Chinese traffickers / drug dealers found guilty

[scutty brown]

Typical example from last year


24th October 2020
Naked clients and 'human slaves' found during police raid on brothel

WOMEN allegedly being forced to work as prostitutes were found during a police raid on a brothel.

Officers stormed a “spa and massage” business in Uckfield yesterday, finding naked clients and two Chinese women, who they believe are victims of modern slavery.

Police believe the women were being exploited through “debt bondage” and pictures from the scene of the raid in Mill Lane show a number of massage beds within the property

An undercover detective involved the raid said: “This is one room for clients.

“There was a young girl – Chinese girl – in here and a client who was naked when we entered.

“One of the young ladies who we found here has told us her story. She’s extremely distressed and we are offering her support.”

The force believes the women may have been tricked into working for little or no money to repay a debt.

They were recused from the property and are now being offered support through the National Referral Mechanism (NRM), which identifies victims of exploitation and provides ongoing support.

The men found inside the building during the raid have been released without charge

A charity worker described the moment they found the women inside the brothel.

Jean Bovell-Strachan is from Streetlight, a charity which helps women in prostitution to reclaim control of their lives.

She told the BBC: “Once we entered the property and [they] realised who we were and what we were doing, there was probably an element of relief that there’s going to be no more clients today.”

Speaking about human trafficking in general, she said: “They will eat in that room, they will sleep in that room, they have all their clients in that room – it’s like a prison cell.”

Police say that East Sussex Project Discovery executed a warrant to search the address, as well as a nearby flat, with documents and cash being seized from the premises.
 
Detective Sergeant Sophie McGarel said: “The operation follows reports from the public that women of apparent Chinese background have been offering sexual services, and the national intelligence picture shows that women are being exploited by human trafficking gangs around the UK for sexual work.

[scutty brown]

Another example which shows the scale: this woman ran 26 brothels

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Madam who ran brothels across London told to repay £300,000
A
brothel madam who controlled a UK-wide sex worker empire from an east London “call centre” has been ordered to give up more than £300,000 she earned from her crimes.

Yanping Zhu, 40, managed sex dens at addresses in Earl’s Court, Clapham, Poplar, Liverpool and Southampton. She used dozens of phones and advertised women online.

She disguised her illicit and “sophisticated” operation, which targeted men who wanted to exploit south-east Asian women for sex, as a company specialising in wedding and party dresses.

In total detectives uncovered 26 brothels, housing 40 prostitutes, which Zhu ran between April 2016 and October 2017.

They found phones “ringing and pinging” with messages from men when they first raided a New Cross flat in 2016

The Chinese national threw 22 phones out of the window when police swooped, a court heard. Almost 50 were eventually recovered from the property with one containing 3,000 messages enquiring about sex services, which included French kissing for £10.

After the raid and while on bail, Zhu set up another call centre in Newham.

In June last year Zhu’s flat in Docklands was raided and detectives found dozens more phones plus online ad-verts featuring naked women and a price list of sexual services.

She denied knowledge of the prostitution ring despite a mobile receiving “customer enquiries” being found in her pocket, the Crown Prosecution Service said.

Her London brothels were in Warwick Road, Earl’s Court; St John’s Hill, Clapham; and Saltwell Street, Poplar.

Zhu was jailed for two years after admitting three counts of controlling prostitution for gain, three weeks into her trial at Snaresbrook crown court in February.

Now, after a CPS investigation into her assets, she has been ordered to pay £303,700 under the Proceeds of Crime Act.

The confiscation hearing at Snaresbrook this month heard she amassed hundreds of thousands of pounds of jewellery, cash and equity in a home in Heron Place, Silvertown.

Senior CPS prosecutor Elaine Cousins said: “Zhu ran a sophisticated network of brothels across the country.

"She used websites for advertising and set up what was in effect a call centre where potential customers could make enquiries about sexual services.

"When police raided one call centre in New Cross, Zhu simply started another in Newham.

“This order means Zhu will not be able to benefit from the profits of her criminal activity.”

Zhu has three months to settle the confiscation order or will face a further two years in prison.

[scutty brown]

External Link/Members Only

Smuggling debts lead Chinese migrants to rape and prostitution
By Andy Pag
BBC News NI

Published15 February 2015

An investigation into Northern Ireland's sex trade has revealed Asian migrants are drawn in due to people's smuggling debts.

