Brothel Raided! Punter Found With Thai Gal!

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Brothel raid in posh street stuns neighbours

Sep 9 2005

By Katie Archer

POLICE have shut down a seedy oriental brothel - which was being run on a posh street in a leafy area of Sutton.

Officers raided the sordid sex business earlier this week after staking it out in an undercover operation.

They found a man naked on a bed with a 21-year-old Thai prostitute - and now believe the owners were illegally trafficking in women from the Far East.

Police are now seeking to track down two men they believe ran the brothel - who weren't there at the time of the raid.

Sutton Police's central and west wards safer neighbourhoods team swooped on Monday afternoon, raiding the flat in Egmont Road - where the average house price is £200,638.

Team leader Sgt Tony Rogers said: "The place was advertised as an oriental massage parlour, but we had suspected it was being run as a brothel for some time.

"We were just waiting for the right moment to catch someone actually going to use the business."

Plain-clothed officers made their move when they spotted a man leaving the block of flats - where just one one-bedroom flat was being run as the brothel - and another smartly dressed businessman going inside.

Sgt Rogers said: "I pretended to be a customer at the door and when the maid told me to come back later I stuck my foot in the door until my team came to back me up.

"I think she was very relieved we were police and not a gang of robbers, because she told us they had been robbed in the past. It seems like the sort of place where men might come in during the day after making an excuse at the office, and be home in time for dinner without their wives asking any questions."

As well as cautioning the prostitute, maid and customer, police seized £290 from the premises which had opening hours of 11am to 9pm.

It is believed that a different girl worked each day of the week and all girls were oriental - apart from the maid who was English and about 19 years old.

Sgt Rogers said: "We were surprised it was running from Egmont Road, which is a very nice, quiet, residential area with families living there."

People living on Egmont Road seemed equally surprised to find a brothel had been running from their street.

One resident said: "A brothel? On my road? I didn't have a clue. I'm very shocked, but relieved it's closed down now."

Another man living in the same block of flats on the road said: "A brothel? Really? I had no idea. Although now you mention it, there was a lot more traffic on the road recently."

Yet another man wishing to remain anonymous could not believe the seedy business had been operating in his street.

He said: "There's no brothel here. But there was a guy living at the other end of the road who used to run Babe TV."

Egmont Road resident Maryam Fahimi, 22, added: "I didn't even know what a brothel was, but I'm very shocked. It's horrible because it's mostly family homes round here, but I'm happy it's been shut down."

It is the third brothel that Sgt Rogers' safer neighbourhoods team has shut down this year, and they believe there may still be up to 10 more operating in the area.

He said: "There are two crimes being committed here. One is the illegal trade of prostitution and the other is trafficking of girls from oriental countries to work in the sex industry here."

While police try to track down the brothel's owners, they emphasised that the owner of the block of flats was unaware of what was going on there.

Spot-checks will continue to be carried out in the area, but anyone with information about this or other brothels being run should contact Sutton CID on 020 8721 2710.

source: http://iccroydon.icnetwork.co.uk/news/croydon/tm

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