When Hajaj Hajaj decided to rent out his house in south London in the summer of 2020, his daughter, Kinda Jackson, urged him to use a reputable lettings agent for peace of mind. Her father had enough on his plate. Hajaj, a 79-year-old retired garage owner, is the primary carer for his wife, who has Alzheimer’s disease. The income from the rental property in Lewisham is effectively Hajaj’s pension, which he uses to pay for her care.

So, when a manager from Imperial Property Group contacted Hajaj about his Gumtree listing, Hajaj arranged to meet them. A sharp-suited British Asian man named Shan Miah arrived in a sports car. He was in his late 20s or early 30s, charming and confident. Heboasted of his business interests in Dubai. “He was doing very well for himself,” Hajaj says.

Miah explained that Imperial was different from other lettings agencies. A company of 70 years standing, Imperial had four London offices, employing 121 people, and had sold or rented 83,000 properties, according to its website. It specialised in corporate lets to NHS staff and IT consultants. Imperial would manage the property, dealing with tenants and paying for repairs. Should the tenants leave early, Imperial would cover their rent.

For all this, Imperial charged … nothing. Its fees were 0%. All it required in return was that Hajaj didn’t contact his tenants directly and gave two months’ notice if he wanted the property back. Hajaj assumed that Imperial marked up the rent to the corporate professionals living in the property. He signed with them in July 2020 and for two years, the rent kept coming. Although the bank accounts the money came in from changed every few months, Hajaj did not think this was unusual, as it was a corporate let.

In December 2020, Hajaj contracted Covid. He was placed in a coma and spent six months in hospital. He had to relearn how to eat, drink and walk. His family were called to say goodbye to him three times. As he recovered, Hajaj’s thoughts turned to the Lewisham house. It had been nearly two years since he had set foot inside. On 10 May 2022, Hajaj emailed Imperial to request a viewing. “The property has been kept in immaculate condition and with regular interval checks,” replied Imperial’s administrator, Sarah Barnes.

Hajaj was mollified. He replied to Barnes detailing how important this let was to him. “Please note, the income is mainly covering the full time care which I provide for my wife … [who] unfortunately is suffering from dementia,” he wrote. He told Barnes how he had nearly died. “We wish you and your partner the best of health,” she responded, adding: “It is clear you do not need any extra headache.”

But in November 2022, the rent didn’t arrive as usual. Imperial said it would evict the tenants, a process that could take months. Barnes sent court papers, to show proceedings were under way. Under no circumstances, Barnes emphasised, should Hajaj go to the property. “Forcing entry will result in the tenants calling the police,” Barnes wrote. Besides, the property had been inspected on 10 December 2022 and all was well, she added.

The months dragged on. Hajaj sent beseeching emails.“I am unable to sleep or concentrate as this is the only income I have … My wife needs 24 hours care. I had to borrow money from the bank at [an] astronomical rate.” This time, Barnes’s response was cold. “Please refrain from constantly emailing … We will not tolerate abuse or unprofessionalism.”

The tenants would be legally evicted, Barnes wrote in a subsequent email, by 18 April 2023. That date came and went. Hajaj heard no word from Imperial. So he went to the house. What he found there was worse than he could possibly have imagined.

“How can a human being be so hard?” says Hajaj with despair, as he surveys the wreck of his property more than a year later.

In October 2023, Michelle Chen skulked outside her property in Milton Keynes. It was 3am and she was on a stakeout. After she listed her house on Gumtree in September 2022, Miah approached her, too. “I checked the Google reviews,” says Chen, 43, an education consultant. “All perfect.”

But something was awry. She knew it. Chen lived in the same development as her rental house and passed it daily. None of the lights were ever on, apart from the bathroom and hallway light, which were always on. But Barnes insisted that Imperial had inspected the property recently. “Rest assured, your property is in excellent condition,” she wrote in an email.

Then, in October 2023, the rent was late. Chen did what she hadn’t done for a year. She rechecked Imperial’s Google reviews. One stood out. “Our house has been turned into a cannabis farm … STAY CLEAR OF THESE CRIMINALS.” It had been written by Jackson, Hajaj’s daughter.

