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When I got an early morning call from a police officer telling me there was a big problem at a house I owned I was filled with dread – especially as the same house months before had been, unbeknown to me, had been turned into a brothel.

My frantic mind flipped between – have the prostitutes returned to the house we were renting through a letting agent to a "working man"? Or even is there to be a terrorism raid or has the house been turned into a drugs factory?

Yes, it sounds a bit extreme but with the previous experience I was ruling nothing out and I was right not to. It turned out the officer was calling me to say the property I previously rented to families was now a suspected cannabis farm.

As you can imagine it was a big shock. A few months previously, I went to the house and discovered the two-bedroom semi, which a letting agent told us was being rented by a married couple, actually housed at least seven young Romanian girls who were plying their trade from the premises on inflatable beds! I discovered later they even had red light bulbs in the home.

Read the full story about the brothel here

So to think the home was now back in the hands of criminals was deeply concerning.

During the phone call the police officer didn’t come out with the words "cannabis" immediately.

She opened the conversation by telling me to get to the property straight away but I couldn’t. I was working here at The Derby Telegraph.

I asked: "Why?" She said "There is a strong smell coming from the home." I asked: "Do you mean cannabis?"and she said: “Well we can’t say but there is a strong smell.” I said: “So it is cannabis” and she then replied “yes”.

She then told me the police had acted on intelligence and sent an officer round who had a smell through the letterbox and realised it was almost certainly the drug with the distinctive aroma.

Based on this, the police decided they would be getting a warrant and carrying out a raid on the property the following morning and of course they had our full backing. Only I guessed that when they did enter the property the crop would have disappeared.

I told my husband: "If they are leaving the raid until the morning, whoever is behind will have an idea the police are sniffing around - quite literally- and will go round tonight and take their assets out quick."

Sadly that is exactly what they did.

The following morning the police duly bashed in the door of the home to find the crop had been cut and only the growing equipment remained and the roots of the cannabis plants in the pots where they had grown. Whoever was behind the operation - the tenant was obviously the chief suspect - had also fled.

I referred the police to the letting agents, who had all the details of the tenant as they were managing the home on our behalf. They were the ones who found us this tenant and were the same letting agent that landed us with a brothel. They were also the ones who should have done a six months check on our tenant - which days before we reminded them about - but they seemed to be dragging their feet.

I remember my husband telling them on the phone just days before the raid: "You really need to check on the tenant and the property after what happened to us last time." They said they would but hadn't.

The benefit of hindsight is a wonderful thing - but we are annoyed we gave the agents another chance despite the major problem we had previously. They convinced us that the prostitute problem was just a one-off and we were just very unlucky.

We talked about whether to ditch them and seek another firm to help us re-let the home, which is situated on a housing estate popular with families, but they assured us they would do a better job with the next tenant.

Well they certainly didn't – they let it to someone who used the place to grow a Class B drugs worth tens of thousands of pounds!

We were left fuming - it was bad enough to be landed with one major problem but then to be landed with another six months later was beyond belief really.

When the letting agent suggested the tenant originally, they said he passed all the various checks and worked as a contractor and they had evidence to confirm he would pass the affordability test. They said he was a single man who wanted to live in the area because his partner and child did and they were sharing custody.

We thought that sounded ok but after having our fingers burnt so recently we were undecided. The agent then said: "He is a nice man and I will stake my reputation on it that he will be fine." Not the first time we had heard this line but we decided to go with it.

Oh what a mistake that turned out to be!

This time we were left with the remains of a cannabis factory to clear out - which I wouldn't have minded as much if it meant the police had their man but they didn't and said they couldn't charge him anyway.

Bizarrely, although it was obvious the home had been growing the drugs, to get a successful conviction in court the police told us they had to seize the actual plants. So it must have been equally frustrating for them.

We were covered by insurance but the company said we would have to pay a huge excess because they classed it as malicious damage we argued it was criminal damage - we even had a crime number - but they were having none of it. Although we used the tenants bond to cover the cost of the damage we had to add to that. We also changed our insurance company after that.

Surprisingly it didn't take us too long to return the property back into a home, for instance hooks had to come out of the walls which had supported the plants and some serious cleaning needed to be done to get the pungent smell to go. We also had to replace the door which the police had used a battering ram on.

Meanwhile, having got the name of the tenant from the agents I decided to do a few checks on the him myself using Google. It took me five minutes to discover the fact he seemed an unsavoury character and certainly someone I would have not have rented my house to if I had known.

I was able to view his previous address which was close to the house we were letting to him. I guess he saw how a gang had managed to get away with running a brothel for months so once it came up for let again he thought it would be a perfect place to cultivate his own criminal enterprise.

I was also able to see the company he claimed to work for but the firm and the address didn't exist. I believe he had set up the company name on the internet and that is all it was - a name.

But it was more concerning when I discovered he had previously been arrested in connection with a very serious and violent attack involving a firearm!

Not really the "nice man" who the agent did "stake her reputation on".

You live and you learn I suppose and we learnt that signing up tenants ourselves without using a letting agent, like we used to without any issue, was the way forward. We were let down badly twice by the letting agent and it wasn't going to happen again. We didn't even get am apology.

So we signed up an estate agent to sell this property, in my home town of Sheffield. We weren't taking any more chances - it was time to make a clean break!

We have since found out the police did manage to catch up with our tenant and he was arrested after being found in possession of cannabis - but other than that he seemed to get away with his more serious enterprise at our house just like those involved in the brothel.