Sadistic Pimp Who Branded Girls He Forced Into Prostitution With Barcodes Is Jailed

A Romanian pimp who tattooed barcodes on women he forced into prostitution has been jailed for 44 years.

The man also branded his victims – some of whom were under 18 – with his name, and treated them ‘like cattle’.

The evil sex trafficker, identified in court only as Iulan T, was jailed after being found guilty of sex trafficking and exploitation, gender violence, illegal detention, forced prostitution and forging false documents.

The Supreme Court in Madrid heard how the leader of the sex ring would trick Romanian girls, whose family were in financial difficulty and usually illiterate, into coming to Spain, where he would then force them into prostitution.

Thirteen others from the gang, including his wife, daughter and other family members, were also given prison sentences of between 1 and 31 years for the same crimes.

They would use extreme physical violence to make the girls do what they wanted.

The girls were kept in squalid conditions

In one instance, one of the young women, a 19-year-old Spanish girl, had tried to run away but was caught. The gang then kept her tied up to a radiator for days without food and continuously beat her and rubbed bleach on her face.

The tattoos were used to encourage the women not to run away and to mark whose 'property’ they were. In some instances, he also tattooed his nickname 'Nelutu’. Prostitutes in the ring were referred to as 'packages’, 'suitcases’, or 'bicycles’, police said.

Some of the protected witnesses who testified against him told how Iulan, already a wanted man in Romania, would film scenes where they were tortured in order to get them to agree to become prostitutes.

They said he got a perverse pleasure out of watching the videos again.

The judge condemned 'the abhorrent behaviour’ of the gang leader in particular, who he reproached for his 'complacency in the suffering caused to the victims’, 'satisfaction of perverse instincts, and intentionally causing unnecessary harm’, as well as 'maximum pain and suffering’.

The Spanish High Tribune rejected all arguments from the defence and found sufficient evidence to sentence the gang members, who had admitted to some of the crimes during the trial.

Police arrested the gang, who were all Romanians, during raids last year and seized guns and ammunition as well as 140,000 euro in cash, which had been hidden in a false ceiling, a large amount of gold jewellery and five vehicles, three of which were described as luxury cars.

The gang was made up of two separate groups, referred to as 'clans’ with each dedicated to controlling prostitution along fixed stretches of a street in downtown Madrid.

The women were controlled at all times to ensure 'money was taken off them immediately,’ and in some cases they had the amounts that they owed their pimps tattooed on their bodies as well.

Pictures from Central European News