‘Scam netted £18m from thousands of desperate tenants’

A gang of rogue letting agents fleeced thousands of students and foreign workers out of their deposits in an £18m scam, a court heard. The fraudsters cashed in on London’s overheating property market to fleece desperate tenants fighting for accommodation. Deposits they took just to view properties were never returned and the companies they set up vanished overnight. One company operated by ringleader Mohammed Haque, 46, advertised 18,605 rooms on the online platform SpareRoom. Last November two companies and five…