A gang has been jailed for trafficking more than 100 women into the UK.

Led by 35-year-old Vishal Chaudhary, of Park View Gardens, Hendon, the five-strong gang booked flights for at least 120 women from Hungary, the Czech Republic and Poland and delivered them to brothels across London including Barnet, Enfield and Haringey. 

Some of the women had responded to online adverts while others had applied online for what they thought were administrative, cleaning and babysitting jobs - but when they arrived in the UK, they found themselves being forced or coerced into prostitution.

The gang controlled the women with threats of violence and intimidation, including threatening to harm or tell their families they were prostitutes.

They kept their passports in order to exert further control over them, and some women were made to have sex with up to 20 men a day.

The gang managed the victims from a makeshift call centre at a residential address in Parkview Gardens, Brent Cross, where they used more than 40 mobile phones to organise bookings on a commercial scale.

Each phone had details of the victims' working names, fees and brothel locations taped to them, and they charged clients between £30 and £100 per hour.

Detective Sergeant Alan Clark, of the trafficking and kidnap unit, said: "Many of the victims have been deeply traumatised by what this gang did to them, and displayed signs of severe distress when they told us what had happened to them. One victim's graphic account actually brought the interpreter to tears.

"They came to the UK for regular employment, to earn money to make a better life for themselves and their families. Instead, they found themselves trapped and at the mercy of this abusive group.

"The group applied a cold business mentality to their crime, treating women as no more than a commodity.”

The gang was convicted of a series of offences relating to trafficking and sexual exploitation of women aged between 18 and 45.

Chaudhary was sentenced at Croydon Crown Court yesterday to a total of 12 years imprisonment for conspiracy to traffic persons into the UK for sexual exploitation, 12 years for conspiracy to traffic persons within the UK for sexual exploitation and six years for conspiracy to control prostitution for gain - all to run concurrently.

Attila Kovacs, 33, a Hungarian national of Highview Gardens, New Southgate, was sentenced to a total of six years imprisonment and Kunal Chaudhary, 32, of Fog Lane, Manchester, was sentenced to a total of five  years imprisonment.

Krisztian Abel, 33, a Hungarian national of Green Lane, Ilford, was also sentenced to a total of ten years imprisonment, and his sister Szilvia Abel, 24, a Hungarian national from Budapest was sentenced to a total of three years imprisonment for their parts in the crime.