“Oh my God,” says Chen, recalling the moment she read the review. “That’s exactly what’s happening in my house.” Chen didn’t know much about cannabis farms, but she knew that the criminals hacked into the electricity supplyto run cabling to the lamps. What if her house exploded? Chen pulled on a coat and headed into the night. In the dark, the house glowered at her. She needed to get back into her property. But who would help her?

When Hajaj opened his front door on 22 April 2023, he found a hidden wall, reinforced with steel and secured with three locks. He called the police. Inside, officers found 160 cannabis plants, with a street value of about £160,000. Also present was Niazi Hysa, then 38. Officers handcuffed him and walked him to Lewisham police station, which is next door to Hajaj’s house, scarcely 350m away. “You can’t make this stuff up, can you?” says Jackson, from south London, who is 46 and works in PR.

When I meet Hajaj in his house in Lewisham a year later, it is still uninhabitable. The growers punched holes in the ceilings and connected a snaking system of ventilation shafts. They cut through the roof joists to build an internal wall. Hajaj was quoted £200,000 by a builder to fix it.

Hajaj’s insurer won’t pay out, because Imperial didn’t take references for the tenants, obtain photo ID or inspect the property. Imperial also never took the tenants to court after they stopped paying rent; this was a ruse, to stall for time. Hajaj has been trying to repair the property himself, but he is nearly 80.

Hysa appeared before Woolwich crown court on 12 July 2023. The court heard that he had arrived in the UK on a small boat, hoping to earn money to support his wife and then two-year-old daughter, who was unwell. His asylum application had been rejected and he was homeless when he was approached and offered food and accommodation – but no money – in exchange for tending cannabis plants at Hajaj’s house. Hysa said he was afraid to say no to the unnamed person who recruited him. The judge determined that Hysa was a victim of “intimidation”, but nonetheless sentenced him to six months’ imprisonment.

“It’s a familiar story,” says Prof Gary Potter, a criminologist at Lancaster University who specialises in cannabis farms. “Illegal immigrants are coerced into cannabis cultivation and treated as criminals, when arguably they are victims.” Many are trafficked and told by people smugglers that they must work for an unspecified amount of time to repay their debts, which can run into tens of thousands of pounds. If they refuse, gangs often threaten their families back home.

Hysa is Albanian. “The Albanian community has been implicated in cannabis cultivation and there are organised gangs involved in importing cannabis from Albania,” says Potter. In one Imperial property, a two-bedroom house in Dartford, Kent, that was turned into a cannabis farm in 2023, the words “on” and “off” were written in Albanian by a light switch. But Potter emphasises that “most of the people who grow cannabis in the UK are white British nationals”.

While Hysa was prosecuted, the Metropolitan police were incurious about the lettings agency that had repeatedly assured Hajaj that all was well in his property. “Generally, the grower gets nicked and dealt with for drug offences,” says a senior police inspector in the south of England, who asked not to be named. After a prison sentence, they may be deported. There is little institutional appetite to go after the organised gangs involved in forcing people into modern-day slavery, he says, because police forces are under-resourced and these investigations are complex and time-consuming, particularly when frightened victims won’t cooperate. “It’s not a priority at all,” he says.

When officers found Hysa under a bed, he was hiding beside two sharpened metal poles, presumably for protection. In the Dartford house, the back door was smashed in; security cameras overlooking the rear garden had previously been installed. Cannabis farms are at risk from rival gangs, who seek to steal fully grown plants around the time of the harvest. In December 2021, 25-year-old Xhovan Pepaj was stabbed to death in Tunbridge Wells by a gang who were robbing a farm he was cultivating. “Human beings are being exploited and put at such risk,” says the senior police inspector.

Between 2015 and 2024, the Met recorded 8,000 offences related to cannabis farming or cannabis production, according to data provided after a freedom of information request by the Guardian. Charges were brought in less than one-third of cases.“That will be a fraction of the size of the illegal cultivation that goes on,” says Potter. “There will be hundreds of thousands of cannabis farms in the UK.” Britain used to import its cannabis from Morocco and Pakistan, but shifted towards domestic cultivation in the 90s.

The pandemic supercharged domestic production, with Met data showing that cannabis cultivation increased 70% between 2019 and 2020(although it has since decreased).This explosion, says Potter, was mostly fuelled by amateur growers turning over a spare room or garage to make some extra income. “With modern technology, such as carbon filters and grow tents, I’ve been in people’s houses where I’ve not been able to smell it until they take me upstairs and open the tent,” he says. “Walk 50 metres in London and you’ll walk past a cannabis farm,” says Potter.