'Fay' has spoken about being held captive by traffickers and repeatedly raped in a Londonderry brothel.

'Lynne' knowingly turned to prostitution under pressure of a £50,000 people smuggling debt.

Lisa recruits Asian sex workers for her Belfast brothel through classified adverts in Chinese language newspapers.

Recognised victim

'Fay' was recognised as a victim of trafficking after being rescued from a brothel in Derry by the PSNI in 2009.

She has broken her six year silence to speak exclusively to BBC News NI.

She said she came to Northern Ireland for a job organised by Snakehead, a gang of people traffickers, to whom she owed £20,000 for arranging her travel to the UK. They'd previously organised some child minding jobs for her.

She spoke to her new employer on the phone, and agreed she would work as a child minder for him.

Duped, then raped
When she arrived she discovered there were no children. She saw other women in the house but wasn't allowed to talk to them. She now suspects they were sex workers.

She was kept in a locked room.

After some days she alleges she was raped by a policeman. She felt helpless, and unable to turn to the police for help.

The brothel was run by a woman called Rong Chen.

From then on, Fay says Chen threatened her, and made her have sex with customers.

She said: "She was quite fierce. She said I need to return money to her."

She recalls being raped by about 10 more men over the following two months.

Chen
Chen was convicted of running five brothels in Northern Ireland, including the Derry brothel in which Fay and three other women were found. She was sentenced to seven years for trafficking and served three and a half. She is now fighting deportation proceedings.

Chen's husband Jason Hinton was convicted of aiding and abetting the control of prostitution and served 220 hours of community service.

No one was ever convicted of raping Fay. The other three victims are thought to have returned to China.

Chen was released on immigration bail from Yarl's Wood immigration Detention centre last year while she fights deportation.

She and Hinton live together in Kidderminster, Worcestershire.

When approached by the BBC, Chen refused to comment, but Hinton swore at, and pushed our reporter.

Excuse
He later calmed down and claimed his wife was just a housekeeper at the brothel. He said she had worked there for a year, commuting from Kidderminster to Belfast, before he became aware that she was working in a brothel.

He remains unrepentant, maintaining that the four women rescued from the brothel, had been willing participants in sex work, and had lied to claim asylum and benefits.

After weighing all the evidence, Justice Stephens specifically stated, during Chen's sentencing, that all four victims "had not been prostitutes and none of them had worked in brothels."

Fay no longer has family in China, and has lost touch with her only daughter.

"I don't have anybody there. Why should I go back?" she said.

Her permission to stay in the UK expires next year.

She still needs psychological support and said: "I feel like I've been in jail for six years."

Lynne
A Chinese Belfast-based sex worker, 'Lynne', spoke exclusively to the BBC, saying she had come to Belfast from London after seeing adverts, which still appear regularly in the UK Chinese Times and other newspapers.

When she first arrived in the UK, Lynne worked in the kitchens of London's Chinese restaurants. She was paid between £3.50 and £6 per hour, less than the legal minimum wage.

Lynne told the BBC: "Most people from China are in debt when they come here. My loans were 400,000-500,000RMB." (£40,000-£50,000)

After her student visa expired she became worried about frequent immigration enforcement raids carried out in London's Chinese restaurants.

She had never considered sex work before arriving in London but heard rumours it paid well. After a year in the city she replied to an advert recruiting sex workers the free Chinese newspapers. She moved to Belfast and started selling sex for the brothel keeper.

She said: "Many Chinese women can't find work. So they do this work. It requires low skill level, and if you can't speak much English, you can get others to answer the phone for you."

Independent
A few months later she was assaulted by a client and left the brothel.

Undocumented migrant sex workers are prone to physical assaults and robberies because assailants know the victims cannot turn to the police for help.

She now works independently from a rented terrace house in South Belfast.

She said: "I earn £600-700 per week. My rent is £500 a month.

"I was on a student visa, and have been in the UK for almost two years. I overstayed. But I haven't had problems with the police. They leave me alone."

She told the BBC she plans to work for a couple of years until her debts are paid, and then wants to return China. She has a child in China.

[scutty brown]

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Chinese women being trafficked to UK suffer further harm as detention numbers nearly double
‘They made me have sex with men who would come to the house where I was imprisoned. If I tried to refuse they would beat me and starve me. I would often go for three days with no food or water,’ says woman in Yarl’s Wood

Chinese women who were trafficked to the UK are being detained here where they suffer further harm as it emerges the number of Chinese women in detention centres has almost doubled in recent years.

