I have been letting property for over a decade now, and have dealt with a lot of tenants in a range of properties. For a time I even ran a letting agency. I feel that I have a reasonable judgement when it comes to judging new tenants.
About six months ago someone responded to an advertisement I had place in the London edition of Gumtree.com. She was HK Chinese, spoke good English and sounded plausible. After the place was checked out I carried out a credit check on her, which she passed, and produced a contract which she signed and gave me a deposit in exchange for a set of keys.
I normally ask potential tenants to send me a scan of the photo page of their passport, but she failed to do this but said she would bring it along when she signed the contract. She failed to do this but promised to send a scan promptly.
In the following months the rent was sometimes a bit late, paid directly into my account by depositing cash. To be honest I was glad to see the rent flowing.
After six months it was time for the gas safety check to be done. It was always fairly hard to contact the tenant and I eventually turned up at the property with a gas engineer hoping to do it. A guy, living there, said that I could not go in, because the place was too messy. I said that this didn't matter, but I couldn't win the argument and I agreed to come back later. I was then told that this was impossible, but that the safety check would be done by a gas engineer engaged by the tenants.
This did not happen and so I told the tenant that she had to leave the property within one month. She agreed, although negotiated an extension of 9 days, and scheduled a date for the checkout. The night before they day scheduled for the checkout I heard that the property had been raided by the police as it had been found to be a factory (greenhouse?) where cannabis had been cultivated.
I will write a separate entry about the modifications to the property, but I can say here that it was left in a bit of a mess. The conclusion I have drawn from this experience is that it is absolutely critical to get a scan of photo ID, as much as possible (e.g. passport and NI number and driving licence) before even getting a credit check. Credit checks have let me down in the past. Seeing a real passport or driving licence with a photo, at the first viewing, or at least before accepting an offer, would have saved me a lot of trouble and expense. You can be sure I will insist on this in future.