Across Britain, farms have been found in pubs, in former primary schools, in decommissioned nuclear bunkers and even in old police stations. It could be happening on your street – maybe in the house next door. (The next time it snows, look at the rooftops. Cannabis plants need warmth; if snow melts away quickly, that is a giveaway.) In 2018, the Institute for Economic Affairs valued the market at £2.5bn a year. It is immensely lucrative. “As a rule of thumb, £1,000 a plant is reasonable,” says Potter. “If a grower knows what they’re doing, they can easily have four cycles a year.” A four-bedroom house might bring in £400,000 annually.

Hajaj emailed Imperial after he realised what had happened. “Please respond and explain to me if you are … aware of what’s been going on,” he emailed on 10 May 2023. “[If you don’t], you are part of the criminals and [have] taken advantage of a sick old man.” Nobody ever got back to him.

After she became convinced there was a cannabis farm at her property, Chen tried to regain access. At every step, Imperial blocked her. They cancelled viewings at short notice. They had a fake tenant call her. (Chen knew she was lying when she said she commuted by car to work in London: she had never once seen a car outside the house.)

When Chen wouldn’t give up, Imperial threatened her. “[We] will call the law enforcement as you, the landlord, Michelle Chen, are trespassing,” wrote Barnes on 10 November 2023, after Chen knocked on the door of her property. Imperial also stopped paying the rent.

Chen says she contacted Thames Valley police four times to ask for help. They told her there was nothing they could do. She couldn’t prove it was a cannabis farm. “I said: ‘What kind of evidence do you want?’” The police officer told Chen she needed to see the cannabis plants. Chen was stunned. “‘You want me to deal with the drug dealers?’” she says. “‘OK, I’m going to go there, I’m going to knock on the door – and if they open the door, I’m going to call you.’ The police officer said: ‘No, you can’t call us unless you’re in danger.’”

Chen laughs in disbelief. “If the police leave citizens to deal with drug dealers, that’s really ridiculous, to be honest.”

Chen paid a bailiff £4,500 to get into the property on 10 December 2023. She found an abandoned cannabis farm, with plants half grown. Holes had been clawed in the walls. Electrical cables drooped from the ceilings. The plastic sheeting across the floor made the house feel like a crime scene – which, of course, it was. Thames Valley police came to take the plants away, but only, Chen says, after she threatened to fly-tip them in the street. The damage to her property came to about £30,000, of which only £5,000 was covered by insurance, the limit for malicious damage under her policy. Thames Valley police closed the case. “The police don’t care,” says Chen. “I want to be a criminal, because there’s no punishment.”

The Guardian has spoken with six people who collectively say they had seven properties turned into cannabis farms after renting them out through Imperial. Online reviews suggest there are more victims. In some cases, cannabis farms went undetected for years; in others, neighbours tipped off landlords as the farms were being set up. The farms or attempted farms were mostly in London, but also in Milton Keynes and Dartford.

In each instance, Imperial approached private landlords after seeing adverts posted online. Occasionally, Imperial put legitimate tenants in properties, but when it did it stole their security deposits and sometimes their rent. One mother of three, who rented a property in Feltham, west London, in August 2022 through Imperial, had a month’s rent and her security deposit stolen, totalling £4,375. Her contact from Imperial, who called himself Roberto, had the same number as Shan Miah.

Imperial routinely lied to keep landlords away from the cannabis farms, even in the face of overwhelming evidence. When Santosh Chandorkar, a 49-year-old IT director, was told by neighbours in January 2024 that a skip filled with cannabis plants had appeared outside his property in Uxbridge, west London, Imperial insisted that the property had been recently inspected and all was well.

When landlords didn’t swallow their excuses, Imperial threatened them. “The corporate client that supplies us with tenants … have now lodged a formal complaint in regards to you, the homeowner,” wrote Barnes to Andrea Petrie, 53, a project manager from south London.