The most recent statistics show 228 Chinese women were detained across 2016 in the UK, but this number jumped to 420 in 2018.

Experts attribute this rise to an increase in raids on brothels and massage parlours – noting the figures starkly contrast with the overall trend of the number of people in detention falling.

There were 1,839 people held in the detention estate at the end of March 2019, which is one third less than a year earlier.

A new report by Women for Refugee Women, which is the first of its kind, found the Home Office is breaking its own policies and locking up Chinese trafficking survivors in Yarl’s Wood detention centre, despite the fact they have suffered abuse and trauma while being trafficked into sex or labour exploitation.

Home Office guidelines state individuals with indicators of trafficking should be housed in safe accommodation and given emotional and practical support while their case is being considered. It also stipulates vulnerable people, including victims of trafficking and gender-based violence, should not generally be detained.

The report found the Home Office is ignoring the fact Chinese women – who currently make up the largest group by nationality of women in Yarl’s Wood – have been trafficked and is failing to support them.

The study, which looks at the case files of 14 Chinese women detained in the last year, found these women are being kept in detention for very long periods – every one of the 14 cases considered was detained for more than a month – even when their mental health is clearly deteriorating.

Gemma Lousley, author of the report, said women from China tend to be detained for longer than other detainees because they often struggle to access legal help due to language barriers. She said they had encountered women who have been detained for over six months, whereas the majority of detainees are out within a month.

“Chinese women have been neglected by research in this area,” she said. “They can be both isolated from other women in detention and also in terms of any other help they may get. These are some of the most extreme cases we have ever seen because of the sexual exploitation they experience. They are subjected to repeated and violent exploitation. There are women who have been forced to have sex with ten men every day.

“If women refuse to have sex with clients they can either be threatened with violence or actually beaten or deprived of food or water. Women we spoke to had significant mental health problems. It was very disturbing. Lots experience suicidal thoughts and self-harm. One woman had started to experience hallucinations and psychotic symptoms because she had been in detention for so long.

“The detention system is institutionally racist. If they were British non-migrant women, they would have been offered support and protection, but the exact opposite has happened.”

Ms Lousley said a significant number of Chinese women they have spoken to, who were not included in the report, have also disclosed some form of trafficking.

A Chinese woman in Yarl’s Wood, who chose to remain anonymous, said: “The gang leaders forced me to do things that I didn’t want to do, things that made me feel ashamed. They made me have sex with men who would come to the house where I was imprisoned.

“If I tried to refuse they would beat me and starve me. I would often go for three days with no food or water. Then one day men in uniforms came to the house. I was terrified and tried to hide but they found me. They dragged me out and took me to the police station. Later, I was put in another van. It drove for a long time through the night and ended up at Yarl’s Wood. I was taken from one hell to another.”

Home Office statistics show 3,641 women entered immigration detention in 2018 – with 420 of these being Chinese.

Some 92 per cent of Chinese women who had claimed asylum were released from detention to continue with their asylum claim within the community – with researchers arguing this demonstrates their detention served no purpose.

Natasha Walter, the director of Women for Refugee Women, said she has “never heard stories more harrowing” than those of Chinese trafficked women in detention in all of the time she has worked with refugee and asylum-seeking women.

She added: “These women have suffered extreme abuse and exploitation and do not receive the support and protection that is promised in policies. Instead, they are locked up and threatened with deportation. This situation must change now.”

Shalini Patel, a human rights lawyer that specialises in immigration who worked closely with the trafficking victims cited in the report, attributed the recent rise in the detention of Chinese women to an increase in immigration officials and police targeting brothels and massage parlours.

“One of my clients was approached by what she thought was a client but it was undercover police,” she said. “A lot of the women I represent have been here for many years and have been exploited in lots of different environments which points to the fact they have not just arrived.”

Emily Kenway, of Focus on Labour Exploitation (FLEX), an organisation which works to end human trafficking for labour exploitation, argued the rise in Chinese women being detained was linked to the Modern Slavery Act, which became law in 2015.

She added: “The act led to more raids on massage parlours and brothels to identify slavery victims but clearly the Home Office is ignoring international best practice and its own guidance is making detainment the first choice rather than the last choice. They are trigger happy with detention as this shows.

