UK Legal News

A woman was caught out for running a small brothel after neighbours became suspicious about the comings and goings at her rented home.

Norwich Crown Court heard how Emmy Berks - herself a former prostitute and recovering drug addict - ran the sex business from the house she shared with her partner. The woman set up the brothel in October 2007 and carried on running it until May 2008, when it was raided by police.

Analysis of the couple's bank accounts found they had made deposits totalling £30,000 while the business was in operation.

Prosecutor Andrew Baxter described how she touted for business over the internet, offering the services of legal aged girls for £90 for the first half hour of business: Extras were on offer and customers were invited to book appointments by contacting a mobile phone number or by email.

He told the court that one of the sex workers Charmaine Bailey, told police Berks had recruited her over the internet. She believed she would be working as an escort but, when she arrived for her first day of work, realised she was required to have sex for money. However, in her statement to police she said she had not been coerced into the sex industry, adding: Sex means little to me; Emmy told me I would be rich.

Defence barrister Katharine Moore said Berks - who has previous convictions for drugs offences and a caution for soliciting for prostitution - had wanted to provide a safe environment for women in a similar position. None of the women had been forced to work as prostitutes: Because of the life she has led in the past she wanted to find a safe way forwards for herself and for others. This is a vulnerable lady in many ways.

Jailing Berks for four months, Judge Paul Downes said: This was an organised activity. It was not enormously extensive but it was fairly extensive and you were receiving half of the profit. It must be made clear to the public that people who operate establishments of this kind will go to prison.

Sex traffickers who kept women as "slaves" have been jailed for a total of almost 13 years.

Fei Zhang and his "second in command" Suzhen Xu supplied girls from China and Thailand to brothels in Walsall, Wolverhampton, Dudley and Worcester.

Zhang was sentenced to eight years and Xu received four years and nine months.

The brothels were raided in March 2007, Worcester Crown Court heard. Many of the women were forced to pay back a £25,000 bond before they could send money home to their families.

Judge Alistair McCreath said they kept the young, vulnerable women as slaves because they were not allowed to leave the four brothels across the West Midlands. The court heard there were about 20 to 30 girls working in Worcester over a three-month period and many were not allowed to leave the building. After working they were locked in their rooms.

Update: Confiscation

22nd August 2011. See  article from  worcesterstandard.co.uk

The convicted sex traffickers have been ordered to pay back some of the money gained from their crimes. Fei Zhang and Cheng Zhao Su must pay back more than £ 150,000 between them for their part in operating sex brothels or face a longer spell in prison.

The court ruled that Zhang's benefit from his crimes was £ 4,688,243 and he was ordered to pay a confiscation order of £ 35,467.59 within six months or face a further 15 months in prison. During the original investigation into Zhang's finances, West Mercia Police's economic crime unit found he had transferred more than £ 3.8million from his bank account into another account in China. Officers are continuing to try and recover the money.

Two Eastern-Europeans who ran a brothel in Southall have been jailed for a year each today.

Andrius Zubinas and his girlfriend, Edita Zubkova were each sentenced to 12 months in prison at Southwark Crown Court after being found guilty of controlling prostitution.

The pair were arrested by officers from the Met's human trafficking team on December 6 at the brothel in Lady Margaret Road, Southall.

Both Zubinas and Zubkova were cleared of charges of human trafficking at the same court.

A man who ran porn shops and sold adult films without a licence has been jailed for four months.

Donald McEwan was sentenced by Manchester magistrates after pleading guilty to six offences.

McEwan was charged after police and officers from the council's licensing and trading standards units carried out raids on the Big In Amsterdam shop in Tib Street and the Film Factory in Hilton Street where videos and DVDs were seized.

Three years ago he was convicted of identical offences and was fined. This time the judge told him there was no option but a custodial sentence.

The offences all related to McEwan running unlicensed shops in Manchester city centre's Northern Quarter, as well as selling R18-rated films without a licence and films that had no official age certification.

He was given four three-month sentences to run concurrently and one month, to run consecutively, for non-payment of fines imposed in 2005.

Coun Eddy Newman said: McEwan tried to side-step the council's strict controls and attempted to avoid the licence fee, therefore gaining a commercial advantage over those who operate within the law.

You will not have seen it in the news, because for some reason the CPS didn't call a press conference to announce it, nor did they send out a press release for sub-editors to paste verbatim into their rags, but a recent Operation Ore case in Belfast was concluded when the prosecutors came to court and offered no evidence - that's NO evidence.

It was ordered that the defendant should be acquitted, and so ended his 4 year ordeal. It's also now extremely likely that the remaining Ore incitement cases in NI will be dealt with in the same way.

No evidence, because every single piece of the prosecution case - that the accused had used his credit card to pay for child porn - had been showed to be flawed beyond recognition.

A woman who ran brothels which earned more than £1m was yesterday jailed for 12 months.

