Dozens of council homes that were illegally rented out have been seized back by the capital's town halls after investigations found some tenants were living abroad while making a profit from their social property.
Fraud investigations by London boroughs discovered some had illegally sub-let their houses while living in countries such as Ethiopia and France.
Hammersmith and Fulham council said it had taken back 26 local authority properties in the last year after uncovering housing scams worth almost £500,000.
In one case, gas engineers completing routine safety checks on a council flat in West Kensington raised an alert when they found three men living in the property issued to one person.
The fraud team discovered utility bills and bank statements proving that the listed tenant had moved to Ethiopia in 2019.
The case was taken to court and the council repossessed the property in Lickey House.
In another case, a three-bedroom social home in Strode Road - where houses sell for up to £1.7million - was being rented out by the social tenant who was actually living in East London.
The council's anti-fraud team found bank statements that showed the original occupier was receiving rent payments from family members living in the SW6 property.
The house was given up before the tenant was taken to court “because of the significant evidence against them”, Hammersmith and Fulham council said.
A flat in Roseford Court, Shepherd's Bush was also seized after a tip off that a tenant was sub-letting the home while living in a property they owned in Waltham Abbey, Essex.
In Westminster, a council tenant who had moved to France was found to have been renting out their Soho flat on AirBnB.
Officials in Westminster issued a possession order due to non-occupation and unauthorised subletting of the flat in Kemp House.
Hammersmith and Fulham council’s cabinet member for housing and homelessness Frances Umeh said: "We're determined to put fairness at the heart of housing. We'll continue rooting out fraud wherever it hides, so that families waiting patiently and rightfully have a safe place to call home."
Cabinet member for finance Rowan Ree added: "We will not tolerate people exploiting council homes in this way.
"Our council homes are there to support residents in genuine need. We will not stop in our fight against housing fraudsters."
Meanwhile, council houses worth more than half a million pounds have been seized in Hackney after it was found tenants already owned another property.
The seven homes have been redistributed to those most in need in the borough, which has more than 12,000 households on its social housing waiting list.
A further 13 investigations into potential housing fraud are ongoing.
The deception was discovered as part of pilot scheme collaboration between the Cabinet Office's Public Sector Fraud Authority and Hackney Council.
Investigators checked social tenancy data with information from HMRC to identify people who may have purchased a home while still being registered as occupying a social property.
Cabinet Office Minister, Georgia Gould, said: “Every council property that is fraudulently occupied denies a home to a family who genuinely needs it.
“The work being done by the Public Sector Fraud Authority and local councils like Hackney demonstrates how effective data matching can be in tackling this kind of fraud.”