“The act has led to increased pressure for the police to identify victims and to instigate prosecutions. But we are calling for a firewall between immigration enforcement and policing. If you are a police officer and you encounter someone who may be a victim of exploitation or might be being abused, you should not ask their immigration status.”

A Home Office spokesperson said: “Detention is an important part of the immigration system – but it must be fair, dignified and protect the most vulnerable.

“We have made significant improvements to our approach in recent years, but remain committed to going further. We continue to explore alternatives to detention, increase transparency around immigration detention, further improve the support available for vulnerable detainees and initiate a new drive on detainee dignity.

“Any person we encounter who claims they are a victim of trafficking will, with their consent, be referred to the National Referral Mechanism. Their claim will then be considered by a trained specialist.”

[scutty brown]

This guy worked as criminal property landlord with over 440 properties in use. Who said there was no  organised crime in this?

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Chinese criminal ‘estate agent’ jailed in Britain for arranging brothels, cannabis farms
Feng Xu, 43, secured rental agreements on hundreds of properties populated by trafficked prostitutes, cannabis growers and people smugglers
He had moved to the UK from Guangzhou two decades ago with dreams of becoming a businessman, but turned to crime after incurring heavy debts

A Chinese national who acted as a property agent for criminal gangs in Britain, renting hundreds of houses to be used as brothels and cannabis farms, was jailed on Friday for seven years and four months by a court in Birmingham, the UK’s second-largest city.
Feng Xu amassed around 5,500 forged documents – including driving licences, bank statements, wage slips, utility bills and dozens of fake or fraudulent Chinese and Portuguese passports – to secure tenancy agreements on at least 446 properties, according to British police.

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How one mistake led police to Chinese criminal mastermind in Birmingham
Feng Xu was middle-man who created fake IDs to rent properties which he would then sub-let to organised crime groups

Police have revealed how a mastermind who found hundreds of properties for criminal gangs to use as brothels and cannabis farms was finally brought to justice.

Birmingham-based Feng Xu was a 'go to' middle-man who created fake IDs to rent properties which he would then sub-let to organised crime groups involved in prostitution, drugs and illegal immigration.

But he came unstuck after Gloucestershire Police raided a house in Newent in February 2015 and found 170 cannabis plants.

Xu had made a mistake which allowed officers looking for a shadowy figure to unravel the paper trail behind the lease - which led them to a Chinese national who seemed to the outside world like a wealthy, respectable businessman.

In May last year police raided his luxury £2,500-a-month city centre flat and a secure storage unit used by the 43-year-old and found enough evidence to bring him to Birmingham Crown Court Court.

He pleaded to guilty to 22 offences and was jailed for seven years and four months.

During the raid they found a computer database listing 446 different addresses which he had been involved in renting out using false documents such as pay slips, utility bills and bank statements, all made himself.

They believe the network had been operating for at least three and a half years until. More than £4 million in rent had been paid out, some from his own accounts, some paid direct by the crime groups.

The court heard that Xu entered the UK in 1996 as a student, but had been living illegally here since 2000, and will face deportation after serving his sentence.

[val33]

Tip of the iceberg, sadly. There is great difficulty in persuading witnesses to come forward because of brutal reprisals and intimidation.

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The report says women were tricked into coming to Northern Ireland to “carry out cleaning and nannying jobs but were forced into prostitution through extreme violence” by Triad gangs.

[Asurmen]

Part true and part untrue, I knew a female Chinese Copper in the North West who went a few times when brothels were raided as the Force thought a female Chinese face would help.

She claimed that a lot of the girls came of their own free will, knew what they were signing up for and were quite wised up as in they knew what to say to the Coppers to get sympathy. The first thing they grab when they are raided are their Gucci and LV handbags so some are making serious money. They make much more money here than say in HK but there are some that are definitely trafficked. A few places only cater to Chinese, use to be one near Heaton Park.

Its absolutely pathetic that everytime theres crime and Chinese then the word "Triads(s)" nearly always gets added.

[LLPunting]

Have to agree with Asurmen about the sensationalism inherent in media reporting.  The above are all significant offences but they have been reported because they are exceptional and nothing has been presented to confirm how many other (near) identical situations have been found and broken up by the Police.  It's not like the local paper is reporting a running tally on operations against Chinese organised crime or even point to their local forces having a running tally of raids and results; without amassing the evidence you cannot make a factual assertion, just a prejudiced supposition (which may or may not prove to be true).  Even the report by the women's intervention group isn't quoted to summarise of the 420+ women mentioned how many were specifically "liberated" from the sex-trade from how many towns in which regions.  The information may well all be there but the reporting is not conscientious enough to actually substantiate the picture nor are any of the investigative bodies seemingly keen to elaborate.
If I report seeing a white man kicking a dog it does not mean that all white men kick dogs.

