"Estate agents posed as burglars to sell flats"

From The Evening Standard:These are the scruffily dressed estate agents being hunted by police after selling £180,000 worth of apartments in south London. The two men, caught on CCTV, are thought to have gained entry to the apartment buildings by pretending to be burglars before attempting to sell three homes.

Victims of two makeovers at the Viridian Apartments in Battersea Park Road on February 1 returned to find their flats nicely tidied up with bunches of twigs in vases.

Zane Lawrence, whose £750,000 property was put on the market, today told how his fiancée felt "violated". He said: “They must have buzzed everyone at the flats until someone let them in. They were dressed really scruffily and probably just said to someone that they intended a quick smash and grab on the ground floor. When I got here the doors had quite clearly been given a good clean.

"These guys don’t look like estate agents, we want to raise awareness in case they do come through somebody's back window again. It feels like our personal space has been invaded. My fiancée is upset because this has never happened to her before, she feels quite violated because of it."

Richard Street and Sandra Burrows had thousands of pounds of jewellery, clothes and electronics valued in the same raid. They claim a third potential sale at a nearby apartment a month later could have been prevented if officers had released images of the suspects sooner. The same men were captured on CCTV on March 9 entering the Howard Building in Queenstown Road where they put up a 'For sale' sign before being scared off.

Miss Burrows, 32, who works for a private equity firm, said: "The police followed the process and did all the things they needed to do but it was too slow. While they were doing this someone else's flat was put on the market."

Police have now released the CCTV images of the men. Anyone with information should call the Wandsworth Property Crime Unit on 020 8247 8046 or Crimewatch anonymously on 0800 555 1111.