UK Jails Bulgarian Grandfather, 33, for Sex Trafficking

Crime | October 18, 2011, Tuesday // 09:07
Bulgaria: UK Jails Bulgarian Grandfather, 33, for Sex Trafficking Mahmudov was jailed for six years for three counts of sex trafficking and three years for three counts of controlling prostitution for gain, all to be served concurrently. Photo by the Tottenham and Wood Green Journal

A 33-year-old Bulgarian with two kids and a grandson has been jailed for six years in the United Kingdom after he pushed his lover into prostitution, local media reported.

Pimp Mehmed Mahmudov, who was already married with two teenage kids and a grandson, forced his victim to sell her body from a flat in Green Lanes, Harringay, after meeting her at a wedding in Bulgaria two years ago and duping her into following him to London, the Tottenham and Wood Green Journal reported.

The terrified woman, who cannot be named for legal reasons, had been made to perform any sex acts clients asked for, but finally managed to escape after four weeks when her captor went out shopping.

She raised the alarm in March by running up to a smoker outside Finsbury Park tube station and pleading in the only English she knew "help, police, please".

Her discovery led to the unmasking of an international trafficking gang, which captured impoverished women in Bulgaria and transported them to the UK to be used as prostitutes, servicing up to eight men a day for up to GBP 200 a time.

Mahmudov, of no fixed abode, was more than a week into a trial on 11 charges of conspiracy to traffic, controlling prostitution for gain and false imprisonment when he dramatically changed several of his pleas to guilty at Croydon Crown Court on Wednesday, October 12.

But he continued to deny being involved in a pan-European sex trafficking gang.

Prosecutor James Dawson told the court how large amounts of the trafficking's profits were sent back to gang members in Bulgaria while the captive girls in London received nothing – an allegation Mahmudov denies.

Judge Pratt was quoted as saying: "The international trafficking in prostitution is now a serious problem in all civilised countries. Young women from poor backgrounds are often lured, sometimes forced, or otherwise coerced into travelling to this country to sell themselves – and to sell themselves for the profit of others."

Mahmudov was jailed for six years for three counts of sex trafficking and three years for three counts of controlling prostitution for gain, all to be served concurrently.

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Tags: Bulgarian, United Kingdom, trafficking, sex, prostitution, pimp

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