“I turned the lights on and it’s ‘Oh my God, 3ft of soil in my bedroom’,” Charles Reeves says, still in disbelief, as he shows the BBC his home. “I’m surprised the floors are even withstanding all this stuff.”
Mr Reeves, a north London homeowner, returned from working abroad to find his family home transformed into a cannabis farm.
The criminals, posing as tenants, had dumped 10 tonnes of soil in the property, causing extensive damage and leaving the family devastated.
According to experts, rental scams linked to cannabis farms are on the rise, with criminals seemingly exploiting the lengthy eviction process to complete illegal grow operations before disappearing
The Reeves family had advertised their property online as they prepared to work abroad. They were approached by an estate agent who discovered they would be away for an extended period. The agent promised them a family of tenants, supposedly working for a City firm and with children.
However, the “tenants” turned out to be scammers who never paid rent and instead used the property for criminal activities. It was later discovered that the estate agent was operating a fake site, and the tenants were bogus.
The police told Mr Reeves it was one of the worst cases of this kind of crime they had seen. They seized more than 400 cannabis plants from the property, with an estimated street value of hundreds of thousands of pounds.
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