Gloucester gang members jailed for sex trafficking ring

Three members of an organised crime group in Gloucester have been jailed for a combined total of 25 years.

Police believe they were running one of the largest sex trafficking operations in the South West, forcing at least 20 women to work in a network of brothels.

Gang ringleader Maciej Kozlowski, Piotr Lebek, and Agata Jankowski were all sentenced at Bristol Crown Court.

The victims, mainly from Eastern Europe, were forced to work around the clock, seeing up to 10 clients a day.

Some of the women were told they would be working in a restaurant, co-owned by Kozlowski.

Brothels were uncovered at flats in Gloucester, Cheltenham, Swindon, Kettering, Coventry, Nottingham, Worcester and South Wales.

One woman's profile had been active in seven different towns.

"The victims were preyed upon because of their vulnerability," said Det Supt Charlotte Tucker, from the South West Regional Organised Crime Unit.

"They're here, they're displaced, they're in a different country, language barriers and they owe money. Once they get into that cycle its really difficult to get away.

"They are frightened by the very nature of being controlled by the criminals, who we know had access to imitation firearms that looked like real firearms, and I'm sure that's what the victims thought they were."

She added: "We've had some really brave victims who have come forward in this case to give evidence."

Kozlowski, Lebek and Jankowska pleaded guilty to trafficking at least 20 women over two years.

Gang ringleader, 52-year-old Kozlowski, formerly of Midland Road in Gloucester, was sentenced for a total of 14 years for rape, trafficking and causing prostitution.

Appearing in court alongside Kozlowski, who was also convicted two years ago of raping a woman he had hired as a cleaner before coercing her into prostitution, were Lebek, Jankowski and Grzybowska.

Lebek, 57, formerly of Faulkner Street in Gloucester, who would collect the victims from the airport and move them to different brothels, was jailed for seven years and six months.

He also collected the money which police believe was around £300 a day from each of the women.

Jankowski, 37, from Gloucester, was sent to prison for three years and four months for arranging flights into the UK and organising which brothels the victims would work at.

Grzybowska, 45, from Musselburgh in Scotland, will be sentenced in March. Police said she acted effectively as the main "receptionist" for the brothels.

"She had tens and tens of mobile phones and on the back of them the phone number that purported to that phone and the name of the sex worker," said Det Supt Tucker.

"She would answer the phone in the guise of them and organise the visit for that worker who was based down in the south west."

The gang advertised on two websites for sex workers - AdultWork and Vivastreet - who both told the BBC they operated a zero tolerance policy of sexual exploitation.

A spokesperson for Vivastreet said: "We take all cases of exploitation extremely seriously and deploy industry-leading safety measures to detect, remove, and report any criminal content on our site, including adverts linked to human trafficking.

"We will continue to work closely with law enforcement agencies to ensure that there is no safe space for perpetrators on our platform."

The brothels run by the gang were mainly on residential streets, and police officers said community help is key to them cracking down on this type of exploitation in the future.

"If someone's in a property and they never really seem to come out, or very occasionally, and there are lots of male visitors to the property all day long, then we really want to know about that," Det Supt Tucker said.

"It's the cumulative effect of people letting us know that means that we can do something and disrupt and dismantle organised crime groups who are effectively making an awful lot of money out of the misery of human beings."

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