people living within that property?

Yeah, well, our suspicion at that point was 19 people have had

some kind of credit activity there, so it's very suspicious.

Oh, my gosh.

Back in Blackheath, Charles Hahn's application to purchase

his council property with a right-to-buy discount of more than £100,000

alerted authorities to a mysterious second address in Essex.

Charles Hahn and then the address here in South Ockendon.

In Greenwich, counter-fraud manager Nigel Brown's team of investigators

have dealt with more than 2,000 cases of tenancy fraud in the last two years.

When Charles Hahn's right-to-buy form landed on their desk,

their suspicions were immediately aroused.

So what is it that we can see from this document?

As a result of putting the right-to-buy form in,

he also provided us with details of his mortgage provider.

Because we ask them as a matter of course,

"How are you going to fund the property?"

So, in this case, he provided a letter to us

to tell us that he was going to get a mortgage,

but inadvertently, we saw on this letter that it refers

to the borrower, Mr Charles Hahn,

and then it's got an address here in Aveley, in South Ockendon, Essex.

So this raised an alarm bell as to, "Why is this on there?"

This would appear to be his home address.

Investigators delved deeper to find out what connected a property in

South Ockendon to Charles Hahn,

one of their tenants renting a council property in Blackheath.

What they discovered was alarming.

Charles Hahn was already a property owner

and therefore had no need of social housing.

We did a land registry check and, well, lo and behold,

Mr Charles Hahn is the owner of that property in South Ockendon

and he purchased it for £190,000 in July 2010.

A worrying picture was beginning to emerge.

When Mr Hahn applied to get a larger property,

he was living in a one-bedroom flat.

But between the time that he applied and the time that he got granted the

tenancy here, his circumstances had changed.

He'd bought a house, he had an alternative place to live.

He didn't actually need that social housing any more.

And it would have been his responsibility to tell us that he'd

bought a property and he hadn't told us.

The evidence confirmed investigators' suspicions.

While applying to rent a highly sought-after council property in

Blackheath, Charles Hahn already owned another house.

This was fraud.

Further investigation into Charles Hahn's background

uncovered an extraordinary double life.

Mr Hahn had been claiming benefit for a number of years

as an unemployed person,

or as a person who was sick.

But what we actually found was that he had full-time jobs,

he was working as a consultant,

he was a Health and Safety Executive at another

local authority in London,

the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham...

-Oh, my gosh.

-..and was actually quite a high earner.

So he was working within the council?

Yes, within another council, yes.

What did that make you think when you heard that?

I mean, the cheek of it at the very start is crazy,

but to think he was working within the council,

knowing clearly that something like this is wrong.

Yes, well, the department that he was Health and Safety Executive for

-was the Department of Housing within that local authority.

-Oh, my gosh!

So he must have had an idea about everything,

about what social housing was about and the importance of it.

When you saw this information, what did you think?

You must have been shocked.

Yeah, really quite shocked

and it was sort of far-reaching, it had gone back quite a few years.

Yeah, it was quite surprising.

When officers investigated further,

they discovered that through consultancy work with a number of

organisations, including the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham,

and the London Borough of Southwark,

Charles Hahn was earning £55,000 a year.

And all the while claiming to be unemployed and in receipt of thousands of pounds in benefits.

It wasn't just the right to buy and the tenancy fraud that was an issue for us now,

it was also the fact that he had been on unemployment benefit,

or employment support allowance as it's now called,

claiming to be an unemployed male whilst working and earning £55,000 a year in the council.

Not only that, we found that he'd also defrauded us on housing benefit

because at some point he'd claimed benefit from the council property

we had given him and never declared again that he was working.

So we always thought, and had evidence to show, that he was an unemployed male.

Charles Hahn had deliberately withheld information about his change of circumstances -

information he knew would have led to his application

for social housing being rejected.

Looking at all this evidence,

you can see it's a man who's been incredibly deceptive but very

methodical and systematic with the whole thing.

Yes, I mean, for a few years he pretended to be a man,

unemployed male with a family,

who needed help and assistance from the council.

We ourselves awarded him housing benefit,

which we've overpaid him £23,000 as a result of his fraud.

Yet, this was a man that's living a double life, earning £55,000 a year

as an executive of a local council.