Petrie’s three-bedroom house in Catford was turned into a cannabis farm in December 2023. At first, Petrie was impressed with the professionalism of Imperial’s approach. “It was very slick paperwork,” she says. But Petrie, an experienced landlord, realised something was awry when Imperial sent her an inventory report when the tenancy commenced without any photographs in it. She checked out the insurance paperwork Imperial had provided, realised it was fraudulent and persuaded the Met to help her regain access to her property. When they found the cannabis farm, “it was very neat and tidy”, Petrie says. “So professional. They did a really good job on the electrics. The officers said it was the nicest cannabis farm they’d ever been to.”

In all cases, when the landlords finally regained access, Imperial went dark. It was then the landlords realised everything they had been told about Imperial was a lie. “There’s nothing legal about this,” says Chandorkar. “Everything is a fraud.”

Imperial hadn’t been operating for 70 years. It didn’t have four offices or 121 employees. It wasn’t registered with HMRC for money-laundering checks, a legal requirement for all estate agencies, nor was it a member of a property redress scheme, a legal requirement for lettings agencies. The receptionists at the addresses listed on Imperial’s website had never heard of the company. The properties listed for rent or sale on its website did not exist. The real Imperial Group, the company number of which Imperial used in correspondence, is a dormant German cement manufacturer. A weary company secretary confirmed that she had been contacted repeatedly by confused victims of Imperial Property Group.

All the paperwork Imperial sent – home insurance documents, records of bank payments, credit reference checks, inventory reports, deposit protection certificates and passport scans – was fraudulent. Sometimes, it was so realistic that even the legitimate companies responsible for issuing the documentation were duped.

“They are very clever,” says Anna Stone, a 63-year-old academic who owns the property in Dartford. “They are very convincing. Scams don’t just happen to stupid people.” Now, she won’t deal with a company that is online-only. “I’m back to bricks and mortar,” she says. “I won’t do business with anyone I can’t meet face to face.”

Imperial’s victims contacted Thames Valley police, the Met and Kent police. In each instance, bar Hysa’s conviction, the police shut the case without further investigation. When the Guardian contacted the forces, each confirmed that no suspects had been identified, but said this would be reviewed if new information came to light.

After Chandorkar’s neighbours tipped him off in January 2024, he says the Met left his brother waiting outside the property from 8pm until 4am. (Chandorkar couldn’t go himself as he lives in Dubai.) The police showed up the next day and let Chandorkar’s brother into the property. He discovered what he believed to be the remnants of a cannabis farm.

Chandorkar had another property rented with Imperial, also in Uxbridge, and begged the police to help him regain access. “They said: ‘What evidence do you have? Prove there’s something there.’ I said: ‘All I’m asking is you to investigate this.’”

Chandorkar’s teenage son let himself into the second property in February 2024 and found a cannabis farm. “It was scary, because I’m putting my son at risk,” Chandorkar says. When Chandorkar called the police to let them know, he says an officer insinuated that he broke the law by entering his property. “I said: ‘Am I under investigation?’” he recalls in disbelief.

In lieu of police action, Imperial’s victims contacted their MPs. They contacted the Insolvency Service. They contacted Action Fraud – five times. Nothing was done. “We just want answers,” says Jackson, Hajaj’s daughter. “We just want some justice.” She wants to sue Miah on her father’s behalf. But Shan Miah is not his real name. “We’ve got lawyers,” she says. “But who do we sue?”

Everyone who met Miah describes a British Asian man of small build who by now would be in his early 30s. Some pronounced his name “Shan”, others “Sean”. He wasn’t the only person who worked at Imperial, but he seemed to be in charge. Miah told Petrie he had been working in property since he was 18. She thinks he was being truthful and that Miah was formerly a lettings agent. “He’s very knowledgable,” she says. “He’s definitely done it in the past.”

So who is Shan Miah, the man behind so much misery?

In 2019, Imperial approached the family of a 30-year-old plumber from Purley, south London, who prefers not to be named. Something was off. “He offered a ridiculous amount of rent,” says the plumber. He left an online review, warning people off. The person who approached them, he says, was a British Asian man called Taj.

Imperial’s Google reviews also hold another clue. Two reviewers also left positive reviews for a lettings agency called Investire, registered to the same address. Before the Imperial website was taken down, the same photography appeared on Imperial’s and Investire’s websites. They used the same office numbers.

