A London borough has recovered 18 council homes during a £700,000 fraud investigation, including one property where the registered tenant was found living in the USA.
Hammersmith and Fulham council said it has launched probes into 33 properties in 2025 and 2026.
It investigated tip offs that tenants were illegally sub-letting council homes, had made bogus housing applications or were conducting Right to Buy scams.
The local authority said 18 properties were seized back in total, putting an end to “more than £700,000 worth of housing fraud”.
In one case investigators found that a tenant who had claimed their home in White City was overcrowded was actually living abroad.
The tenant was in fact based in the USA and not west London and held a US passport with a different surname.
The property was seized back by the local authority.
A tenant in Shepherds Bush was caught illegally sub-letting their council house when the person renting it reported their “landlord”.
Investigators trawled through bank statements and WhatsApp messages to prove that the tenant was actually living elsewhere and profiting from their social home.
The property was returned and reallocated to a person on the housing waiting list, the town hall said.
In another case, a suspicious application to sign over a tenancy to the tenant’s son was investigated.
It found the listed tenant had bought a new home and their son was living in Hounslow during the period he was said to be staying in the council property in Hammersmith.
Officers proved that the application was false and the home has now been relet.
Hammersmith and Fulham’s cabinet member for housing and homelessness, Frances Umeh, said: We will not tolerate fraudsters denying families access to housing.
“Officers are working diligently to stop all forms of housing fraud and ensure council homes are allocated fairly and protected for residents in genuine need.”
Several London boroughs have launched a crackdown on council home fraud in recent years as the cost of housing the homeless in temporary accommodation puts a major strain on budgets.
Westminster town hall last month prosecuted a man who fraudulently obtained a council flat near Buckingham Palace.
Saeed Yasin Hosseini was handed the one-bedroom property in Jessel House, Page Street in 2011 and illegally rented it out while living with his wife in north London.
He was ordered to pay back £500,000 after buying the Pimlico property under the Right to Buy scheme, receiving a £100,000 discount on the sale.
A council tenant who was last year found renting out their Soho flat on AirBnB while living in France was among more than £1million of fraud identified by Westminster City Council over the 12 month period.