You know, this guy should have known better.

I just cannot believe - even now when I go through this with you -

that this guy really thought he was going to get away with it.

It almost feels like this is the type of fraud that's on your doorstep

because it was someone within the council

and you look at your colleagues and, you know, friends within work,

and think, well, you wouldn't do that, the person you're working with wouldn't do that,

but then, it's someone within your industry.

No, you're right,

it was one of our own committing fraud, really.

Charles Hahn was called in for interview under caution,

and in the face of overwhelming evidence, pleaded guilty

to multiple offences under the Fraud Act and the Social Security Administration Act.

The judge interestingly, though,

had some pretty descriptive words on the case, didn't he?

He was quite passionate about it.

Yes, he did, he said, "In the summer of 2012,

"someone meeting you would see a well-presented head of health and safety

"at a large London borough with a good salary.

"No-one would have guessed what a fraud you are."

On December 20, 2016,

Charles Hahn was given a prison sentence

of two and a half years.

For the investigators who exposed his deception,

the punishment fit the crime.

We were pleased when the result came through and he was put away in

prison - I mean, that was a good result, really,

because he thoroughly deserved it.

Not only has he deprived people who genuinely need properties -

and a nice property, too - he's gone on to claim money from the council,

housing benefit and other things, council tax.

You know, I have to pay my council tax, and we all have to pay.

He didn't have to pay any of it because we thought he was unemployed.

Charles Hahn has been ordered to pay over £46,000 to the Royal Borough

of Greenwich by the end of March 2018.

Should he fail to pay by the due date,

he'll have to serve another 15 months in prison.

In Greenwich, the actions of fraudsters like Charles Hahn have a direct

impact on the 16,000 people currently sat on the social housing waiting list.

From your point of view, you see people who are desperate for housing,

desperate for accommodation, they're coming to you week in, week out.

How does that make you feel on a personal level?

And many of them I would consider to be the working poor.

They are people who work in retail,

many of them will be working on zero-hours contracts.

So a lot of them won't claim benefits because their earnings are going up

and down like a yo-yo.

And frankly, I could cry for them, you know, because I don't...

Sorry.

Isn't that ridiculous?

No, not in the slightest.

But that's the whole thing, isn't it?

It's an extremely emotional thing

and you just want the system to be working how it should be.

And that's why you're working tirelessly to make sure these people get

the accommodation they deserve.

It's sickening, isn't it?

Because here we are trying to do our best to make sure there is a fair

system for housing

and then you get people who are trying to subvert the whole process.

And so taking back our properties from these fraudsters and giving them to

those in genuine need is a priority for this council and every council

in the land.

Back in Brent, we heard how the council's fraud team had become suspicious

that Ingrid Shultz was actually living in Hammersmith whilst illegally

subletting her social housing flat.

She was telling us that one reason she was often in Hammersmith and Fulham

was to look after her cat.

Dave Verma and his counter-fraud team have recovered 60 properties in

the last 12 months.

I'm not sure people realise that we have professional teams of

investigators who are very highly trained,

who are not going to be fobbed off,

who are going to be very tenacious and try to get

to the bottom of things and try and do the right thing for the public purse.

And that's exactly what they did.

Utilising the law to forensically examine the financial activities at

Ingrid Schultz's flat.

So in order to confirm your suspicions of Ingrid Schultz,

-you obviously needed that solid body of evidence.

-Sure.

This first piece of paperwork here shows, indeed, that Ingrid Schultz

is at the property and she's got various credit going on there,

various activity, as we'd expect.

However, on the second page...

This is quite surprising.

This shows no less than 19 different people having some sort of credit

activity at the property.

-19?

-Yes.

So she's had 19 different people living within that property?

Yeah, well, our suspicion at that point was 19 people have had some

kind of credit activity there. So it's very suspicious.

Oh, my gosh. And then if you couple that with her bank account details,

what did that help to confirm?

Well, when we used our powers under the Prevention of Social Housing Fraud Act

to actually get her bank statements in,

these very quickly indicated that there was a problem.

Because right here on the first page we've got the word "rent",

"paid in", and an amount.

It's incredibly clear.

