London Centric has obtained the first videos of a hammer-wielding gang targeting Londoners’ homes with red paint, motor oil, and graffiti claiming properties are “brothels”.
One video, in which the gang can be heard speaking Mandarin with accents associated with northern China, shows a violent attack on a property in Acton earlier this month in which a hammer was used to smash windows. A second video shows a near-identical attack on a property in Ealing in January.
There is growing concern that an organised crime gang is carrying out a large-scale campaign of intimidation across the capital which is impacting innocent Londoners who live next to the targeted properties. London Centric can now reveal that a leading criminology expert believes the attacks may have roots in Chinese organised crime.
Many of the individuals affected claimed the Metropolitan police had failed to act on the cases when they were first reported, which until recently appear to have been treated as isolated local incidents. We have now pieced together at least 14 similar targeted attacks across the capital over the last eighteen months.
If you have any information on this story you want to share, please get in touch via email or WhatsApp in confidence.
Both videos of the gang in action are only available to paying London Centric subscribers.
If you want to join today and read our investigation into the gang’s activities and how they are impacting Londoners please either sign up now for a 25% discount or take out a free trial subscription.
By Rachel Rees
Earlier this month London Centric reported on a mysterious incident in Walthamstow where red paint and motor oil were thrown over the front of a row of suburban houses. Just a few days later, the same properties were targeted again – this time drawing the attention of some of the national media.
Now, we have been able to piece together what appears to be a coordinated effort by criminals targeting at least a dozen addresses across the capital. Although it is not certain that the same individuals are involved in each attack, many of the incidents appear to have been carried out with similar approaches in the early hours of the morning.
In all the cases the targeted properties were covered in red paint and motor oil, designed to make it difficult to remove the damage. The word “brothel” was spray-painted on the buildings, alongside a mobile phone number. Warning notes written in similar handwriting were pushed through doors.
Experts say this could be the work of a Chinese gang operating in the capital. Oliver Chan, an associate professor of criminology at the University of Birmingham, told London Centric that “red paint splashing” is a common practice used by debt collectors in Hong Kong and major cities in mainland China as a “reminder” to the property owners to pay their debts.
In many cases the gang appears to have returned to the crime scene the night after the initial attack and repeated the process, potentially because they didn’t get the response they were after.
One property on a major road in Acton was vandalised on two successive nights in early March. CCTV footage of the incidents, obtained by London Centric, shows three men following the well-established routine. The gang members spoke Mandarin with accents associated with the northern part of mainland China, according to two native speakers who reviewed the footage.
At one point the gang leader can be heard telling his accomplices to “hold on” and wait for traffic to pass before throwing paint over the property. One then uses a hammer to smash in a window on the property. Neighbours said the address had been targeted in a similar paint attack in 2023.
Chan, the criminologist, said it is “less common” for gangs to use the red paint method on brothels unless the residents of the property are in debt.
He said in the case of the London incidents it “remains uncertain if the properties being targeted are resided [in] by a debtor, a debtor who runs a brothel, or [are] pure vandalism”, emphasising that some of the properties may be “pure unlucky”.
Watch a second exclusive video of the gang attacking a property in Ealing.
“The Largest Japanese Gentleman’s Nightclub in London”
Multiple residents at different locations described the occupants of many of the targeted addresses as Asian women. A phone number graffitied on a wall in one of the attacks links to an advertisement headed “Sexy Asian Escort VIP Service”, and a 23-year-old “Japanese girlfriend”. Others linked to escort adverts for women described as Japanese, Thai and “oriental”. There is no evidence that the phone numbers relate to the women living inside the properties.
One graffiti incident took place near Ealing Broadway railway station in January, when a Thai massage therapist and surrounding properties were targeted twice in three days. The masseuse’s tenancy – which had begun around three months earlier – was terminated by mutual consent after the second attack. A neighbouring business said no further attacks had happened since that night.
One neighbour said he was “very sad because it’s a lovely building” and feared the house’s Victorian brickwork had been permanently damaged. He said he is worried about “losing law and order” in the UK.
In late February, a karaoke bar and “Japanese Gentleman’s club” in St John’s Wood was also targeted in a red paint attack. An archived page of the club’s now-defunct website described it as “The Largest Japanese Gentleman’s Nightclub in London”. In August, the club posted on a Japanese job listing website advertising for “companions and reception girls”. Another Japanese website describes the club as “a private gentlemen's club run by a Chinese beauty, with karaoke rooms”, with an emoji indicating the option of “Karaoke companions”.
One London Centric reader said that despite living nearby for 18 months, he’d “never once seen anyone go in or out” and the windows were blacked out: “When they cleaned up the paint it was the first sign that it was even occupied to me.”
When a property in Walthamstow was targeted earlier this month the neighbours took daffodils and other gifts to the residents in a show of community support.
At 2am the following night, the gang returned and left paint spread over at least five houses, a shop and a parked car. When one neighbour heard paint hitting his window he ran outside, spotted three people, and chased them down the street. Shortly after, he saw a young woman run out of the targeted flat with two bags. One resident told London Centric that the landlord had asked the tenants – an older woman as well as the younger woman – to leave after the second incident.
“Thoughtless damage”
Residents at all the locations London Centric visited expressed frustration with the police’s response. They were shocked to learn that similar incidents had taken place across the capital, meaning they weren’t the only innocent Londoners to wake up and find their homes and businesses had been permanently scarred with paint and oil.
One person whose Leytonstone home was vandalised said that police closed their initial investigation within 24 hours, without speaking to residents or asking for any footage of the incident.
Footage captured by the resident’s own doorbell camera showed two hooded figures walking along the street in front of the house at 2.30am on the night of the attack. One holds a can of paint while the other walks up to the door and puts a piece of paper through the letterbox.
“We’ve heard nothing from the police,” the Leytonstone resident added and “nobody has talked to us about the footage”.
“The paint isn’t the worst part, it’s the motor oil – it stinks and you can’t get it out of the brick,” the resident said. He might have to get the bricks replaced but has been quoted £15,000 for the work.
A spokesperson for the Metropolitan police said investigations into the east London incidents are ongoing, although the Guardian reported that the police have told local residents they are considering potential “intimidation where money is owed and links to organised crime”.
Two months after the Ealing attack paint and motor oil remain visible on the walls of the targeted properties, even after three rounds of cleaning. Though the red paint is now mostly gone, one neighbour said that she “keeps finding little fragments” of it and condemned the “thoughtless damage of these beautiful old homes”.
Another Walthamstow resident said that he and other neighbours had collected gloves, bowls and tins of paint that the gang had left behind – with potential forensic evidence on them – but that the police had not yet visited the site.
The delays to the police response were “just ridiculous”, he said, adding that given the abandoned evidence “it doesn’t seem like it would take a mastermind to work it out”.
Did you enjoy this edition of London Centric? Please forward it to a friend, post it on social media, get in touch via email or WhatsApp, or leave a comment.
