Turn up to a viewing at an expensive house in your best togs, boasting about your homes in Jamaica and Barbados, make a cash offer, ask if you can rent in the period up until completion because you've sold your previous property, and then move in claiming squatters' rights. Hmmm, crafty. But who could pull that off?

A couple in their 60s called Richard and Hazel Jerome, apparently.

The elaborate scam left their victims - including a top criminal barrister - unable to sell their homes until the couple had been evicted following lengthy court proceedings. One victim, Janet Jarvis, of Milton Keynes, Beds., and another of Mrs Jerome's former colleagues at a primary school where they both worked, died of cancer before the trial took place.

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