Boss of luxury Camden brothel jailed for two years for laundering ‘millions’
11:15 24 July 2013
The Steam and Sun Health Club in Chalton Street. Picture: Google
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The owner of a high-end brothel in Camden who raked in millions of pounds from laundering its profits has been jailed for two years.
Ross Lawson employed around 25 women at the Steam and Sun Health Club, offering clients a variety of sex acts, including sex in tantric leather chairs.
The jury heard the business, which ran for seven years in Chalton Street, King’s Cross, turned over £1.1million in the 10 months before it was closed in a police raid in February last year, and raked in £75,000 every Friday night.
Judge Peter Murphy described the operation as being “as legitimate as a criminal enterprise could be” at the sentencing at Blackfriars Crown Court yesterday.
The business had annual licenses for massage and alcohol sales from Camden Council and paid national insurance, tax and VAT.
Lawson, 32, of Oakwood Road, St Albans, was jailed for 18 months for one count of converting or transferring criminal property and two counts of possessing criminal property, after being found guilty.
The sentence will run alongside a two-year jail term for keeping a brothel used for prostitution. He will serve half his sentence in custody before being released on licence.
Lawson appeared alongside his sister Jade, 27, a law graduate of the University of Hertfordshire, who lives in Linkway Parade, Hampshire.
She was sentenced to a six-month suspended prison sentence for receiving £30,000 from her brother, generated from brothel profits, to pay off student debts.
Lawson and his sister stood trial with three others, including alleged barman Waldemar Walczak, 29, of Cooper’s Lane, King’s Cross, who will be sentenced in August.
