A leafy street in Essex has become home to more than 80 bogus businesses, with 14 being created in just the last week.
According to official records and despite only having around 30 houses,Henry Drive in Leigh-on-Sea is a metropolis for wholesale clothing sellers but locals can tell you otherwise.
Over the past four months, businesses supposedly selling clothes have registered to residential properties on the road. Most have “entrepreneur” owners from Italy, Georgia, Germany, France or Morocco.
A financial crime expert has said that the mass registering of companies is likely the work of criminal gangs for money laundering and obtaining bank loans. It costs just £12 to register a business with Companies House.
Henry Drive residents Ian Ross and his wife Tess have had six fake companies registered to their home in the past few weeks.
First, a letter arrived from Companies House addressed to a business they knew nothing about. Post from HM Revenue and Customs followed with an activation code for corporation tax and a company unique taxpayer reference number.
“None of these businesses have anything to do with me,” said Mr Ross. “The first one was set up at the beginning of June, the latest one was set up two days ago.”
“Henry Drive is just a quiet residential street but in the one post code we are in, we now have 80 businesses registered – it would be like a clothing alley if it was true.
“It has got more worrying the more letters we got because it shows the system is out of control.
“They just seem to be coming out on the Companies House website which many people assume means the businesses are real.
“It is getting complicated and it is taking up quite a lot of my time.”
Financial crime expert Graham Barrow said: “They’re burner companies. Just like burner phones that you use and then throw away, so too these companies are used and discarded – they are only ever going to have a short life.
“This is highly likely to be an organised crime group. And, if so, it is multi-million pound stuff. It is just scary.
“There is a very significant problem with scam companies being set up and abusing the financial system. It is really important for people whose homes are registered to file the paperwork to get their addresses removed.”
Kit Akister thought the letters were junk mail until a neighbour told him it was happening to the whole street.
“I want to know why you can register a business without proving anything yet I have got to prove I am the legitimate owner of this property to get my address removed,” Mr Akister said.
“It is totally ludicrous and I cannot understand why the government allows this.
“I phoned Companies House about this and they said they had a backlog of these cases and said it was throughout the UK.”
Another neighbour Rosalind Miller said: “We were receiving two or three letters a week and then they started coming from the Inland Revenue as well, which were for the same companies named by Companies House.
“My concern was if we started getting people knocking on the door demanding money.
“You do start worrying there’s going to be some kind of financial comeback on you. It is a bit of a worry really wondering what is behind all of this.”
An HMRC spokesperson said: “Anyone receiving correspondence to their address from HMRC for a business that they are not aware of should contact us immediately.”
A Companies House spokesperson said: “We are sorry to hear about the difficulties these individuals are experiencing and will take action where the law allows.
“The government is bringing forth measures to reform Companies House in the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Bill.
“Once in force, the bill will significantly enhance the role and powers of the Registrar of Companies, so she can become a more active gatekeeper over company registrations – including by cracking down on the use of false addresses. “
