A PCSO has been convicted of blackmailing, imprisoning and sexually exploiting women in Newham and Waltham Forest.

Kabeer Yousaf, 31, will be sentenced along with four others later this year after being found guilty of the crimes while on duty.

In 2012, Yousaf, then a PCSO for Green Street Safer Neighbourhoods Team in Newham, contacted a woman in her 40s on an adult website.

He arranged to have sex with her at a brothel.

After doing so, he returned, wearing his uniform, and demanded that she pay him £2,000 to remove her details from the Metropolitan Police Service's (MPS) data systems.

Fearful, the woman paid him £1,500.

He did the same at another brothel in East Ham.

The owner paid him £500 a fortnight.

Yousaf visited the brothel on duty, sometimes having sex with the women there in lieu of payments.

The same woman was also blackmailed by Ionut-Viorel Motroc, 35, and Bogdan-Stefan Gherghel, 30.

The Romanian men visited the address and demanded that the women there work at one of Motroc's brothels or else pay £10,000.

One of the women worked for him at an address on Ranelagh Road, West Ham, for one night.

A fight broke out at the brothel in St Stephen's Road, West Ham, and police were called.

The matter was referred to the MPS Trafficking and Kidnap Unit (TKU).

They executed search warrants at brothels linked to Ionut-Viorel Motroc, including one in Vansittart Road, Leytonstone, where they found a woman locked in a room.

She was so scared of him that she refused to speak to police and instead returned to Romania.

Eventually she was persuaded to give key evidence.

She told police how she had come to the Waltham Forest brothel to be a sex worker.

There she met the Ionut-Viorel Motroc.

He took her money, phone and passport and she was imprisoned.

Police also found recorded video footage proving that Yousaff had colluded with them.

The footage shows him in uniform at a brothel on Barking Road taking women’s details.

The gang made the women here pay £1,000 for posting their advertisement cards up in the neighbourhood, which Ionut-Viorel Motroc said was ‘his area’.

Detective Chief Inspector Phil Brewer, of the TKU, said: "Kabeer Yousaf held a trusted position in the Newham community, which he exploited to abuse vulnerable women and help the very people he should have been stopping.

"Yousaf's actions have undermined everything that the MPS stands for and the Met will do everything in its power to ensure that those few police staff and officers who commit crimes are brought to court.”

Yousaf, Gherghel and the Motrocs appeared at Snaresbrook Crown Court for trial on October 6 last year and were convicted on December 29.

A sentencing date is to be set.

Kabeer Yousaf, 31, of Barley Lane, llford, was convicted of two counts of blackmail and conspiracy to commit misconduct.

He was found not guilty of rape and one count of conspiracy to control prostitution for gain.

Ionut-Viorel Motroc, 35, of no fixed address, was convicted of conspiracy to pervert the course of justice, trafficking and organising prostitution charges and false imprisonment among others.

Bogdan-Stefan Gherghel, 30, of Keogh Road, Stratford, was convicted of eight charges from perverting the course of justice to conspiracy to commit misconduct in a judicial or public office and controlling prostitution.

Monica-Olimpia Motroc, 35, of Romford Road in Newham, was convicted of controlling prostitution for gain, false imprisonment and removing criminal property.

She was found not guilty of one count of controlling prostitution for gain.

In October 2014, Florentina-Ancuta Biliuta, 24, of Milton Avenue, East Ham,pleaded guilty to perverting the course of justice, for which she was sentenced to 23 months' imprisonment on December 23.

Three more people have been arrested in connection with this investigation.