This exact thing happened to me when I was a student. In '94 when myself and 6 other first-year students moved into a house, one of the first things we did was get a TV sorted out between us. Renting TV's was still a thing then and doing so was quite viable for a bunch of students who didn't have the disposable cash to just go and buy a TV.
"Paul" put his name on the rental agreement. of course we needed the license too so that day we got that sorted too. "George" (there was a John too, and I was sorely disappointed to find there wasn't a Ringo!) arranged it and her name went on the license. a few weeks went by and sure enough we got a visit from the "Detector Van" because Radio Rentals told the licensing authority that we had taken delivery of a TV and of course that didn't match their records of a license holder... never mind that the address was covered and it was a shared house. (not individual apartments)
A similar thing happened a couple of years later when I moved in with a bunch of guys who just didn't bother with a license and I was in when a guy with a clipboard of address that didn't have licenses just went door to door checking if there was a TV in use. he had a "detector van" but it was just the output of a database select.
For a while the licensing agency even had ads to the effect that "detection" is just the output of a database.
Alos youtube is full of people their their harrassment by licencing officials because they don't have a license