Tom Greenhalf, 40, a British army bandmaster, was approached by Investire after he posted an advert for his one-bedroom flat in Croydon on OpenRent in March 2018. Greenhalf met Tajruhul Huda, a lettings agent originally from Mitcham, south London. Huda didn’t have a “slimy sales patter”, says Greenhalf. “He was really normal and convincing. He didn’t have to sell me very hard.”

Investire agreed to manage his flat for a 5% commission, but the tenancy fell apart. The credit reference check Investire had provided Greenhalf with was fraudulent. It said the lead tenant earned £41,000; in reality, he was on universal credit.

When the tenants moved out, leaving rent arrears, Greenhalf realised Investire hadn’t secured their deposit into a scheme, meaning that Greenhalf could be fined up to three times the value of the deposit. Greenhalf also says that Huda showed another tenant around the flat, took a deposit and disappeared with her money.

Greenhalf secured a county court judgment (CCJ) for £4,285 against Huda in 2019, but he never paid. He later found out there was another judgment against Huda, for £5,185. CCJs are wiped after six years, so there may be more, now expired. Victims of fraudulent lettings agencies generally find it impossible to enforce their debts. “You might win an award, but you won’t get your money, because they dissolve the company,” says Ben Reeve-Lewis, the policy manager at Safer Renting, a tenant’s rights advocacy service.

In housing circles, this practice is known as “phoenixing”. Reeve-Lewis explains: “You start a limited company and when the pressure is on you dissolve the company and any penalties or fines that go with it. Then you start a new company, sometimes from the same office.”

The name Tajruhul Huda is also familiar to Hajaj – one of Huda’s companies paid the rent on his Lewisham house in September 2020.

Since 2012, Huda, 34, has set up at least six lettings or estate agencies. In 2012, Huda owned a franchise of a lettings agency called Let’s All Move, headquartered in Croydon. The owner of Let’s All Move, Samer Butt, Huda’s brother-in-law, fled the UK in 2013 after the Met opened an investigation into at least 23 allegations of fraud. A wanted photograph of him was circulated by the police, even appearing in a local newspaper.

Huda’s businesses are not registered with HMRC for money-laundering checks, nor with a property redress scheme. None of his current businesses appear to have employees, physical locations or properties available to rent or buy. Despite the fact that his companies appear to have no legitimate business concerns, Huda bought two properties in St Helen’s, Merseyside, in 2022 and 2023 through one of them, for a total of £360,000.

Reeve-Lewis routinely deals with cases of phoenixing. Local authority trading standards officers are responsible for enforcing regulations, but after 15 years of cuts, officers are overwhelmed by the scale of the criminality. A 2018 report found that there were just 2.46 environmental health officers to inspect private rented accommodation for every 10,000 properties in London. “There are so many of these buggers around,” Reeve-Lewis says. The Guardian has seen evidence of Huda using a variety of aliases – David, Roberto, Shan Miah – retiring each when they have outlived their usefulness. He has opened and closed businesses, careful never to own assets in his name, lest his creditors come after him. He remains, to all intents and purposes, a ghost. There is little trace of him online, no public social media accounts or photographs, although a private Instagram account, believed to be his, offers a trace of his worldview. In the “about” section, Huda has written “koinophobic”, which means afraid of living an ordinary life. In May 2024, he phoenixed again, opening a new online lettings agency, Tajhana. It is not registered with a property redress scheme and has no properties for rent, nor any employees. The Guardian attempted to reach Huda for comment through multiple channels, but received no reply.

After nearly two years, Hajaj’s house is almost ready for new tenants. Putting it back to a habitable state has drained his life savings. “It’s ruined his retirement,” says Jackson. “He feels completely failed by the system. Criminals were able to do this and he’s left to carry the can on his own.”

For Hajaj, the stress has proved almost unendurable. “I feel sick,” he says. “I feel bad. I can’t sleep at night. I’ve had enough with it. I don’t even like thinking about it any more.”

Meanwhile, through his newly launched company, Huda is in the process of buying a five-bedroom detached house in St Helen’s. The property last sold for £515,000 nearly four years ago. The newly renovated home has a summer house, a garden room and a store room.

“Why wouldn’t he start again?” says Jackson. “He’s living the life of Riley while all these victims are suffering. And no one is doing a thing about it.”