This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful.
Business News Legal Live Business
Former East Village owners jailed over brothel card payments scheme
By Chris Cooke | Published on Friday 26 June 2015
Shoreditch venue East Village shut down somewhat abruptly two years ago as its licence was suddenly revoked due to suspicions that two men involved with the business were “connected to serious crime”. Those involved with the music side of the operation expressed shock at the time as a number of booked in club nights were canned or moved to new locations.
But this week we found out more about those serious crimes as two of the venue’s former owners, Ashley Sheldrick and Terrence Hart, were jailed for a total of eighteen years for conspiring to run brothels and launder the money they generated.
According to the Evening Standard, with their Shoreditch venue struggling, Sheldrick and Hart set up bogus hospitality companies via which they secured chip and pin machines that they then provided to seven brothels across London. Customers at the brothels were then able to pay for sex and drugs via the card payment machines, with the East Village duo taking a cut. Some cards were then scammed.
Sheldrick admitted the charges and was jailed for eight years, while Hart was found guilty of the same crimes and was jailed for ten years. Two other associates received shorter sentences for similar charges in relation to the enterprise.
Confiscation proceedings are now under way to claw back monies made through the laundering scheme, with Detective Sergeant Geoff Donoghue telling reporters: “Our investigation started over two years ago. At the time, the use of bogus companies laundering vice money via chip and pin machines was very new”.
He went on: “It served to speed up the money laundering process and further enabled brothel users under the influence of drink and or drugs to be defrauded. Our evidence suggests that in three years, the group made around £12.3 million. I am pleased with the sentences these individuals have received and we are now seeking to recover as much of that money as possible”.
