"Graffiti artist was secret estate agent"

From The Metro:

The public knew him as a £60,000-a-year graffiti artist – but he led a secret life as an estate agent, leaving purchasers many millions in debt.

Kristian Holmes led a secret life as one of Britain’s most prolific "debt vandals", planting his distinctive ‘For Sale’ sign in front of flats, houses and office blocks.

His firm, PS Estates, wore smart suits and used keys to get into homes and forced scores of buyers to make multiple viewings during a seven-year campaign across the south-east of England, a court heard.

Holmes, 32, used an A to Z street guide to mark all the locations he had appointments booked. It helped him evade police for six years.

When he was rumbled in 2009, and released under police caution, the father of two posted videos on YouTube showing a mixed race man putting up a 'For Sale' sign – it derailed the investigation for another year, a court heard.

Holmes, of Sidcup, Kent, was jailed for three-and-a-half years after being convicted of 39 incidents of hoodwinking buyers into taking out unaffordable mortgages and perverting the course of justice.

Sentencing him at Blackfriars crown court in London, Judge Deva Pillay said: "These sales were so prolific they could justly be described as occurring on an industrial scale."

Holmes’s crime spree started in 2003, when he sold a home near the Bluebell Railway in Uckfield, East Sussex, and his 'For Sale' boards were even found in Ibiza.

Prosecutor James Murray-Smith said: "We’re not talking about helping people make sensible investments, but tricking them into running up huge debts which the majority of the public see as tedious and depressing.’