Brothel owner told to pay €2.2m or face 10 years in jail

AN IRISH brothel keeper who is serving a prison sentence in Wales has been ordered to pay the equivalent of €2.2 million or face another 10 years in jail.

Thomas Joseph (TJ) Carroll, originally from Bagenalstown, Co Carlow, is serving seven years in a Welsh jail for a string of offences relating to brothels he kept in both the Republic and the North.

A confiscation order was granted against Carroll (49) at Cardiff Crown Court for £1,902,496 which was sought by the UK’s Serious Organised Crime Agency.

The money is the proceeds from Carroll’s prostitution ring which he ran from a house in Castlemartin, a hamlet in Pembrokeshire.

The agency secured the order last Friday and revealed yesterday that Carroll’s assets include four houses in Wales, three houses in South Africa, four cars including two Mercedes and a personal registration number plate.

There are other properties in Bulgaria and Mozambique which will now be subject to confiscation proceedings.

Judge Neil Bidder QC described Carroll as “determined and astute” and he noted that Carroll was prepared to “squirrel away” his ill-gotten money by buying property abroad. Carroll fled to Wales in 2006 as the result of a Garda investigation which found he was operating brothels in the southeast and in Galway.

He set up his operation in an old priory where he and his partner Shamiela Clark, an ex-prostitute, ran a network of nearly 50 brothels in Ireland. From there they fielded 300 calls a day from men looking for sex services.

Carroll and Clark were arrested in December 2008 in Wales where crime agency officers found 70 mobile telephones all connected to websites advertising prostitution businesses, an address book containing details of rented flats and landlords, rate sheets and a safety deposit box related to properties in Bulgaria, South Africa and the UK as well as approximately €20,000 in cash.

His daughter Toma Carroll was arrested two weeks later and was given a two-year sentence for money laundering.

In February last year, her father was given five years for conspiracy to control prostitution and two years for conspiracy to money launder, both sentences to run consecutively. Clark was given 2½ years for conspiracy to control prostitution and one year for conspiracy to money launder, also to run consecutively.

Their trial heard that Carroll recruited women who were economically vulnerable from South America, Portugal and Nigeria. Six of the women were trafficked and forced into prostitution.

Some of the Nigerian women believed they were escaping life in Nigeria to a better life in Ireland. One girl was 15 when she was trafficked, another 17. Some of the women who gave evidence at Carroll’s trial were supported by the charity Ruhama which provides support for women involved in prostitution.

Yesterday, spokeswoman Geraldine Rowley welcomed the confiscation order and said it was important to send out the message that pimping should not pay.