Women trafficked in Bolton and Blackburn, court hears

The conspirators allegedly took half of the women’s earnings by selling sex to male guests via online adverts and controlling where they could go at all times.

Laszlo Matus, 52, was brought before Bolton Crown Court this week accused of being one of the gang, who had profited by exploiting women between October 2021 and November 2022.

Prosecutor Marte Alnaes said: “At some point in 2021 a plan was hatched to commit a number of crimes in and around Bolton, Blackburn, Birmingham and Preston.”

She added: “The investigation that went on during that time revealed an organised crime group that we say this defendant was involved in.”

The trial opened at Bolton Crown Court (Image: Newsquest)

Wearing glasses, a grey North Face T-shirt and a dark grey jacket, Matus listened on from the dock through a Hungarian interpreter as Ms Alnaes laid out her case.

She told the court the court that the gang sold the women’s services through an online agency and that they trafficked the victims around the country.

She said that the women were held to be in debt to the gang leaders, but it was “not always clear as to why or how much.”

Ms Alnaes told the jury of six men and six women that two people had already confessed to their part in the plot.

She claimed that Matus’ role  was “essentially, we say, to be the right-hand man to the other two.”

The prosecutor said that he was often found with the victims where they were staying which, she said, must have been “to keep an eye on the operation.”

Ms Alnaes said that evidence had shown Matus driving between cities, receiving money and taking victims to new locations.

She said that when police paid a series of “harm reduction visits” to victims’ homes, they found Matus there with them at Blackburn in August 2021 and then in Bolton in January 2022.

He was found with them again in February that same year in Blackburn and then in Preston the following August.

Matus was arrested abroad but never took part in a police interview.

The court was played a police interview with one of the gang’s victims where she described how she had come to the UK to find work but was unable to get a job and could not go home.

Speaking through a Hungarian interpreter, the woman told the officers that she owed the gang between £500 and £600 but “I don’t know why I would owe them anything.”

She said that while working for the gang she had to let the leaders know when she went to the shop and had to be available for sex work between 9am and 2am apart from Sundays.

The woman said there were certain things she “would not do” but that she could expect five to six “guests” each day at the house she was staying at.

The woman said: “So basically they knew about every single step we took, we always had to let them know if we were going anywhere.”

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She added: “But if they said the guest would be there at seven, we had to be there at seven.”

She told the officers that she “didn’t have anything to say” about Matus and that she had last seen him around a year and a half before the police interview.

Matus, of Beverley Road, Heaton, denies conspiracy to control prostitution for gain and conspiracy to arrange or facilitate travel of another person with a view to exploitation.

He also denies conspiring to conceal, disguise, convert, transfer or remove criminal property.

The trial continues.