Daily Mail : The Romanian town ‘built on British benefits’. Mansions bigger than the average UK semi and BMWs with British number plates parked in the drives ‘paid for with taxpayer cash’

Welcome to Tandarei, a town where many houses were built on the back of Britain’s generous benefits system – and the ability of the criminal underclass to manipulate it.

• More than 100 homes in Tandarei, Romania, built with money earned illegally in the UK, Scotland Yard has claimed 
• Many of the brightly coloured mansions, with brand new BMWs parked in their driveways, lie empty most of the year
• Two of them belong to gypsy gang the Radu clan who claimed £29,000 in UK tax credits while still living in Romania
• Ordinary Romanians are now too scared to walk throught area at night after what they perceive as a gypsy invasion

At first glance, this is very much a town on the up – a place where newly wealthy citizens pour their riches into gaudy, Beverly Hills-style homes, proud to show off just what they have achieved.

But the brightly-coloured streets hide a much darker secret: this is a town allegedly built on British benefits, where law-abiding locals fear their neighbours return.