Eight criminal landlords - three of them companies - have been fined approaching half a million pounds.
They were prosecuted for offences under the Housing Act 2004, including the operation of 14 unlicensed HMOs and a catalogue of breaches relating to fire safety, tenant information and maintenance of the properties.
West Northamptonshire Council began investigating the gang and their activities in 2019 and attended the properties under a Housing Warrant in September 2020 and January 2021 after concerns were raised over safety.
The five individuals used a range of false and misleading documents to acquire properties from high street letting agents, purporting to be taking on properties for themselves as single family properties before converting them to HMOs.
They then set up companies to handle the rent payments between themselves, the tenants and the property owners.
During sentencing at Northampton Magistrates Court, the District Judge remarked that this was a deliberate, large-scale operation of falsity and that the defendants broke safety laws with no regard to the safety of the tenants, engineered solely for financial gain and profit.
The District Judge identified Alexsejs Cugurovs of Northampton as the instigator of the scheme and imposed a fine of £270,000 - with a contribution to the investigation costs of £5,000.
The other defendants included Maxims Borozdins who was fined £30,000 with a costs contribution of £5,000, and Valdims Oblikovs of Riga in Latvia, who was fined £2,000.
The remaining defendants did not attend the court and were fined in their absence, these included Karlis Cernihs, fined £60,000 with a costs contribution of £5,000; Dimitri Vinconschii, fined £40,000 with a costs contribution of £5,000; Charlex Limited, fined £4,000; Convid Limited, fined £5,000; and Civon Limited, fined £3,000.
A council spokesperson says: “This was a well-planned, cunning and conniving scheme for the purposes of financial gain.
“I am pleased the court has imposed a substantial fine which will hopefully deter rogue landlords and persuade them to comply with the law in future.
“While the housing team cannot visit every property, we won’t hesitate to step in when we have evidence of wrongdoing.”
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Very odd names
Putin might be familiar with the names - and with the people themselves?
A couple of years ago I was cheated with a short delivery of heating oil, 818ltrs instead of 1000ltrs. I have a square steel tank, so calculating the amount of oil is very simple, and very accurate.
One of the two directors of the company was Latvian and the other Lithuanian.
I reported them to Trading Standards of course, but nothing happened. Of course.
But Barclaycard immediately refunded me the amount covering the shortfall in oil.
They are Latvians, and I guarantee the fines will not be paid.
The defendents present in this country should have been jailed,
Common law element is not law. The government's common law Policies are unlawful -- a serious mental health, safety and financial hazard for tenants and landlords in particular. The civil service and power groups have unlawfully wiped out good faith agreements (statute + common law) before starting as the civil service cannot DELIVER Richard Heaton's fused loop to protect customers as on its own website -- the management structures are WRONG and there is no evidence of comparable contract law to measure 'reasonableness' in a system's failure. The power groups have become useless, The common have become gangsters to teh extent that exiting landlords are forced out of business in some cases dure to government without integrity in UK's version of American greed, scams and scroundrels, According to the grapevine the system is not-fit-for-purpose
Investigations and Richard Heatons' talk on the government's webiste reveals 'woke' ideology by the top civil services/councils and unlawful common law practices by the power groups (Letting agents, Property Mark, Landlord Law, SAL, NRLA, solicitors, media groups (Mashroom/ NRLA/Landlord Law), course providers). THere is no fusion between implied statute and common law or in design common law because customer protection has been deleted with the missing statute in a system failure turned into an unfair trading - criminal practices. Government's 'U'-turn Common law policies cannot be DELIVERED by comparing against world- class contract law, where FUSION loop can move from design common law over to Implied satute for customer.
Landlords are now placed in a dilemma in a system collapse 6 years for whether to 1) Choose believer/non believer source God focuse and/or forced unlawfully into into accepting the civil service/Councils breach of good faith agreements with the wrong management structures and no way of measuring reasonableness. Even the power groups are beginning to talk back and why should landlords not object to a solicitors common law cover-up when the law is (implied statute + common law). Google says that thee should have been a FUSED loop in the past ( (implied statute + common law
What on earth are you talking about?
Another comment in the wrong forum.
Eric Morecambe mk 2 ?
All the right notes but not necessarily in the right order :)
I was a UK practicing Solicitor for nigh on 40 years before I retired in 2010. There was one certain precaution which I taught myself and which should always be taken before the villains are even given a whisper that legal steps are imminent ... namely an ex parte Garnishee Order. ( No notice to the offenders) With proper grounds these are easy to obtain. This freezes the money in the target bank account and only then do you prosecute them. This news report should have had the headline " CPS fails yet again to bring an effective prosecution " and Landlord Today team keep up this approach on all these stories.
Since there is not a word about actualy recovering these massive fines I believe the whole exercise would have been yet another waste of taxpayers money. And the "authorities" must have been the CPS who no doubt are congratulating themsleves on their great suuccess. Sorry to criticise the reporters at Landlord Today but you should always ask about enforcing judgments of these types and find out what steps if any were taken to freeze the money ; clearly too late now! And below here in Related Articles I see another story which Landlord Today headlines with "Landlords hit with 27k Fine " will that money be recovered ? Was it recovered? Oh and there is another one "Five Figure civil penaltyserved on rogue landlord ; same issues again?
I think all of us on here know full well that those fines and costs will never be paid
Bernard
As a qualified solicitor can you please tell us what the post 2 above your post is all about?
This is exactly what Councils SHOULD be doing, instead of '' dithering about shuffling paper licensing schemes for the vast majority of honest landlords, pushing the costs inevitably onto the end-user ( tenants )
The politicians that enabled Councils to devise Money generating Licensing schemes to fund their financial shortfalls need to take some responsibility for rent increases.
I won’t comment on those cases but I wouldn’t want to risk a fine or hope to avoid to avoid the outcome.
Separately on another issue I had to switch the TV off again because Mr Michael Gove was on there commons committee supposedly answering questions. Well not a hope he couldn’t string 2 words together, stuttering, hamming & Haaing, A, AM, AA, hmm. Ah, Ahh, hm, Am, and the 2 hands all fingers clasped / locked together tightly trying to think of a word to say it’s so ridiculous. He is top man in Government Department making unfair renting laws Bankrupting to Country. God help us to have to Suffer this indignity, is he brain dead or drunk.
Hear hear!
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