Courts allow alleged brothel owner to keep profits
An application by the State for the confiscation of €670,000 as the estimated profits from five brothels run by a former cruise-ship chef has been refused by Judge Frank O’Donnell at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court.
Paul Humphreys (aged 63), a native of Cork city centre, who received a two-year sentence and a €40,000 fine in May 2007 for running five brothels was estimated to have earned as much as €780,000 a year from them.
Humphreys, who now resides in Cyprus, and with an address at Harty Court, Lower Ormond Quay, Dublin 1, pleaded guilty to knowingly allowing three separate premises in the city centre to be used for the purpose of prostitution between August 31, 2005 and March 26, 2006.
Humphreys and his wife have an apartment in Cyprus, the value of which has not yet been estimated and have two bank accounts that the authorities in Cyprus have frozen following instructions from the Irish Director of Public Prosecutions.
Judge O'Donnell refused the application to confiscate the money because he said there was not enough evidence to allow it.
"It galls me that this man was drawing disability from the State and the Irish tax payer while he was making money for himself by working these unfortunate women," Judge O'Donnell said.
He had adjourned the forfeiture application two weeks ago to consider the facts after commenting that he did not know what Humphreys' wife worked at in Cyprus.
"She could be a high flying banker, a lawyer or a barrister making a fortune in Cyprus."
Judge O’Donnell said there was no valuation for the property the couple owned in Cyprus and there was no way to determine if it had been purchased with legitimate or illegitimate funds.
Mr Fergal Foley BL, prosecuting, said that after gardai took testimonies from the prostitutes working in the brothels and examined the business accounts it was estimated that Humphreys had made a profit of €663,751.
Mr Sean Gillane BL, defending, said that his client opposed the confiscation on the basis that the court did not have the jurisdiction to interfere with bank accounts and a property abroad.
He said both the accounts and the apartment were held by Humphreys' wife and she had not been served with any documents by the State in relation to the forfeiture application. He submitted that the court did not know if the property was obtained with legitimate funds.
Detective Garda Deirdre Conway told the court at the sentence hearing in May 2007 that when gardaí arrived to arrest Humphreys they found him in his kitchen counting stacks of money - totalling €30,000 - and tallying it against several worksheets.
Further sums were found in various places in the brothels, making a total of €41,646 recovered during the operation. When gardai raided the premises, as part of the investigation arising out of Operation Quest, they found meticulous records of money taken and the number of clients.
Det. Gda Conway said the brothels were staffed by anything up to five girls at one time on a shift basis. There were two shifts a day. The girls were mainly from Eastern Europe and charged €150 for a half hour and €250 for a full hour of which they were allowed to keep half.
She told Mr Foley that in one ten hour shift over two brothels, there were 47 clients who brought in €8,730.
Det. Gda Conway said there was a call centre which took the bookings from 10 different mobile numbers, advertised on various internet sites.
