A WOMAN has been jailed for 18 months for running a brothel in Leeds where illegal immigrants were working as prostitutes. Police and immigration officials raided the premises in Nickleby Road, Burmantofts, after an anonymous complaint to Crimestoppers.

The mid-terraced property was advertised in a local evening newspaper as providing massage services, but when the raid was carried out on April 28 one woman was involved in sexual activities with a man in a first-floor bedroom and another with a male client in a second-floor room.

Helen Sanderson, prosecuting, told Leeds Crown Court yesterday that both those women were from Thailand. One had stayed illegally after her six-month visa had expired, the other had been in the UK for some years after being brought into the country on a false passport.

Mrs Sanderson said the door of the brothel was answered by Ylin Wang, and when her home address in Carlton Towers, Little London, Leeds, was later searched, documents were found which revealed she had arranged the tenancy of the premises in Nickleby Road and had also booked the advert in the newspaper.

The woman whose visa had expired told officers that two months earlier she was working in a Manchester brothel when Wang asked her to come and work for her.

The second woman said when she entered the UK on a false passport she was given the number of agents who could provide work. Wang had subsequently asked her to work for her and had arranged her travel.

Wang, 37, claimed at the time she was doing nothing wrong. She told police she believed the women were just entertaining male friends, but subsequently pleaded guilty to two charges of controlling prostitution for gain and one of trafficking a woman by arranging her travel within the UK.

Andrew Stranex, for Wang, said both women working at the premises were entirely willing to do so, and there was no suggestion of any coercion or force being used.

Jailing Wang, Judge Kerry Macgill said he accepted the women were willing to provide sexual services "but what choice in life they had, given that they were in the circumstances they were, is very difficult for me to assess."

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