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‘Clearance scam nets mafia £1,500 a week’
Ex-workers claim tenants’ property is sold on eBay
A TIGHT-knit “mafia” make up to £1,500 a week from the sale of valuables and furniture cleared from the council homes of the dead and vulnerable, former Town Hall insiders have told the New Journal.
Insisting that they remain anonymous to avoid reprisals from the council workers at the heart of the scam, three ex-employees have made detailed allegations of a network of theft and graft which controls the disposal of goods from the 1,200 council properties that fall empty through the death, illness, disappearance or eviction of tenants each year.
Although it is impossible to verify their accounts the three sources have separately contacted the New Journal and spoken knowledgeably about the internal workings of the scam.
Prompted by the New Journal’s investigation into how items from the Gospel Oak flat belonging to Dorothy Robinson, 92, ended up in a Kentish Town antiques shop after they were cleared by workers as she lay dying in a nursing home, they allege:
• That council officers sort through the possessions in empty properties and separate items of value before clearance teams arrive;
• That council vans are used to transport the valuable items away for sale;
• That while worthless items are dumped at a Cricklewood rubbish tip, the valuables are sold on eBa or at antiques shops in Camden or further afield;
• That finds of cash in the properties of the dead are divided among workers, with a slice paid to colleagues to ensure silence;
• That the recruitment of workers to the lucrative clearance teams is carefully controlled by insiders; and
• That the crime-ring’s senior figures have netted up to £1,500 a week from the sale of ex-tenants’ effects,
Source A, who worked on the house clearance teams until recently, said: “We are talking about people who have been there since the word go and know they’ve got it made. This has been going on for years and years and they think they are untouchable.
“About 15 months ago, two of the blokes found £7,000 in cash in the flat of dead old boy in Patshull Road. He kept it in his hat and they found it when they went in. They split it, but one of them couldn’t keep his mouth shut. They had to pay a monkey (£500) each to (the alleged crime-ring organisers) to have it hushed up. No more was said.”
A council press official said this week that the council “can find no complaints regarding money being found in a property in Patshull Road”, but called for anyone with information to come forward.
Source A also said that the ring-leaders of the scam were capable of physical violence if they discovered who was leaking their methods. “They could come and do my windows, my car. They could come and do me or my family. They know plenty of people,” he said
Source B said he had seen council officers lay out the effects of dead residents in the BMD offices at Holmes Road, Kentish Town, and begin itemising them for sale on eBay.
All three sources have made detailed allegations about named individuals which it is not possible to print for legal reasons.
The council launched its own internal investigation after the New Journal revealed it had broken its own procedures by failing to take an inventory of the Gospel Oak flat’s contents before disposing of them “in a skip”. |
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