Annabel Wise ran a brothel at Middle Way, Summertown, Oxford, for almost four years in an operation a judge labelled "substantial".

Oxford Crown Court heard claims police had turned a blind eye to the brothel until residents started to complain.

Wise earned about £50,000 a year from the business, while the rest of the money was kept by the prostitutes working there.

Peter Coombe, prosecuting, said Wise's brothels took in about £600 a day - with an estimated turnover of £1.27m over six years. He said when police raided the two-bedroom house last November they found one client and three prostitutes, as well as a part-time receptionist.

Coombe said: The prostitutes were spoken to and it became perfectly clear that all of the ladies involved on that premises were there voluntarily. There was no suggestion or question of duress.

Coombe said Wise, who admitted keeping a brothel was described to the police as a good boss who cared about the prostitutes' safety. He said: There was a laminated menu which set out the services which could be provided and the prices.

Tim Boswell, defending, said Wise ran the brothel to make money but also out of a genuine desire to protect prostitutes. He claimed police knew about the brothel because Wise had reported concerns about a prostitute she believed was being forced into the trade by a pimp.

Boswell said: This brothel was run for several years with the full knowledge of the police. Miss Wise's understanding was that the police would turn a blind eye as long as the brothel was not disturbing anyone and was not a place for drugs or illegal immigrants. It may be that she was lulled into a false sense of security by the police not prosecuting her at that stage.

A business man sold uncertificated pornographic DVDs at shops and garages in Swindon.

Philip Tobias was ordered to pay more than £6,000 after admitting 11 counts of owning and selling the explicit adult films at Swindon Magistrates' Court.

He also asked the court to take another nine similar counts into consideration relating to more than 100 films.

The court heard that Trading SubStandards officers seized DVDs, which did not show the legally required classifications, in a number of operations during February and March last year.

Rosie Bone, persecuting, told the court Tobias' XXX Sales company had a £42,000 annual turnover and he paid himself a £20,000 a year salary from the proceeds of selling the blue movies out of the back of a van.

Bone said some of the films would most likely have been given R18 certificates, meaning they could have only been legally sold in sex shops and not in garages and newsagents.

In an interview with the police and Trading Standards, Tobias said that he had run his business selling adult material for three years.

Gordon Hotson, defending, said: We are talking about selling uncertified DVDs. We are not talking about films containing children or unlawful material. These DVDs were adult in nature, but had not been put through the film classification board.

After serious consideration magistrates ruled that they could have sentenced Tobias to a jail term for the offences, but in light of his previous clean record agreed to hand out a financial punishment instead.

He was told to pay £300 for each of the 11 counts, and an extra £3,000 towards persecution costs.

A man has been jailed for 21 months for his part in a business selling pornographic DVDs and videos in the UK.

Michael Fowler was one of five men involved in the business - run from Belgium - which detectives said netted nearly £2m at least between 2005 and 2007.

Judge Charles Gratwicke described the material as revolting and disgusting as he handed down sentences totalling more than 10 years, following a hearing yesterday at Chelmsford Crown Court.

Unemployed George Buchanan who ran the operation from his home in Blanenberge, Belgium, was given a seven-year term. The judge said Buchanan was extradited from Belgium after fleeing, was the central figure.

Unemployed John Dormer who copied and distributed DVDs and tapes, was given a 12-month term. Printer Stephen Fisher who printed brochures advertising DVDs, was given an 18-month term.

Fowler and Malcolm Winter, the business cashiers, were each given a 21-month term.

All five admitted conspiring to supply obscene material and conspiring to launder money.

None of the DVDs or tapes featured children.

A salesman who turned to a life of vice after falling in love with a prostitute has been jailed for 12 months.

Faisal Sheikh fell into the business of running brothels after paying his Thai wife-to-be for sex.

Sheikh made more than £30,000 from oriental girls who dressed up in PVC nurses' outfits offering punters a "menu of sexual activities".

He was arrested after police raided a brothel at Windmill Lane, Stratford, London on September 5 last year.

Detectives found he was also controlling bordellos in Claremont Road, Forest Gate, and Great Cumberland Place in the West End.

Sheikh admitted three counts of managing a brothel used for prostitution and eight counts of transferring criminal property.

It was raided on September 5, 2006, after police from the Met's Vice Squad raided properties listed in the classified section of local newspapers.

Sheikh's wife was arrested and admitted to assisting in the management of a brothel. She was jailed for eight weeks.

Judge Dodgson told Sheikh he was "intelligent and industrious" but that he did not accept Sheikh had run the brothels for "philanthropic" reasons. Sheikh was jailed for 12 months.

A man who ran a sex business in Eastbourne town centre has narrowly escaped a spell in jail.

David Pye was given a 12 month jail sentence suspended for two years.

