A rogue letting agent who tricked students into paying to rent a house they could not live in has been forced to pay back all of the money he swindled from them.

Zulfiqar Hussain took a deposit and a month’s rent from seven students so they could live in a house in East Oxford but when they came to move in they found out the house was not in Hussain’s care.

Hussain - who founded Charles Lawson Lettings in Cowley Road in 2005 - admitted seven counts of engaging in an unfair commercial practice after the incident in 2009 and was ordered to pay the money back.

But he had not paid the £3,292 all back until Oxfordshire County Council’s Trading Standards team recently applied for compensation orders.