A landlord has been left footing a £20k bill after a fraudster tenant secretly sublet his flat on Airbnb – before changing the locks, hosting wild house parties and running off with his furniture.
Rohann Divanji, 39, has spent the last year fighting his tenant in a costly legal battle as well repairing the trail of destruction left behind in the two-bedroom apartment in Canary Wharf, east London.
Mr Divanji, a product manager at a tech firm, claims that in October 2023, his new tenant somehow bypassed employment and credit checks on OpenRent by claiming to be a data analyst on a salary of £78k-a-year.
However, this was all part of a scam and the landlord became embroiled in a nightmare that saw him forced to spend £2.5k on legal fees to evict the tenant, £5k on damaged furniture and stolen goods on top of the six months of rent he has lost, which would have been £15k.
To add insult to injury, Mr Divanji even watched the tenant from hell walk out with the furniture he had paid for.
Shocking CCTV shared with MailOnline shows two men brazenly walking through the block of flats with Mr Divanji’s belongings, including a massive sofa and washing machine before loading it up into a yellow van parked up outside.
The devastated landlord told MailOnline: ‘It feels horrible, it’s really frustrating. I trusted the system… but no one is willing to play their part in resolving this issue.’
Landlord Rohann Divanji (pictured) has been left with a £20,000 bill after his tenant stole an identity and sublet his flat on Airbnb
Pictured: Rohann Divanji found his Canary Wharf flat was being listed on Airbnb by his scamming tenant
Pictured: On February 2, Mr Divanji went round to his own flat and found this man, Asad, who was claiming to be the tenant’s brother
Pictured: On July 17, a massive group of revellers arrived outside the building for a party at the flat but the police showed up
Pictured: On the same day, several items of furniture, including a sofa were taken from the property. An eviction notice had been served several months before
Pictured: The furniture, including a washing machine, was then loaded into a yellow van parked outside
Mr Divanji added: ‘Even when I spoke to the solicitors no one has a clue on how to handle the situation where a tenancy agreement is signed with the fake person.
‘And what do you do with that? How do you handle that? And can you just go in and change the locks, or do you wait?
‘And we just literally had to wait until a court date comes through the court, which takes time and obviously they have a massive backlog.’
It comes after we revealed how another landlord had been scammed by their fitness influencer tenant who was secretly renting the flat on Airbnb and Booking.com to tourists for £190-a-night while jetting off on luxury holidays to Dubai.
Mr Divanji told how a woman called Sue came to view the property and told him that she had a team of data analysts who wanted to rent the flat.
A tenant, who posed as ‘Poonam Grover’, then paid a deposit and was able to pass the reference report with a forged driver’s licence.
Mr Divanji said that everything seemed above board for the first few months, until his neighbour complained about parties being hosted at the Canary Wharf flat and later discovered it being flogged for as much as £250-a-night on Airbnb.
The landlord contacted the tenant to inform them they had breached the tenancy conditions and requested that they take down the listing and vacate the flat.
But to his horror, when he visited his own property he found that the locks had been changed and that a man called ‘Asad’ who was claiming to be the tenant’s brother was living there.
Pictured: The tenant stole a woman’s identity and somehow managed to pass the OpenRent credit checks
Pictured: The original listing that Mr Divanji put up on OpenRent, but the sofa was stolen
Pictured: Mr Divanji’s is loaded up into a yellow van which was waiting outside the flats
Pictured: A pair of men were caught on CCTV taking the items out of the flat, before leaving the building
Pictured: A washing machine is removed from the flat and then driven away in a yellow van
Pictured: When Mr Divanji got the flat back, he returned to smashed glass doors and further damage
Pictured: Broken beds were left in the room after the tenant trashed the property
Mr Divanji confronted him before reporting this to the Met Police. He then served the tenant with Section 8 and 21 eviction notices.
The audacious scam ended up in the courts, with a judge ruling in the landlord’s favour on June 26. The tenant, who did not show up for the hearing, was ordered to leave and pay back the money owed.
On the same day, the concierge for the block of flats informed Mr Divanji that a group of three boys had entered the flat. When Mr Divanji went round to ask them to leave, he found a broken balcony door.
Two days later, another set of guests who booked the flat on Airbnb were shocked to find out they had unwittingly been caught up in the scam.
CCTV from July 17 shows police swooping on the block of flats after dozens of revellers had gathered for a party hosted by someone staying at the flat.
After the police dispersed the crowds, two men were later seen leaving with several furniture items and loading it into a yellow van.
