Property boss hid fraud jail time behind new name

Scott El Paraiso hid that he had previously been known as Adam Minett and had been jailed for fraud

A property firm boss accused of trying to evict students to pressure their landlords into selling their flats is a convicted conman who hid his criminal past behind a new identity.

Scott El Paraiso, from Liverpool firm Urban Evolution Property Management, was jailed in 2009 for defrauding £25,000 from pensioners while he worked as a plumber under his birth name, Adam Minett.

His offending came to light during a BBC investigation into claims – which he denied – that in 2024 he misled leaseholders that a building needed to close because of issues raised by the fire service, and that he did so in an attempt to get them to sell up.

The 41-year-old, from Wirral, also denied that he had manipulated the identity of a former Urban Evolution tenant to make it look as though an investor from the Middle East was buying up properties that were actually being bought by him and his business partner Ross Spencer.

'Serious dishonesty'

Adam Minett changed his name to Scott El Paraiso in 2011, half way through a sentence of four years and four months for defrauding mainly elderly customers of his plumbing firm out of about £25,000.

He had also tried to impersonate his landlord to take out two loans in his name and was, a judge said, guilty of a "prolonged campaign of serious dishonesty".

Under his new name, he helped co-found Urban Evolution Property Management in 2018 and the company went on to manage and rent several thousand student flats and apartments across the North and Midlands.

Adam Minett was jailed in 2009 for defrauding mainly elderly customers of his plumbing firm

In 2022, leaseholders at a block in Sheffield were given information that Mr El Paraiso was actually Mr Minett, and although his conviction was not yet spent, he denied having a previous identity or a criminal past.

He also used a 10-year US visa he had received in 2014 as evidence that he could not be a convicted criminal.

Lawyer Christi Jackson, an expert in US immigration law at Laura Devine Immigration in London, told the BBC it would be virtually impossible for anyone who had declared that they had convictions for fraud to get a 10-year visa.

She also said someone convicted of fraud would typically need a waiver to go into the USA, and that their visa would be annotated – which Mr El Paraiso's was not.

Mr El Paraiso said he had changed his name for personal reasons, and that while he no longer had access to the visa paperwork, he would have filled in the application truthfully and disclosed all the information he was required to by law.

Many of the leaseholders in Sheffield appeared to have been convinced by his explanations in 2022, and, when challenged by the BBC, Mr El Paraiso produced testimonials from some of them.

One leaseholder described him as "an absolute hero, helping us, guiding us and advising us through the goodness of his heart".

It is not clear whether those who wrote in support of Mr El Paraiso were aware he was Mr Minett.

'Exit option'

In 2022, Urban Evolution took on the management of Arndale House, in Liverpool's London Road, and applied for up to £10m of funding to replace cladding on the building.

The bid was rejected later that year, and in February 2024 an appeal was turned down. Mr El Paraiso then set up a WhatsApp group called "Arndale House exit options" and told the people who owned properties in the building that he might be able to get an Omani investor he knew to buy their flats.

Mr El Paraiso told the leaseholders the investor had bought flats in nearby Borden Court from landlords who were making a loss on them.

Leaseholders in Arndale House were told an Omani investor might be interested in buying them out

After the leaseholders began to ask for more information about the Omani investor, Mr El Paraiso told them he was no longer interested, saying investors would only be likely to want to buy when buildings were facing closure and flats were at their lowest prices.

Richard Barker, 61, from the Isle of Man, who paid about £56,000 for his flat in 2013, told the BBC: "His goal was very clearly to put us in a state of desperation, a state of having no way out.

"He wanted to be everyone's saviour by offering everybody a way out.

"The trouble is the way out he was offering you represented a huge loss on the money you'd put in."

Mr El Paraiso and Urban Evolution denied the allegation, stating they told leaseholders about the possibility of selling the flats as a way to withdraw their investments once it was clear government funding to remove the cladding was not coming.

They said the offer was welcomed by leaseholders.

'Criminal matter'

The BBC has learned that 44 flats in Borden Court had been bought in one day in October 2023 for a total of £220,000 - £5,000 each - by companies registered as being entirely owned by an Omani man called Mr Hamaz Al-Huseini.

Mr El Paraiso and his business partner Mr Spencer, 41, were directors of 34 companies apparently owned by Mr Al-Huseini, including the ones that bought the properties in Borden Court – something the Arndale House leaseholders said was never mentioned to them.

Mr El Paraiso had told them any sale to the investor would be completely separate from Urban Evolution or its block management arm, BlockEra.

The BBC has found evidence that in 2020, an Omani man of the same age and with the near-identical of name of Hamza Al-Huseini briefly lived in an Urban Evolution building in Liverpool called Parliament Place.

Richard Barker paid about £58,000 for his studio flat in Arndale House

From his home in Oman, where he returned for good in 2020, Mr Al-Huseini, 26, told the BBC he believed his details had been manipulated, adding he did not know Mr El Paraiso or Mr Spencer and "only ever received emails from [Urban Evolution's] office about rent".

He added: "I certainly did not know them and am not a business associate of theirs.

"Since this was brought to my attention, I have been contacting Companies House asking them to remove my name, which I believe has been used fraudulently.

