Samy Daim, 28, advertised properties he did not own and demanded substantial deposits before vanishing with the cash. The scam allowed him to live the high life and regularly jet off to exotic spots
A globetrotting fraudster who posed as a landlord to scam desperate tenants out of thousands of pounds is now facing jail.
Samy Daim, 28, advertised properties he did not own and demanded substantial deposits before vanishing with the cash. The scam allowed him to live the high life and regularly jet off to exotic spots. He then callously showed off his love of luxury in a string of boastful Instagram snaps. He shared images showing him feeding an elephant in Thailand and posing next to an infinity pool in a white spa robe. In another, he sits bare-chested on the roof of a Jeep next to a palm-tree-lined Florida beach.
Daim admitted two counts of fraud by false representation on Friday after pocketing £1,9730 for plugging a London property he had “no intention of renting out.” The conman is also charged with nine further counts of fraud relating to nine victims and totalling £164,720.
He is being held at London’s Wormwood Scrubs and is due to be sentenced in June. Last night Martin Richardson of the National Fraud Helpline said: “It is so rare that fraudsters are caught and convicted so we are very pleased that justice has been done.
“The crisis in the housing market, rent fraud is a growing problem. Wherever there is desperation, fraudsters will appear to exploit the situation.
“Daim’s actions caused a dire financial and emotional toll on his victims. One of our clients had to leave London as a result of the scam and was forced to live in a caravan until we successfully recovered his money.”
Richardson, whose law firm represented two of Daim’s victims, continued: “We believe that this case also demonstrates that more needs to be done by everyone to fight the scourge of fraud.
“You have to question how Daim was able to sign up with a letting agency and have the property he didn’t own posted for rent on online property platforms. Someone should have carried out a simple Land Registry check, which would have shown he did not own the property.”
Some 9 million people were caught out by financial scams in the past year, with one in five across the UK falling victim to a scam. The most common scams involve marketplace frauds with fake sales or impersonation schemes, where scammers pretend to be someone else.
It emerged emerged in March scammers had used fake Facebook and other social media ads featuring celebrities such as Zoe Ball, Ben Fogle, and Martin Lewis to promote a variety of investment schemes, resulting in British victims losing a combined total of £9 million.
And in France, a woman was scammed out of £700,000 by someone pretending to be Hollywood star Brad Pitt, even leading her to believe they were in a relationship.