Pretty clear. Moving through the bank statement,

that kind of activity is replicated on various pages.

-Yeah.

-So here we have the word "rent" and again, 520...

-Yeah.

-And here, "Kilburn rent", which is clearly our property.

-It's very specific, isn't it?

-Yeah.

And then again, 520.

With two bedrooms and a mattress in the living room,

Ingrid Schultz could have been renting out all three rooms.

At £520 per room, per month,

she could have been taking in over £1,500 a month.

And how much was she paying the council?

On average, that was £150 per week.

That means a potential profit of over £900 a month from illegally

subletting her Brent flat.

So she was making a tidy profit from this, wasn't she?

She was, because at any given time,

she was renting between two and sometimes three rooms in the property.

The bank statements also revealed exactly how she was running her sublet scam.

From the bank statements, we got a very good clue and that led us to

a prominent website where people advertise rooms.

So she was advertising your council property for private rent?

-Yeah.

-Let's have a look at the information.

-So, what's this one?

-Gorgeous double room, flat-share in Brondesbury.

And here we have £145 per week.

It's telling us it's five to ten minutes' walk from Brondesbury station.

The availability is now.

Minimum term - three months, maximum term - none.

So it would look to anybody as if it was a genuine room offer.

This woman was just coining in money, wasn't she?

Well, there's a significant opportunity to make illegal profit, yes.

-And she really cashed it in.

-Yeah.

Ingrid Schultz pleaded guilty to subletting her social housing property in Kilburn

and making an unlawful profit of over £10,000.

On the 16th of February 2017, she appeared for sentencing.

Dave Verma was at court to witness the outcome.

So, we take this very seriously at Brent Council and we spend quite

considerable resources to investigate these matters and bring

the perpetrators to justice.

The maximum penalty for this offence is a two-year prison sentence or a hefty fine.

And Ingrid Schultz has just been sentenced to 12 months,

suspended for two years, which I think's a very good result,

bearing in mind all the circumstances of the case.

She'll also have to pay back over £10,000 in unlawful profit

and £5,000 in costs.

It is days like this that makes our job as fraud investigators well worthwhile,

when we can hopefully send out a very strong message that we take this seriously and are here

for the community to eradicate housing fraud.

The housing crisis is affecting almost every part of the UK, but nowhere

more so than London.

The shortage of social housing in the capital city is so severe,

and rents in the private sector so high,

that thousands of people stuck in temporary accommodation are moving out

and relocating to other parts of the country.

An increase in demand is continuing to drive up property prices and

private rents, with the gap between London and the rest of the UK

wider than ever.

In the capital, private rents are up to three times higher than they are

in other parts of the UK.

Vanessa Ashawe is living in temporary accommodation with her two children

in Croydon, south London.

Obviously, I don't like it because it keeps me in limbo.

I don't know what I'm doing, I don't know where I'm going.

I don't know in terms of schooling, you know, nursery for my kids,

in terms of work.

You know, there's so many different things there that people don't obviously, I suppose,

as housing, they're not really thinking about that.

Vanessa applied to Wandsworth Council for social housing in 2014

when her relationship broke down.

From the age I was 15, 16,

I've always worked and I've always been able to stand on my own two feet,

and support myself and my kids.

I've never ever relied on social housing before.

This is the first time.

It can happen to anyone.

You just never know.

Vanessa and her two children have been living in this two-bed maisonette

for the past two years.

The rent here is £260 a week.

In London, even though you have two boys,

and though my son is 17 and James is two -

there's a big age gap between them - but because they're the same sex,

you can only have a two-bedroom property,

so that means that me and James both have to share this room.

I just don't have the luxury to spread out in my own bed the way that I would want to.

Even though she's lived in Croydon her whole life,

Vanessa is now planning to move away,

leaving behind everything and everyone she knows.

She signed up with Homefinder UK,

who place people on the social housing waiting list

in different parts of the country.

Manchester, Liverpool, Cumbria, Wales, whatever it is,

it just works out to be so much cheaper.

A three-bedroom house property there is about £400 a month.

It's amazing.

Vanessa regularly checks online to see what social housing properties

are currently available across the country.

There has been a property that I've seen that I love,

which is the one in Carlisle. It's a three-bedroom house.

