A MYSTERY criminal mastermind who sourced more than 400 properties for multi-million pound prostitution, modern slavery and drug rackets has been jailed for seven years after a raid on a Forest house finally unmasked him.

Chinese national Feng Xu had no criminal record, but sub-let rented premises for organised crime gangs across the UK, using a web of fake ID, passports and addresses.

Police had rumbled his nationwide criminal operation and knew what he looked like from photos provided with fake rental applications.

But every time they raided a property and arrested someone – often an illegal immigrant – they refused to speak and the ringleader remained hidden behind his smokescreen of disinformation.

The shadowy ‘Mr Fixit’, who charged gangs £2,500 a time to arrange fake ID to secure a property, including farmhouses, thought he was invincible.

But his arrogance finally caught up with him 10 months ago, when a raid by Gloucestershire Police and the National Crime Agency (NCA) on a large house in Newent’s Stallions Street blew his cover wide open.

Gloucestershire Police’s Serious and Organised Crime Operations Team tweeted after the raid: “Found a different type of (tree) in the Forest today. 170 Cannabis plants seized from an address in Newent this evening. One in custody. #weedwarriors.”

An illegal Vietnamese immigrant was arrested at the premises, which had been rented since December 2016 under the name Fok Long.

But crucially for detectives, they discovered that Xu had slipped up by paying the rent for the p[roperty through his own bank account.

And the landlord of crime who spent every day in his Birmingham city centre flat dealing with his vast criminal property portfolio, had finally been nailed.

Surveillance over the next two months tracked him to letting agents across the country, where he provided convincing fake references, utility bills, photo ID and bank statements in exchange for the keys to rented properties.

Detectives probed further and found that the IP address on emails to letting agents was located in a block of Birmingham city centre flats where Xu lived.

d’s criminal empire came crashing down when NCA officers burst into his home at 6am on Tuesday, May 14, 2019 as he lay in bed.

An NCA spokesman said they found 31 fake or fraudulent Chinese and Portuguese passports, plus up to 100 other ID documents and £94,000 in cash.

A computer database held by Xu - who came to the UK to study as a student in 1996 and illegally overstayed his visa – listed 446 different addresses he was involved with.

Fake IDs and aliases supported by false documents like pay slips, utility bills and bank statements, had all been made himself.

Once he secured new properties, he handed them over for pimps, sex workers and drug suppliers to set up brothels and cannabis farms, often hosted by illegal immigrants.

Police say he had been operating his vast criminal network from Scotland to Hastings for at least three and a half years, paying out more than £4m in rent, some paid by the gangs, some from his own accounts.

Birmingham Crown Court heard that raids across the UK had uncovered the same names and photos, and detectives soon realised there was a mystery mastermind behind a vast criminal web, which included women forced to work in brothels.

Thirty four police forces were involved as NCA officers began to map the scale of the network and identities used.

Letting agents said the tenant who signed the leases and used names like Chao Lee, Hanjing Wang, Quing Dong, Zhongxing Zheng, Jiatian Zheng, Chao Chen and Chui Lee, was a polite, softly-spoken businessman who always paid on time and never made any complaints.

But it all came crashing down on Xu when police raided the Newent house on February 25 before bursting through his front door nine weeks later.

As well as the fake passports, he had 11 driving licences and numerous bank accounts.

Police also found he had used his computer to create fake payslips and bills, and kept a list of every property and the ID used for each premises, which he stopped using if a cannabis farm or brothel was raided.

Xu admitted 22 offences when he appeared for sentence on Friday, December 20, including fraud and money laundering, and will face deportation after serving his sentence.

Police say he made at least £2m from his crookedness, while crime gang profits could total tens of millions.

DCI Neil Smith, who headed up the team that raided the Newent property, said cash made from cannabis farms was often utilised to “purchase firearms, and is involved in human trafficking, modern day slavery, child sexual exploitation and all other serious and organised crime.”

NCA branch commander Matt Rivers said: “Xu was a prolific operator, and an important enabler for multiple different criminal networks involved in prostitution, sexual exploitation and drug production.

“Using numerous false IDs and documentation he was able to supply hundreds of different properties across the UK

“We believe that taking him out will have caused significant disruption to a number of different organised crime groups involved in sex trafficking and drug production.”

NCA senior investigator Daren Nicholls added: “It was only through excellent, old fashioned police work by several forces working together that he was caught.”