A human trafficker who used Facebook to prey on a “naïve” Romanian teenager before forcing her into prostitution in the UK has been jailed.

Marius Dragusin, of Skeltons Lane, Leyton, was sentenced to six years behind bars at Southwark Crown Court on Monday (October 16) after admitting trafficking and prostitution charges.

The court heard how the 29-year-old lured the vulnerable teen from Germany to London in October 2016 after promising in online chats to “rescue” her from her desperate life as a sex worker. 

The court heard once the victim arrived in the UK she was told to work in a Walthamstow brothel and advertised for £100-an-hour.

The girl caught a sexually transmitted infection while Dragusin and associate Lacramioara Nicolaie, 33, raked in profits and sent up to £30,000 back to Romania.

Dragusin threatened to upload photographs of the girl to her father's Facebook profile if she told her family about her plight.

The trafficker had first contacted the teen through social media after she moved from Romania to Germany to work in a cafe in early 2016.

She had been promised 1,000 Euros a month and hoped to send money back to her family, but the cafe's Turkish owners paid her just 400 Euros and asked her to work as a prostitute to earn more.

Dragusin offered to “rescue” the youngster from the situation in a Facebook message and helped her move to a new German flat in August 2016.

The court then heard how Dragusin persuaded her to work in a German brothel to raise money to move to the UK.

Prosecutor, Richard Milne, said: “He explained that she would have to work as a prostitute, she would have her own room, she would take clients there or take clients in and have sex with them.

“He insisted and said this was the only way they were going to raise enough money to come to England.

“She thought that he would look after her.

“Although he was kind and did look after her, he was also getting angry with her and getting insistent that she would have to work as a prostitute to raise the money.”

Dragusin supervised the teen's Facebook messages to her mother in Romania as he lived off her earnings as a prostitute between August and September last year.

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Lacramioara Nicolaie had helped advertise the girl as a prostitute

Prosecutors claim he brought her to London on a coach the following month to work as a £100-an-hour prostitute in Walthamstow.

Nicolaie allegedly uploaded adverts offering the complainant's services to the internet while she stayed at a nearby “reception house”.

Mr Milne said the victim “felt she had no way out of the situation she found herself in”.

He added: “She was alone, she didn't speak English, she had no family in this country. She was shouted at by Marius, she worked, as I say, the whole time.

“She was totally controlled, she was young, naive, in a foreign country unable to do anything about her situation.

“She of course was able occasionally to speak to her mother on the phone but he [Dragusin] controlled that, she couldn't speak freely to her, he was always at her side.”

Officers raided the brothel and arrested Dragusin and Nicolaie after the victim's mother raised concerns with German authorities, which were passed on to the Metropolitan Police.

Nicolaie was given a one-year suspended sentence for her role in the plot after Judge Martin Griffith heard she is the sole carer for four children aged between four and 15.

Jailing Dragusin for six years, the judge said: “[The victim's] evidence in the trial was that you [Dragusin] required her to engage as a prostitute in Germany.

“You then brought her here to the home of [Nicolaie] and after a few days she was taken to a brothel.

“She was forced to see many clients and her earnings were made available, at least in part, to you both.”

The court heard the brothel was run by Nicolaie's sister, but she was not named and prosecutors said she has not been charged.

Dragusin, who has previously received a police caution for advertising prostitutes in phone boxes around London, said he wants to return to Romania after he completes his sentence.

Judge Griffith added: “The victim complains, not surprisingly, of the effect of knowing you and what you did to her has had on her relationships with men, and while she was working as a prostitute she got an STD.

“You threatened her and threatened to expose her to her family as a means to control her.”