It's close to local shops and schools.

It has a large family kitchen.

It's got a front and back garden.

I mean, I can't compare what is on this to what I have now because

there is no comparison at all.

This property is saying it's £386 a month...

you know, and my property is £200-something a week.

There is no comparison towards it.

Vanessa is convinced her decision to leave London is the right one for her children.

I think as a two-year-old,

he hasn't started nursery or anything yet,

so this is the perfect time for me to move.

The chance of a home she can afford has finally given this single mum

hope of putting down permanent roots after so long in temporary accommodation.

I've got thoughts of how the property's going to be,

what it's going to be like. I've got ideas of decoration in my head,

and so forth. I mean, I've thought of...

I've kind of just, you know, thought a lot about it.

I am excited about the future now.

I've had such...

a hard time for the last couple of years,

should I say that it's really been so tough, and now to move somewhere,

start something new, you know, start a new life, that's how I see it,

you know. It's going to be great.

I'm really looking forward to it, so, yeah.

The idea of social housing is that it provides

secure and stable accommodation for people on low incomes

or with particular needs.

It is not intended for those on high incomes

or for those who drive an expensive car and pay for private education.

Our next case exposes a successful businesswoman,

leading a double life to cheat authorities

out of £43,000 in benefits

and a highly sought-after social housing property.

It is a shocking thing and there's no need for them to do it.

It is pure greed.

Croydon, south London -

population, 381,000, and one of the UK's largest commercial districts.

As this bustling London borough continues to expand,

so, too, does the demand for social housing.

Gail Campbell is a tenancy investigations officer

for Croydon Council.

When her colleagues in the housing office received an application

from a woman called Angella Brown,

they assumed they were dealing with a claimant

in desperate need of help.

Angella Brown came to Croydon Council and reported herself

to be a homeless single parent with one child.

According to Angella Brown,

she'd been living with her daughter at a friend's house,

but was forced to leave

when the friend decided that the house was becoming overcrowded.

There are nearly 5,000 households

on the social housing waiting list in Croydon

but, as a homeless single mother,

Angella Brown was given the highest priority.

In March, 2006, the London borough of Croydon

were able to offer her a place to call her own.

That application that she made was successful.

She was housed in a council property, her and her daughter,

and she would continue as a council tenant and pay rent to the council.

Angella Brown settled into a council property in New Addington

and, as far as the authorities were concerned,

that was the end of the matter.

But in 2008, a phone call to Croydon Council aroused suspicions.

There was an anonymous tip-off from somebody that said

that we'd housed her into a council property

when she already had a property of her own

and that property was habitable.

Investigators were alarmed.

By now, Angella Brown had been living

at the New Addington address for two years.

They conducted a Land Registry check against the name of Angella Brown.

What they discovered suggested the tip-off was accurate.

We were able, then, to make a check on the Land Registry

and confirm that she did, in fact, own another property.

Two and a half years before being awarded a council property,

she'd purchased this flat in Thornton Heath.

Angella Brown wasn't a homeless single mother

in need of social housing.

She was a property owner.

So, looking at this property, what would Angella Brown be using it for?

It's an investment property, so she would find it really easy

to get a tenant that would be happy

to live in that property and pay a rent.

When authorities examined the mortgage application

on the Thornton Heath property, they were stunned.

Angella Brown had declared an income to her mortgage lender

of £92,000 a year.

And that wasn't all.

Credit checks suggested that Angella Brown's financial circumstances

were in complete contrast to what she'd told the council.

That showed that she had a substantial amount of money

to pay each month for a car.

It was the top of the range and she was expected to pay,

each month, £700, for the privilege of driving that car.

-So, she was paying £700 a month to drive a car...

-Yeah.

..yet had applied for a council house property?

Yeah, and claimed benefits.

Since 1999, Angella Brown had claimed more than £43,000

in income support, housing benefit and council tax benefit.

How does that make you feel?

Cos that, in itself, as a small part of the case, is just shocking,

-in my opinion.

-It's somebody that's living two lifestyles.

One lifestyle is set aside for the council

but I'm sure to her friends outside and her business colleagues

and everybody else that knows her, she probably lives the high life.

Later...

..Angella Brown is exposed on tape...

