Harrogate dominatrix who ran international sex trafficking racket to be deported

Fabiana De Souza, 43, and her English husband Gareth Derby, 55, were jailed for a combined ten years in February last year after they were caught running a sex den in Harrogate, where many of the sex workers were based after being flown in from abroad.

Today they appeared at Leeds Crown Court for a financial-confiscation hearing under the Proceeds of Crime Act.

These proceedings will determine how much the former couple has to pay back for their mega-money trafficking scheme, which involved sex workers from Portugal and Brazil.

Defence barrister Michael Fullerton said that full analysis of the defendants’ assets and finances had not yet been completed and De Souza had yet to provide her own statements.

He said the defence would be contesting the undisclosed sum being sought by the prosecution.

Mr Fullerton asked for an adjournment in the proceedings to allow time for De Souza to serve the statement but asked for a postponed date no later than August 21 when she would be deported from the country.

He said Derby’s defence team also needed more time to ascertain the value of a car belonging to him which appeared to have ended up in Portugal.

He claimed that some of De Souza’s financial gains during the offending period were from her work as a beautician and in the fitness industry.

He said this money was “not earned by her as a dominatrix with her own website during that period”.

Mr Fullerton claimed that De Souza’s involvement in trafficking six prostitutes from abroad was for a “limited period” only.

He claimed that Derby had transferred some of the money into De Souza’s account and she had received some legitimately from a family member.

During their trial at the same court in December 2021, the jury heard that De Souza and Derby, from Norfolk, had been “flying in” sex workers from Europe and South America.

Prosecutor Nicholas Lumley KC said the couple treated the women like “commodities” as they made massive sums from their illicit trade.

De Souza, who provided dominatrix and discipline services to punters in Harrogate, was said to be the ringleader of the “large-scale commercial operation” in which she and Derby, a high-earning engineer and machine specialist, flew in prostitutes from Brazil and Portugal, paid for their flights and met them at airports, before whisking them off to sex dens where men paid for “massages” and “full (sex) services”.

They had exploited the “vulnerable” women for “significant” financial gain by “controlling (their) finances (and) choice of clients”.

The prostitutes were put at a “significant financial disadvantage” and forced to lie to police to avoid detection.

De Souza and Derby, who ran the lucrative business from their home in East Anglia, were arrested in August 2018 and charged with controlling prostitution for financial gain and human trafficking.

They each denied the charges, but the jury found them guilty on both counts following a 10-day trial.

The charges related to six named women who worked at the Harrogate sex den and two properties in Norfolk between April 2017 and August 2018.

Mr Lumley said De Souza rented a two-bed flat in Harrogate town centre through a letting agency “so it could be used for sex which would be advertised on the internet by these two defendants”.

“There was another (rented) flat in Norfolk put to similar use and when that became unavailable, even the home of these defendants was converted for use by sex workers,” he added.

“As soon as the (prostitutes) arrived here, they would be installed in the flat in Harrogate or elsewhere, always with the purpose of being available for sex.”

De Souza and Derby would pay for sex adverts within hours of picking the women up from airport around the country and “setting them up” at the flat on Bower Road in Harrogate.

The adverts were placed on the classified escort websites Viva Street and Adult Work and included raunchy descriptions of the women.

They took the bookings and “made the arrangements (with the clients)” who would pay various amounts - from £80 for half an hour to over £1,000 for an overnight stay.

The money usually ended up in De Souza’s Halifax, Bank of Scotland and NatWest bank accounts, but on occasions “cash simply changed hands, handed by the sex workers to one of these two”.

Between May 2017 and August 2018, some £38,000 cash was deposited into De Souza’s bank accounts at branches in Harrogate and Norfolk.

About £9,000 of bank transfers were then made to accounts in Brazil and Portugal using a money-services bureau.

Mr Lumley said one woman was flown in on an EasyJet flight from Amsterdam and was picked up by the couple who had driven from Norfolk in a 4x4 pick-up.

They would arrange for a train ticket to be available at the airport as they moved the women around the country “or put them on a bus and sent them up to Harrogate or somewhere else”.

Following her arrest, De Souza, who is serving her sentence at a women’s prison in Peterborough, told police she had left her husband in September 2017 with the intention of divorcing him and moved to Harrogate “where no-one knew me”.

She had rented the Bower Road flat for over £700 a month and let rooms out to “others”, some of whom were “friends from Portugal”.

Derby said only that he had an “inkling that Fabia worked at the Harrogate flat as a dominatrix”.

In a text sent to a friend in January 2018, he boasted of being a “smuggler of women”.

Police trawled through the bank accounts of De Souza and her husband and found they had spent “thousands on air fares” and over £2,000 on Viva Street adverts alone.

An undercover officer posed as a client to make appointments for the sex den on Bower Road.

De Souza would answer the calls in “broken English” and arrange the appointment where the officer was offered a “range of services”.

On his first visit, dressed in civilian clothes, he was met by a sex worker named ‘Lisa’ wearing a “revealing” short-length dressing gown who buzzed him into the flats above shops.

He made “numerous” such visits to other women after responding to adverts including one for a “Hot Brazilian, full service” – she was about 57 years’ old but was advertised as 33.

De Souza and Derby, of Town Street, Upwell, in south-west Norfolk, were each jailed for five years in February 2022.

They are still serving those sentences in different parts of the country and had to be transported to Leeds for the confiscation hearing.

Judge Mr Stubbs KC adjourned for a further hearing on June 27 when the case might be resolved but is likely to go to a contested, half-day hearing on July 28, when the prosecution and defence will set out their cases for a greater or lesser financial settlement based on the defendants’ assets and finances.