But because he has been declared bankrupt he will not have to pay any court costs and only £1 of the £122,000 which he was said to have made from the brothel can be confiscated.

The court heard Pye, a father of three, made the money over an 18-month period when he was running the brothel in Susans Road. He advertised the brothel, known as Mermaids, in local publications.

Police raided the building after a tip-off from Pye's ex-partner, Alison Hooper, that prostitutes were working from the premises. Fifteen officers stormed the building in August 2006 and discovered three women working as prostitutes at the time and a male client who was with one of the women.

Pye was arrested some weeks later and a long police investigation began. Pye, who has since been declared bankrupt admitted charges of running a brothel and living off the proceeds of prostitution when he appeared at Lewes Crown Court last year. He was back in court in Brighton to be sentenced by Judge Paul Tain.

Rebecca Upton, defending Pye, noted that none of the women working as prostitutes were underage, working against their will or were being mistreated. The court heard a health visitor had also seen the girls working at the brothel and gave them a clean bill of health and believed they were working there of their own accord.

Judge Tain told Pye he had crossed the custody threshold and sentenced him to 12 months imprisonment but suspended it for two years. Pye was also ordered to do 100 hours of unpaid work.

A brothel manager has been jailed for running a covert sex shop in a spa.

Paul Chapman employed illegal immigrants to offer sex to customers at the Carlton Spa in  Orpington, London.

Chapman was jailed for 10 months after pleading guilty to management of a brothel at Croydon Crown Court.

Bromley council sent a private investigator to act as a bogus customer. He visited the brothel in and was offered sexual services for up to £140 an hour. He returned a few months later and was offered the same thing.

Prosecuting, Philip Jones, said: It was discovered that the spa was being advertised on the internet, featuring a large number of females in provocative poses.

Police with a search warrant raided the shop soon afterwards and found that the girls working there were illegal immigrants. Some have since been deported.

John Blandford, defending, said there was no evidence that any of the girls were the victims of exploitation. He said: They were free to leave; no-one was imprisoned there. They turned up for work, did their shift and went home again. It might not be everyone's idea of a career. No-one was forced into it.

A man who pleaded guilty to selling pornographic films at Chalon Way Car Boot Sale, St Helens was fined and ordered to pay costs totalling £1,480.

He was arrested in a joint car boot sale operation between St Helens Council's Trading SubStandards section and Merseyside Police.

He was caught in possession for the purpose of supplying 17 hardcore R18 DVD films. R18 films can only be legally sold through officially licensed sex shops.

Five women have escaped jail over their involvement in a chain of brothels after a judge ruled no-one had been harmed.

Rooms at three premises in Cardiff and one in Swindon were rented out by prostitutes and their clients, Cardiff Crown Court heard.

Prosecuting, Robin Spencer QC said the brothels were in operation between May 2004 and October 2006, and typically took a combined total of £11,000 cash per week.

Diana Jones, who managed all four brothels, admitted managing a brothel used for prostitution and concealing criminal property.

But Judge John Curran ruled she would not be sent to jail. He said: These are crimes which carry a maximum sentence of seven years under the Sexual Offences Act, where prostitutes are coerced, pressured or threatened in some way, but this does not apply in this unusual case. The only aggravating feature is the scale of the operation, as no trafficking has occurred. There clearly was no intention to harm people and no reason to suggest any individual has suffered any physical or psychological harm.

He added that police knew about the premises and officers often visited them to check there were no drugs, illegal immigrants or under-age women working.

Paul Lewis QC, defending Jones, said a BBC documentary team interviewed workers at the Twice as Nice Parlour on Woodville Road, Cardiff, that Jones managed. It was only then that Jones realised two of them were illegal immigrants, but he said she had not helped traffick them to the UK or coerced them into prostitution.

Jones was sentenced to 12 months' imprisonment, suspended for two years. She was also given a community order of 18 months' supervision and ordered to complete 200 hours of unpaid work.

Four others pleaded guilty to assisting in managing a brothel used for prostitution and were each sentenced to four months' imprisonment suspended for two years with a community order of supervision for 18 months.

Blight's mother admitted paying bills for the brothels at her local post office with cash given to her by her daughter. She pleaded guilty to possessing criminal property. She was sentenced to four months' imprisonment, suspended for two years, with a community order of supervision for 18 months.

Update: Enjoying a Life of Illgotten Gains...Good on her

26th July 2009. Based on article from metro.co.uk

A former brothel manager ordered to pay back millions of pounds from the proceeds of her businesses has said she will not be leave her luxury Mediterranean hideaway.

Diane Jones is enjoying the sunshine of northern Cyprus in a three-bedroom villa after failing to return from a holiday to the island.

The 46-year-old grandmother is believed to have made £4m managing The Ambassador Health Suite, Twice As Nice and Heaven, all in Cardiff, and St Tropez, in Swindon, with the help of four other women.