It's just lie upon lie.

..as investigators come face-to-face with her.

We were one step ahead of her all the way through this interview.

The housing crisis is hitting hard,

so it's inevitable that every time someone cheats the system by holding

on to a property they don't need,

or by unlawfully subletting it,

someone else loses out.

Our next case spans two years and involves this young couple

who became innocent victims caught up in a tenancy fraud case

involving this man, Kibria Ahmed.

I was really upset. It was horrible.

It felt like everything was perfect and then it's just been taken away.

The story begins here, in Tower Hamlets, where, in October 2015,

this young couple, Shannon and her boyfriend Nayim,

were looking to build a home together.

We had a look on Gumtree and found this flat.

It seemed perfect for what we wanted.

-It was nice.

-We arranged to meet up with the landlord.

We sort of reviewed it and everything seemed OK.

He seemed legit. And then, yeah, we sort of moved in the following week.

The rent for the one-bedroom flat was £800 per month,

plus a £600 deposit.

They'd been saving up and could just about afford it.

We used to be sharing flats before, sharing houses,

and being in rooms and someone else there.

But that was only our place, there's no-one there and it looks like it's our home.

As soon as they moved in,

Shannon and Nayim set about turning their flat into a home.

It was just great getting things for the house.

It felt really good.

It felt like home. I loved coming home from work and stuff like that.

-It was brilliant.

-Yeah, it was nice.

Like, having a new home,

you are happy to call someone, to invite someone to come round.

-Yeah, proud.

-It was good.

-It's our house.

But unbeknown to Shannon and Nayim,

their new home was not a private flat, it was social housing.

And the tenant, Kibria Ahmed, the man who was supposed to be living there,

was unlawfully subletting it.

Mr Ahmed was allocated the flat

back in 2008 by housing association Poplar Harca.

Following a tip-off that Mr Ahmed wasn't living there,

Poplar Harca's fraud investigator Avril Drummond

decided to investigate.

On the 3rd of December 2015,

she called round to the flat hoping to see Mr Ahmed, but instead finding

Shannon and Nayim.

It was a police officer and it was this lady. I thought,

"What's happened? Maybe something's happened."

She sort of said, "I'm the proper landlord."

I was a bit like, "No, you're not." So she showed me her ID

and I was like, "OK, maybe you'd better come in."

Avril broke the news to them

that the flat was being unlawfully sublet.

Shannon and Nayim were devastated.

I was really upset. I mean, it was horrible.

It felt like everything was perfect and then it's just been taken away.

How can someone do that to innocent people?

It really hurt.

I mean, having a house, finally living on my own with the person

that I really wanted to be with and then everything was taken away.

Avril needed to come face-to-face with her unlawful tenant,

so she enlisted the help of Shannon and Nayim.

She came up with a plan to ask the landlord around to fix a blocked sink.

Our cameras were filming with Avril and her team when this plan

came to fruition on the 9th of December 2015.

The best scenario would be for

this landlord to tell us everything that has been going on,

hold his hands up, then we'll take it from there.

Once round at the flat,

Avril gives Shannon and Nayim a last-minute briefing.

Hello. All right?

Thank you for seeing me again today.

Obviously, we're now waiting for your landlord to turn up, OK?

So we'll just play it by ear when he gets here.

We've got the police on standby and they are in the locality, as well, OK?

Nayim calls the man who's posing as his landlord and checks

he's on his way.

Hi, are you all right?

Yeah, we are home now, so if you want you can come around...

-All right, thanks, bye.

-Next few minutes.

The man in question is about to arrive.

I'm going to be in here. He's not going to know who I am.

I've got my identification badge on me but I'm not going to be

-wearing it until he comes in.

-Yeah.

Later, the search for the illegal subletter Kibria Ahmed

is stepped up.

I need to speak to you, please. I'm from Poplar Harca.

Can you open the door, please, sir?

And what happens when he's finally brought to justice.

INDISTINCT SHOUTING

Back in Croydon, Angella Brown had obtained a council flat,

despite owning this property in Thornton Heath,

having an income of over £90,000 a year,

and a finance deal for a top-of-the-range car.

It's somebody that's living two lifestyles.

She probably lives the high life.

