Admin l Thursday, December 15, 2016
WESTMINSTER – A couple who laundered more than a million pounds of proceeds from a brothel they ran in Westminster through a network of companies, have been jailed.
Mario Seu, 69 of Grafton Road, Kentish Town and Maria Teresa Vittoriano, 65 of Kember Street, Islington – both Italian nationals – were found guilty of controlling prostitution for gain, acquiring criminal property and two counts of concealing criminal property following a two and a half week trial at Inner London Crown Court.
Seu was handed a five-year sentence and Vittoriano a two-year suspended sentence at the same court on Wednesday, 15 December.
On 29 May 2014 officers from the Met’s Organised Crime Command attended a property in Gloucester Place, W1U, with a search warrant and found five Romanian women inside, including one with a nude male customer, who claimed they were employed as sex workers.
Seu was arrested at the scene and taken for questioning.
Some of the women who claimed to be employed as sex workers said that they could earn between £300 and £500 a day but a large proportion of this would be pocketed by Seu and Vittoriano.
It is believed that since 23 January 2009, Seu and Vittoriano laundered the criminal proceeds through a network of eight limited companies owned by them. All eight companies were linked to the same five-storey Georgian house in Gloucester Place, W1U.
During the search officers found three chip and pin card machines, two laptops and a box containing nine mobile phones, five of which were linked to escort websites owned by Seu to attract business.
Throughout the five-year period the couple hid their true identities and were known to their employees and associates as Jon and Rosa. Officers discovered that in this perios Seu and Vittoriano’s business accounts were credited with just under £1.3m. Seu and Vittoriano were charged on 29 January 2015.
Detective Constable Silje Mikkelsen, of the Met’s Organised Crime Command, said: “I am pleased that Seu and Vittoriano have received a custodial sentence for these offences and glad that they will no longer be able to exploit vulnerable women for their own financial gain.
“They hid behind the guise of fake companies to launder the proceeds of a brothel and thought they’d get away with it. But our officers were able to establish what these people were doing and how much they were making from their crime.
“This should be taken as a warning to anyone intent on exploiting women in this way that the Met will take every step to find and prosecute them.”
