A LANDLORD with 30 properties in at least three local authority areas ran a five-year fraud involving council tax payments, York magistrates heard.

John Rangeley, 51, claimed a 25 per cent single person discount on the tax on the grounds he or his wife lived alone at three of his properties when in reality he was renting them out on a room by room basis, said Victoria Waudby, prosecuting.

He used his wife's email to send City of York Council a fake tenancy agreement for her for one of the properties in Bishopfields Drive, off Leeman Road, and also used two of his properties in nearby Phoenix Boulevard in the fraud.

When council officers tracked him down to his home in Stillington Road, Brandsby, in the Howardian Hills, he initially claimed he had only moved in the previous weekend.

But Hambleton District Council revealed the couple had been registered for council tax at the Brandsby house since 2014.

Rangeley, who rented out properties in York and Leeds pleaded guilty to four charges of fraud by false representation committed between June 12, 2011, and November 22, 2016, and one of presenting a false document.

Magistrates said he had planned the crimes and carried them out over a long period and betrayed his wife's trust by using her email.

They ordered him to do a 12-month community order with 200 hours' unpaid work and 20 days' rehabilitative activities and pay £1,082 prosecution costs to City of York Council which brought the case, and an £85 statutory surcharge.

They heard he had repaid the £2,831 he had gained through the fraud.

For Rangeley, Angus Westcott said: "He has made a mistake when he was under tremendous pressure."

The landlord had had 20 commercial properties and ten residential properties but in 2011, his bank put his business into special measures and were "trying to take over his business and repossess it."

His wife broke her leg and surgical complications meant it took 15 months to heal properly.

Rangeley himself had a tumour removed from his stomach.

Mr Westcott said Rangeley had arranged to pay council tax himself rather than his tenants to avoid new tenants receiving bailiffs' letters addressed to previous tenants who had not paid their debts.