Fraud investigators needed to learn

the full extent of Angella Brown's deception.

They teamed up with the Department for Work and Pensions

to look more closely at her claims history.

Benefits were being claimed that were their domain.

They were happy to come onboard

and the investigation then became a joint investigation.

And it was this joint investigation

that uncovered a whole other level of fraudulent activity.

In 1999, two years before approaching Croydon Council,

stating that she was homeless,

Angella Brown had been receiving housing and council tax benefits,

while apparently renting a private property

from a man in north Croydon.

But when authorities discovered the identity of Brown's landlord,

they were stunned.

Through the investigation, it transpired

that the landlord for that property and the owner of that property

was, in fact, her husband.

Over the course of nine years,

Angella Brown fraudulently claimed more than £43,000 in benefits,

as well as obtaining a council flat.

But she wasn't even living at the property she'd been allocated.

She was, in fact, unlawfully subletting it to someone else,

while still living with her husband.

Subletting is a real issue for you guys.

It's one of the worst things you can do with a property

that's been given to you.

You've been given that property because you need somewhere to live.

You've not been given that property to then hand it out

to somebody else and make your own income out of it.

Bank records revealed that the money Angella Brown made went towards

not just a top-of-the-range car, but also school fees

to provide one of her children with a private education.

It is a shocking thing when you see

that somebody has got a comfortable lifestyle, shall we say,

and there's no need for them to do it. It is pure greed.

How would you describe Angella Brown?

I would say that Angella Brown is a cut above your normal tenancy cheat.

She's got a substantial income, more than most people I know,

more than I would ever, ever imagine myself earning.

But she still feels that she's entitled to have a council property

and the only reason that I think that she thinks like that

is because it's a source of income.

On 22nd September, 2010,

Croydon's head of anti-fraud, David Hogan, invited Angella Brown

to Croydon's council offices for an interview under caution.

How we see it is, we're giving people a chance to come clean,

we're giving them a chance to come honest. It's really their choice

as to whether they continue to tell lie upon lie

or whether they realise that they have been caught

and they're going to actually finally start telling the truth.

The audio recording of Angella Brown's interview under caution

provides a window into the world of a fraudster.

Let me just play a bit of the actual cassette tape for you

and you can hear her.

Investigators had done their homework.

They had evidence, including Land Registry documents

and a mortgage application,

which proved that Angella Brown had purchased a property in 2003.

But, in her interview, Angella Brown uses her child

in an effort to distance herself from the purchase.

It is amazing actually listening to Angella Brown talking there,

because she's really trying to come across

as if she's done absolutely nothing wrong.

I think what strikes me here is she's actually using her children

-to, if you like, create a defence for her own actions.

-Yeah.

The interviewer wants to see what Angella Brown is going to say.

Is she going to tell the truth or is she going to tell further lies

-to compound the ones she's already started?

-That's it, yeah.

Next, investigators quiz Angella Brown on her child's private education.

Having already contacted the school,

they know she was paying the fees herself.

But in the interview, she, again, had a different story.

So, again, straightaway, when questioned on the private school,

she's come up with an excuse - the grandmother.

And she's coming up with a version of events which, on the surface,

might appear reasonable, had we not already gone further

and discovered how the fees WERE being paid at that school.

We were one step ahead of her all the way through this interview.

Angella Brown decided to stick to her lies

and Croydon Council decided to prosecute.

It would be down to a jury to decide the outcome.

So, what's going through your mind just before the verdict?

We're there, on the outside, just wondering,

"What are these 12 men and women going to think

"and are they going to reach the right conclusion?"

At Croydon Crown Court on November 7th, 2014,

a jury found Angella Brown guilty

of eight charges of dishonestly making a false representation

and one of obtaining property by deception.

Brown was sentenced to 12 months' imprisonment.

The property she fraudulently obtained could now be offered

to a family in genuine need.

And there was a positive outcome with this case, wasn't there?

Yeah, I mean, in many ways, there were positive outcomes,

both in the fact that we were able to deal with Angella Brown,

but by getting the property back,

we were able to put a deserving tenant in there.

That property is occupied now by people,

it's going to change their lives

and if it sends them on their way to success,

then, you know, we've done incredibly well.