I fully expect there to be plenty of evil being done by organised crime to exploit women (including Chinese) in the sex-trade but given the situations I have encountered in parlours and flats I would be no less concerned about the exploitation of women from the poorer EE and EE-adjacent states as well as perhaps the "South American"/Spain connection.

I have never been begged by a (fearful/hysterical) Chinese to stay when I walked, most have been sour-faced throughout the encounter hence the walk.  Nothing in their demeanour or conduct suggests they fear any retribution because a punter has refused to punt.  On the many occasions where a male minder was present he did nothing to persuade me to stay, ask what the problem was or to threaten the woman.  All have either been ambivalent, some were polite in seeing me out, some women scolded me with contempt to my back not a hint of fearfulness.  If those behaviours are in fact indicators then they are exactly the same (if not worse) as those I have encountered at the flats housing the other nationalities mentioned above.

This is a similar picture to that painted by numerous "reports" by fellow punters across the years and boards on this site.

Look forward to some non-Chinese criminals being reported soon in the name of balance.

This isolated nugget is interesting, check the ethnic breakdown out.  External Link/Members Only.  How "much" crime, however you measure it, is done on average by each individual is of course rather key.

Some other stats as dots to connect, with lots more context still missing e.g. No of Romanians in UK is of same order as no of Chinese.
External Link/Members Only

Another good read: External Link/Members Only

[Kev40ish]

You are so, so wrong.
Virtually every time this subject comes up you do your damnest to trivialise what experienced people say. You boast about how many girls you speak to........well it must have been pretty trivial conversations because when you get them under the correct circumstances the story changes. What I and others have said here is real and factual.

Some of what you say may be real and factual.
It certainly is the case that in some cases organised gangs do operate to control girls. It certainly isn’t restricted to Chinese girls and EE operations are probably my biggest concern at the moment.

Many of the Chinese girls I have met are over here as they see it as a way to better themselves and raise money to secure their future. They have a lot more freedom to decide what they want to do, have time off and often have their own places and friends that they mix with.

This certainly isn’t my experience with Romanian girls I have met who appear to be tightly controlled..

[petermisc]

Have to agree with Asurmen about the sensationalism inherent in media reporting. 

I have never been begged by a (fearful/hysterical) Chinese to stay when I walked, most have been sour-faced throughout the encounter hence the walk.  Nothing in their demeanour or conduct suggests they fear any retribution because a punter has refused to punt.  On the many occasions where a male minder was present he did nothing to persuade me to stay, ask what the problem was or to threaten the woman.  All have either been ambivalent, some were polite in seeing me out, some women scolded me with contempt to my back not a hint of fearfulness.  If those behaviours are in fact indicators then they are exactly the same (if not worse) as those I have encountered at the flats housing the other nationalities mentioned above.

Look forward to some non-Chinese criminals being reported soon in the name of balance.

Agreed about the sensationalism in much reporting.  Unfortunately there are certain groups with agendas to push, who would have the public believe that every WG is either a street-walking druggy or trafficked or coerced.

This thread was initiated by a news report of a Chinese group being taken down, so naturally it concentrates on the Chinese.  I seem to recall there being a more general trafficking thread in which the problem with Roms and Poles was covered.

Being begged to stay when you decide to walk is not an indication of a trafficked operation.  In the kind of high turnover operation typical of these places, if a client wants to walk then it is best to just let him walk.  You will be seen as a timewaster, so no point in wasting further time begging or arguing with you, just move onto the next customer.  And the last thing they want is for you to draw attention to the place, or call the police.

[LLPunting]

...

Being begged to stay when you decide to walk is not an indication of a trafficked operation.  In the kind of high turnover operation typical of these places, if a client wants to walk then it is best to just let him walk.  You will be seen as a timewaster, so no point in wasting further time begging or arguing with you, just move onto the next customer.  And the last thing they want is for you to draw attention to the place, or call the police.

Indeed, I know that would be the "wise" business approach, my context for comment was "a controlled woman at risk of battery, or worse, for not making money from a punter".