Thai Woman Convicted Of Laundering Money From British Brothels

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Four years for the 'respectable' woman who laundered vice cash

The Herald

Friday, February 12, 2010, 07:00

Oranong Biscoe

A Thai woman who laundered cash from British brothels, including one in Plymouth, has been jailed for four years at the city's Crown court.

Oranong Biscoe was caught after a trafficked Thai woman forced to work in a brothel at Gascoyne Place in Greenbank was rescued by a customer in 2007.

This sparked a police investigation, Operation Celsius, which led to a huge nationwide money-laundering scam.

Brothel operators Jarawee Faknak and Jutamas Songglin were arrested and later jailed for six years and four years respectively for people-trafficking.

When police investigated where the huge amounts of cash generated by the brothels were going, the paper trail led to Oranong Biscoe.

Biscoe, aged 51 and from Hayes in Middlesex, denied three charges.

Married to Englishman Paul Biscoe, she worked in London as a credit controller for Thai Airways.

Prosecutor Andrew Oldland said she appeared a thoroughly respectable woman, but between 2005 and 2007, 'greed got the better of her.'

As a sideline, she ran a service transferring or holding sterling for Thai nationals and transferring money to Thailand using her airline contacts.

Money was paid from the brothels into accounts she controlled, and either transferred abroad via the banking system or carried in cash by couriers to Bangkok.

Mr Oldland said Biscoe handled £1.3 million between 2005 and 2007 and, while not all of this money was the proceeds of crime, she must have known or suspected that much of the cash was coming from prostitution.

One link in the chain which led to her arrest was forged when Jutamas Songglin was arrested at Heathrow about to board a flight to Thailand. She was carrying £10,000 in cash, and documents showing the money belonged to Paul Biscoe.

After a four-week trial, the jury of six men and six women took just over an hour to convict Biscoe unanimously on all three counts:

running an unlicensed bank.

removing criminal property from England and Wales.

transferring criminal property – cash – into bank accounts controlled by her.

James Doyle, for Biscoe, said she was a woman of previous good character who was 'clearly devastated' by the verdicts.

She had dealt with many women, not all of whom were engaged in prostitution.

She was kindly, helpful, charitable and did not live a lavish lifestyle, and was not a 'cold-blooded professional money-launderer,' he said.

Judge Paul Darlow told Biscoe she had been willing to help people involved in organised prostitution, including people- trafficking, for her own gain.

"You were prepared to launder their ill-gotten gains through the banking system and out of the country to Thailand," he said.

Sentencing Biscoe to a total of four years in jail, the judge congratulated the police investigators.

Outside the court, DS Ian Tomlinson said: "This has been a protracted and complex investigation by Devon and Cornwall Serious and Organised Crime Investigation Team and the Economic Crime Unit."

He paid tribute to colleague DC Rob Clement and financial investigator Jay Driscoll.

DS Tomlinson said prostitutes, pimps and people traffickers could not operate without people such as Oranong Biscoe to launder and move their money.

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