Back in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets,

Shannon and her boyfriend Nayim thought they'd found a place

to call home, but a few months after moving in,

they discovered they'd been conned.

The flat they'd been renting was a social housing property

and the tenant, Kibria Ahmed, was committing fraud by subletting it.

With their help, fraud investigator Avril Drummond is trying

to track down her tenant.

Hello, thank you for seeing me again today.

Obviously, we're now waiting for your landlord to turn up, OK?

So we'll just play it by ear when he gets here.

We've got the police on standby and they're in the locality as well, OK?

Eventually, a man turns up.

But it's not Mr Ahmed.

Avril calls the police in and he is arrested, questioned,

but later released without charge.

The next morning, Avril briefs fellow investigator Mike Frost

about the previous day's events.

We asked him about Mr Ahmed.

He said, as a friend, he was helping Mr Ahmed, but he only

posed as the landlord.

He took the £800 a month and gave it to his friend.

He said, "I'm not taking any money for myself."

That's kind of him, isn't it?

The rent Kibria Ahmed was paying to Poplar Harca was just £292 a month.

Avril and Mike are more determined than ever to track him down

and bring him to justice.

They get a tip-off that he's in the area and then they spot his car.

-Eh?

-As in Kibria? Possibly?

I need to speak to you, please.

Sorry? I'm from Poplar Harca.

-He saw...

-Can you open the door, please, sir?

I'm Michael Frost from the fraud investigation team. Are you Kibria?

His identity is confirmed and Avril calls the police.

And Kibria Ahmed, in the hooded coat,

is handcuffed and led away for questioning.

They are searching his vehicle at the moment, which he said was a gift

from his mother, so we'll wait and see if they uncover any evidence from there.

It's now more than 12 months since his arrest,

and Kibria Ahmed is about to face justice at Basildon Crown Court.

I feel justified in bringing the case to court.

I think too many people believe social housing fraud is not a big deal

and it doesn't really matter, but I think we've got to start sending

that message out that we are taking things seriously.

On January the 19th, 2017,

30-year-old Kibria Ahmed pleaded guilty to two counts of fraud,

including unlawful subletting contrary to the

Prevention of Social Housing Tenancy Fraud Act.

That's the first criminal case that Poplar Harca have brought

for tenancy fraud, so it was quite a big case for us.

Kibria Ahmed did his best to avoid our cameras

but he couldn't avoid justice.

He was given a 12-month prison sentence,

suspended for two years, and was ordered

to carry out 120 hours' unpaid work

in the community.

I'm really happy and satisfied with the proceedings today.

I'm happy with the result we've got for Poplar Harca and getting

the message out that tenancy fraud is not going to be tolerated.

We'll tackle it head on and we're going to bring prosecutions

like this in the future.

After the hearing, as Kibria Ahmed made a run for it,

not everyone seemed entirely happy with the proceedings.

INDISTINCT SHOUTING

As for Shannon and Nayim, the innocent victims who were

tricked into subletting Kibria Ahmed's social housing flat,

they had no choice but to move out and are now flat hunting again.

I really miss this place.

We got engaged there. He proposed to me there.

On Christmas Day. We've got so many memories in this place.

Our friends coming round, my family coming here.

-Yeah, it was...

-It's horrible. It's all just been taken away.

The house that we've made a home, built up, just gone.

Everything gone. And now we are back to square one.

Tenancy fraud is never a victimless crime.

There's always a financial cost and a very human cost to pay.

But thanks to the tireless work of housing fraud investigators across

the UK, those who are cheating the system are being tracked down

and their properties are being reclaimed and re-let.

Since 2014, in the East End of London,

Tower Hamlets Council has successfully recovered 134 properties as a result

of fraud-related investigations.

Are you going to go back on the slide?

Amy Sictorness and her daughter Lucia were on the social housing waiting list

for three years and applied for more than 200 properties before finally

getting a two-bedroom flat.

KNOCKING

-Nearly there.

-Yeah.

Hi, Amy, nice to meet you.

-This is Lucia.

-Hi, Lucia.

-Say hello.

-Hi!

So, what have we got here then?

So, this is my two-bedroom flat.

In here, this is the living room.

It's nice and bright and big, isn't it?

It is a really nice size.

