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Agent who hung on to tenants’ deposits has Proceeds of Crime hearing delayed
A proceeds of crime hearing following the jailing of a letting agent has been postponed until next year.
It is the latest in a very long saga concerning Helen Gregory, 55, who failed to repay £67,000 in tenants’ deposits.
Money which could have gone to her creditors did not. When she was paid £45,000 at the end of last year, she transferred the money into her partner’s account and he bought the couple a £25,000 car.
The judge at Derby Crown Court this April told her: ‘There are victims who are quite understandably furious. Not just that they lost their money, but the case has been strung out for two years or more.”
Trading Standards began investigations in 2011 after a tenant complained they had not had their deposit money back. She was arrested in December 2012 and charged the following July.
The charges related to three businesses in Matlock and Chesterfield, Derbyshire – Beechwood Lettings, Beechwood Property Portfolio and Letzlet – over a period spanning from April 2007 to October 2012.
Deposits received by Gregory and which should have been paid into Deposit Protection Service were not.
In February 2012, the Property Ombudsman had expelled Beechwood after it failed to pay an award made against it, and had delayed paying rent into a complainant landlord’s account on 12 occasions over a period of 19 months.
A month later, TPO said Beechwood Property Portfolio was illegally displaying the TPO logos for both sales and lettings, despite not belonging to a redress scheme. The firm was continuing to sell homes.
TPO had earlier delayed the expulsion of Letzlet, trading as Beechwood Lettings, while the complainant landlord was helped to obtain a county court judgment of £2,176.
Gregory, of Spital, Chesterfield, pleaded guilty to three charges of engaging in unfair commercial practices in August last year.
She should have been sentenced last summer but her sentencing was delayed, initially by six months, following reassurances that she would be able to repay the £67,000 owed to her victims.
She was finally sentenced to ten months in prison when she appeared at Derby Crown Court in April this year, and told she would serve half of her sentence behind bars.
The court heard she had not repaid her victims and a proceeds of crime hearing was set for next week, September 10. The local paper reports this will now take place in January.
While Gregory has been banned from working as a company director for six years, it seems she could nevertheless quite legitimately work in the lettings industry or in estate agency.
She has not been banned from estate agency and her name does not appear on the register published by the National Trading Standards Estate Agency Team at Powys. There is currently no legal mechanism to ban anyone from working in the lettings industry.
The local paper’s reporting of the latest twist in the saga is here
