Mysterious Bulgarian Blonde ‘Loves’ My Flat!

We have recently had quite a few changes of tenancies and have had lots of enquiries from Rightmove etc. However, the vast majority are scammers such as rent to rent and sub letters. Most scammers are easily weeded out over phone.  However, had a strange meeting last night with an attractive blond Bulgarian lady and her friend. She was very persistent to get a viewing, sold us a sob story about her experiences being ripped off by agents putting rent up after she put down deposit, loved the flat, it is a great flat with views over Olympic park, and wants to move in straight away. 

The problem is nothing stacks up, i.e.

• she produced payslips showing take home £3.5k pcm and this also showed on her bank statements. She brought these papers to the viewing but her English is fairly poor.
• She says she works for a building company solely sourcing Bulgarian builders. The company has no website and has only been trading 9 months.
• She says she works in canning town but couldnt remember the name of the road.
• She says she currently shares a room in Stratford with her Mum who is a cleaner (seems a big jump from sharing a room to £1,650 pcm flat).
• She will be sharing the flat with her Mum (who is in Bulgaria so we didn’t meet her) and she has taken time off work to fulfil her mums cleaning contracts.
• She came along with a Scottish friend who says he is married to a Bulgarian woman who is a friend of our potential tenant. He says he also works in the construction industry and told me he lives in the same area of Hertfordshire as where the tenants employer is based. I Googled this during our meet and discovered he is the director of the company she says she works for! When I quizzed him on this he denied it.
• They clearly tried to disarm us by flattery and holding simultaneous separate conversations.

Has anyone come across this pair or any ideas what the scam is? There have been brothels in the block before so this is my first thought. Must say they weren’t too good at deception. My wife was suspicious from the off especially as she had two mobiles. Only got them along out of curiosity and to create a buzz for another viewing.

This is not meant to be any slur against Bulgarians who in my previous encounters are absolutely fine!

Regards

Joe