So, tell me about your situation before you moved into this property.

-Where were you living?

-I was just living over the road with my mum in

another two-bedroom flat, my mum and my twin sister.

And, obviously, me and my twin, we shared a room.

Amy desperately needed a place of her own,

but she had no choice but to wait.

Just one room, you've got the baby's cot in there, obviously,

mine and my sister's bed, all the baby's stuff.

It's funny, because one little person just takes up so much room.

It's mad. It's very overcrowded and I think it must have been very stressful for my sister as well.

A privately-rented two-bedroom flat in this area can cost over £2,200

per month, well beyond Amy's price range.

Reluctantly, she turned to the council for help.

I went down to the council and put my name on their housing list.

And I was bidding for about three, four years.

Three or four years?

Yeah, I bid on over 200 places before I got to view this one.

Did you lose heart at any point?

I did get to view some properties and that,

but obviously people was always in front of me.

And obviously they accepted it.

And every time I'd feel gutted.

I'd be the third person that gets refusal on it

and I'd get to go and view the properties and you just stand there

thinking, "Please don't accept it, please don't accept it,

"so I can have it." And then I'd walk home, I'd ring my mum and I'd cry.

I'd be like, "I didn't get it again."

For Amy's mum, Julie, it was also crucial that her daughter

and granddaughter were able to live close by.

How would you have felt if, you know,

Amy had been given a property or offered a property that wasn't so close to you?

That, actually, would have upset me because, you know,

we've always been close

and from when Lucia was born they was living with me,

so I'd got to see her first, you know, steps kind of thing,

and then for her to have sort of moved out...

I would have been concerned about her because, you know,

I'm on hand if anything happens.

You know, I'm always sort of, I can be, you know,

I can be there in five minutes kind of thing.

If she was living out of the borough with no family, you know,

what would she do?

What would she do being on her own?

But in November 2015, Tower Hamlets Council held an amnesty to encourage tenancy cheats to hand

back keys without consequence or risk of court action.

They got back properties worth £13 million.

Amy's was one of the first flats they recovered.

I couldn't have been happier, especially just when it said a two-bedroom as well.

I thought all my Christmases had come at once.

The fact that I did get it just shows me that there is hope

because there's a lot of people that's in the same situation that I was

and obviously losing hope and that sort of thing is horrible, so,

just fingers crossed they carry on with what they're doing and other

people do get offered properties like this as well.

When Amy got the letter for this property, how did you feel?

Could not believe it. Really excited.

Really, you know, never wanted her to leave home kind of thing,

but so excited that she had got her own home and the fact that it was so close.

Amy's family have been in the area for generations

and bringing up a young child, it's important for her to have a support

network close by. But this isn't always possible.

The number of homeless families being relocated outside London has

increased fivefold in the last decade.

And now you've got your own place,

what difference has this place made to your life?

Well, obviously, it's just over the road from my mum,

I've got a lot of support, it's just over the road from my mum's sister.

I've always grown up in Bethnal Green.

My mum, even like my nan and my grandad,

their nans and grandads, we've all been born and bred in Bethnal Green.

So, it's all we know. So if I would have had to have moved out,

I would have been lost.

So, that's why this area, in terms of finding a suitable council property,

-is so important to you?

-Yeah, definitely.

Even when Lucia goes to nursery, my mum will be able to help

because obviously then I'll go back to work.

I worked right up until three weeks before I had Lucia.

So once Lucia's two, she'll go to nursery and I'll definitely get

myself back into work.

And is that something that when you got this property, you were thinking,

"Yes, now this gives me a base in order to kind of carry on

"with my future and, you know, think about those types of things?"

Yeah, definitely. When obviously, like, I started a family sort of thing,

you do think about, obviously, once she grows up, she goes to school,

you go out to work in the morning and that sort of thing, like,

how am I going to do all that happily from one room in my mum's?

Do you know what I mean? It's nice to have your own house.

It's all about growing up in a way, ain't it?

With her family supporting her,

Amy's looking to return to work as soon as possible.

Amy's story shows how social housing can have a real, positive impact,

not just on individuals, but on entire families.

And it's stories like this that motivate housing investigators

as they continue in their fight to crack down on tenancy fraud.