Pictured: Messages showing Mr Divanji was able to book his own flat on Airbnb. They then asked for a £150 deposit
Pictured: Reviews from guests staying at the unlawfully sublet flat on Airbnb
Mr Divanji reported this to police but four days later, the same crew returned to take more items from the flat.
The police came to the scene and asked the person to leave and took the flat keys off him.
Mr Divanji changed the locks back on July 26 and upon inspection found that a sofa, washing machine, vacuum cleaner, mop, broom, two mirrors, microwave, kettle and desk had been stolen.
Footage shows Mr Divanji returning to the repossessed flat for the first time, with damage visible to both beds, while the glass balcony door had been smashed and discarded.
The landlord told MailOnline: ‘All of this just means that I lost eventually six months of rent. That’s £12,500 to £15,000. I lost £2,500 on the legal fees.
‘And the damage and the loss of property was another £4,000 to £5,000. She stole my washing machine and my sofas, and all this furniture I kept.’
Mr Divanji added: ‘The most important thing actually in this case was she used fake identity documents and yet passed OpenRent’s reference checks.’
The landlord said he was able to contact the person whose identity had been stolen. They confirmed that it was their driving license, but with a different photo.
‘And so what was happening is this girl essentially created fake documents, including a fake driver’s license, fake salary slips a fake company website to show she was employed and nothing in that was real,’ he added.
‘The birth certificate, everything was fake, and I didn’t know that I didn’t realise that until June.
‘I had to go through the legal process, go through an eviction, pay thousands of pounds to evict her.
‘Eventually she just left on her own. She damaged the flat. The flat was completely ruined and she stole all the furniture.’
The landlord still does not know who the identity thief is – and is battling with police to investigate further. He told how the rental money was being transferred to him by a different name, but that the fake tenant routinely came up with excuses.
He added: ‘I trusted that OpenRent had given me a document which says ‘ID check verified’ and everything is good to go with this person. But they also didn’t acknowledge their part. They said, ‘We’ll look into this and close it’, and they never came back to me with anything.’
Mr Divanji even tried booking his own flat on Airbnb and received a message from a company called MD Management, who requested a £150 deposit.
He added: ‘Somehow Airbnb just facilitate all of this where anyone can come in, create a profile, change the name.
Pictured: The yellow van, filled with furniture, leaving the Canary Wharf block of flats
‘I don’t know what kind of ID checks they do. But the same thing just goes on and on, and they just send you a standard kind of cookie cutter response, saying, ‘Oh this is between you and your tenant, and we won’t do anything’.
‘It is completely [unregulated] It feels like there’s so much mismanagement in this.’
It’s understood Airbnb removed the listing in March 2024 and that the flat was not booked through the rental company on July 17 – the day the furniture was stolen.
Mr Divanji fears that this is a ‘problem where it’s only going to grow simply because of the way the legislation is changing’.
He added: ‘We as landlords are under kind of so much scrutiny and regulation where you can’t miss anything, otherwise you’ll be fined.
‘But on the tenant side, there’s little to nothing we can do. There’s no one to chase. There’s no one to get the money back from.
‘And for me, even insurance doesn’t cover this. So I’ve just been completely let down.
‘Naturally, she never showed up to defend herself because she was never going to. She’s made tonnes of money on the flat.’
A spokesman for the Met Police said: ‘Police were called in July to reports of a theft of a sofa and a washing machine from an address in Lamington Heights E14.
‘It was further alleged the address had been illegally sublet.
‘There have been no arrests; enquiries continue.’
A spokesman for OpenRent confirmed that they have ‘a case where a tenant has defrauded a landlord’ which ‘is now a police matter’.
They added: ‘In terms of our referencing service – this is a two part product comprising tenant vetting, and corresponding insurance which covers the landlord in case of unpaid rent, property damage and other costs up to £50,000 in case something goes wrong (even if the reference check fully passed).
‘In this case the landlord purchased a reference check, but opted out of the insurance cover. It’s also worth noting that risks were highlighted on the report meaning the advice was to ‘proceed cautiously’ – often in this case landlords will conduct further checks of their own, request a guarantor, or seek rent in advance to reduce their risks. The best option to mitigate the risk though is the insurance component.
‘When purchasing a reference check on its own, the service exists as an advisory report to help landlords make an informed decision when selecting tenants.
‘As above, if landlords want a guarantee against potential losses from that tenant, then the insurance component exists exactly for that purpose.
‘Thankfully situations like this are exceptionally rare among the 250,000 properties we help let every year; we are really saddened to hear of what happened here, and we are doing our best to support this landlord and the police as far as possible to bring this to a resolution.’
Airbnb declined to comment.
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