"I believe this should be investigated by the police as a criminal matter."

'A different Mr Al-Huseini'

Mr El Paraiso said the Mr Al-Huseini he had been in business with was an entirely different person to the one the BBC spoke to, but his lawyers did not respond to the BBC's request to speak to the man.

Mr El Paraiso also said that his Mr Al-Huseini had not actually bought any properties in the end, and that his name was being removed from the Companies House filings.

Hamza Al-Huseini said he believed his identity must have been stolen and said the police should investigate

At the time the Borden Court properties were bought, a Mr Al-Huseini was listed as the owner of all the companies that purchased them.

Companies House confirmed that to submit false information about a Person with Significant Control (PSC) of a company is a criminal offence.

Days after the last contact from Mr El Paraiso's lawyers, the BBC received an email, from a Yahoo email account, from someone claiming to be the Mr Al-Huseini who had been considering buying property in Liverpool.

He backed up Mr El Paraiso's claims, but when asked to provide evidence of his identity, he did not reply.

'Significant concerns'

In June 2024, Arndale House leaseholders told Mr El Paraiso they might want to bring in a different firm to manage the building.

He told them he had been in contact with Merseyside Fire And Rescue Service (MFRS) and had met its officers on site, and they had wanted assurances that his firm would be running the building.

Forty-four student bedrooms were bought in this building, Borden Court, in a single day for a cost of £220,000 - or £5,000 each

But MFRS told the BBC its staff had never met him or spoken to him, and would never express a preference for who managed a building.

The fire service said it had identified some problems with the building, including trip hazards, a faulty fire alarm, and other issues that it told the BBC could be "remedied quite readily".

But on 3 September 2024, Urban Evolution put up notices and posted letters around Arndale House telling the students the building would "close imminently due to significant fire safety concerns raised by Merseyside Fire And Rescue Service".

Leah Barrow, 20, said: "We were given a letter, and they also hung it up, and it basically said to us we had two weeks and we had to be out of the building. We had to find somewhere else to live. Obviously I was very stressed.

"At the start of university you're going to be stressed, but knowing you don't have anywhere to live or where you're going to end up… is very stressful."

Leah Barrow found out she was being evicted just days before she was due to move back into her flat

MFRS told the BBC it had never said the building needed to close, and that the notices were "not an accurate representation of the situation".

Mr El Paraiso claimed students had only been advised to leave the building for their own safety, said he had offered to help them find alternative accommodation, and claimed leaseholders had failed to pay for the costs of remedial works necessary to make the building safe.

The company currently managing the building, Haymarket, told the BBC the works required by the fire service had cost about £13,000, which leaseholders said was more than covered by what they had given to Urban Evolution.

MFRS has now signed off the works as complete.

'Worse than Grenfell'

While Mr El Paraiso said the safety of tenants was his main concern, the BBC has found evidence that he described another Liverpool building as "worse than Grenfell [Tower]" but continued to let out and sell units in it.

He made the comment about Queensland Place in a 2021 WhatsApp chat with a colleague, and urged a leaseholder to let him sell his units in it for "whatever we can get for them in the next seven days".

But the WhatsApp messages showed that at the same time, he urged a member of staff to press ahead with the sale of two units for £65,000 to customers the employee described as "an elderly couple".

Messages seen by the BBC suggest Queensland Place was described by Mr El Paraiso as "worse than Grenfell"

Mr El Paraiso told the employee it was "[the couple's] job to do their due diligence".

Queensland Place has never been closed down over fire safety concerns.

But through his lawyers, Mr El Paraiso said the difference between Queensland Place and Arndale House was that the Queensland Place leaseholders paid their service charges, and therefore the fire safety problems could be managed.

When asked for evidence the building was "worse than Grenfell", he said the building had similar cladding to Grenfell Tower, the Kensington and Chelsea block of flats in which 72 people died in a fire accelerated by flammable cladding.

He also said some of the BBC's sources had "an axe to grind" against him.

Former Queensland Place tenant Joshua Churcher, 20, said: "If they believed the building genuinely to be so dangerous, we were living there completely unaware as it was never mentioned to us.

"It is shocking that someone would use a tragedy like Grenfell seemingly for their own gain."

In December, MFRS issued Urban Evolution with an enforcement notice saying it had six months to start work on replacing the cladding and dealing with other fire safety issues that were outstanding, some of them similar to those at Arndale House.

'Investigation'

Liverpool City Council is investigating whether Urban Evolution attempted to illegally evict students from Arndale House, with cabinet member for regeneration Nick Small adding it was important students and leaseholders could have confidence living and investing in the city.

Liverpool City Council regeneration cabinet member Nick Small said it was important the allegations were investigated

Leaseholder Mr Barker said he and others who had invested in Arndale House would "never have done so if we had known who [Mr El Paraiso] was and what he had done".

Liverpool Riverside MP Kim Johnson said better regulation was needed to protect leaseholders and tenants, adding: "It is not acceptable that people are having their lives turned upside down by sudden threats of eviction, or that fire safety issues are being used to cause fear and concern unduly.

"For the protection of both tenants and leaseholders, there is a serious case for reform."