Jailed: bulldog breeder who ran ‘conveyor belt’ of prostitutes using trafficked women

Hong Chin bred and judged bulldogs while trafficking women for prostitution
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A bulldog breeder who ran a £100,000 prostitution ring likened to a “sexual conveyor belt” involving Asian women illegally trafficked to the UK has been jailed for four years.

Hong Chin, 46, put a string of women from China and South Korea to work as £100-an-hour escorts at budget hotels across the south of England, advertising their services on adultwork.com.

Chin was also living a double life as a bulldog breeder on a country estate in Esher. He was a well-known judge in dog competitions and sent his 10-year-old daughter to a £1,400-a-month private school.

Chin’s ex-partner Li Wei Gao, 44, was in on the scam, helping to advertise the escort business and reserving hotel rooms for customers in across the south of England and Wales.

There was evidence Chin, along with a former lover, Ting Li Lu, 48, was involved directly in trafficking at least two women into the UK.

Accomplices: Hong’s ex-partner Li Wei Gao, left, and another lover, Ting Li Lu

At the Old Bailey today, Judge Philip Katz QC sentenced Chin to four years in prison. Lu and Gao are due to be sentenced next week.

“You led a law-abiding life, making a comfortable living by honest means, but I’m afraid I think you became greedy”, he said.

“It seems to me this was a sustained, cynical and organised exploitation of women whose circumstances meant at least some of them were vulnerable. Over a period of years, you took your share of the sex workers’ earnings.”

He added Chin was known as a “boss” in the illegal sex trade, receiving trafficked women to use as prostitutes for a period of time before passing them on to others. The prostitution ring, operated between February 2013 and June 2015. In summing up the case, Judge Katz described the operation as a “sexual conveyor belt”.

The court heard Chin is believed to have been born in Malaysia and may have moved to the UK in 1998, but the Home Office are not sure of his immigration status.

Chin, of Dunstall, Burton-Upon-Trent, Staffs, was convicted of two counts of conspiracy to control prostitution for gain and two counts of conspiracy to traffic for sexual exploitation.

Gao, from Oxshott, and Lu, of Portsmouth, were convicted of one count of conspiracy to control prostitution for gain and one count of conspiracy to traffic for sexual exploitation.

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