Private detective employed to tail ‘dishonest husband’ tells of second he realised his goal was really serving to to run an enormous prostitution ring trafficking ladies in from Southeast Asia to use them

Catching cheating partners in the act is the bread-and-butter of detective work. But private investigator Daniel Smith got more than he bargained for when a young woman approached him with concerns her husband was having an affair.

‘She said he would often be away from home for days and weeks at a time claiming to be working, but never had any money’, Daniel said.  

What started off as an ordinary matrimonial surveillance job, turned into a large-scale investigation when he accidentally uncovered a prostitution ring in the UK.

The operation involved young women from Southeast Asia who were being moved around the country — to affluent areas — using Airbnb to avoid them getting caught.

Daniel followed his client’s husband from Birmingham to Bath, London to Cheshire and Leamington Spa, over the course of several months, collecting evidence. 

He told MailOnline he realised there was more to this case when he saw male customers sat at the bus stop, waiting to be allowed entry into one of the ‘brothels’. 

‘I remember having an address under surveillance and he (the client’s husband) answered the door telling customers to sit in the bus stop as the girls they’d come to visit were busy with other clients and had gone over on their times,’ Daniel said.

‘They’d see tens of guys between them on a busy day.’

Footage taken by Daniel, published on TikTok, shows the moment police officers conducted a raid on one of the properties and arrested the ringleaders. 

Daniel, who founded Anderson & Co surveillance just five years ago, said ‘absolutely nothing’ shocks him anymore. He’s seen scammers fake their own deaths, come back from the dead and even carry out their crimes from inside a jail cell.

When he first took on this matrimonial surveillance job, he was quickly able to establish that the husband was having an affair.

‘We got him under surveillance and were able to confirm that he was actually in a relationship with an escort who had come over from SE Asia,’ Daniel said.

‘He moved himself into a property at the time, with the escort, and a group of other girls who were all escorting too, and helped them run the show. He would even be at the address when men would visit to use their services (including his girlfriend).

‘He assisted them with moving large amounts of money abroad back to their home countries and moved them around the country using Airbnb to avoid them being caught.’

When the police conducted the raid, Daniel said, it was confirmed the women had overstayed their visas. 

‘By having them under surveillance we were also able to identify the ‘boss’ who would visit them on a weekly basis to collect cash — she was a Thai national running the operation here in the UK,’ Daniel added.

‘Through technical means we were able to establish that that the girls would all pay approximately 30 to 35k to come to the UK and would pay 50% upfront and then the remaining amount once here in the UK and working.

‘Again, through intelligence gathered we were also able to confirm that most of the girls that were part of the ‘ring’ had all previously worked in the middle east and Korea, where they would earn enough money within the sex trade to be able to afford to come to the UK. The UK was seen as the golden ticket.’

Since 2019, Daniel has caught hundreds of cheaters, fraudsters and romance scammers — many of whom he says are ‘living very nice lifestyles off the back of their lies and deceit’.

He said he often wonders how fraudsters sleep at night, but if his career has taught him anything, ‘it’s that they sleep much better than me or you’.

‘I think doing what we do, it’s very much like the police. We are dealing with the worst in society and seeing and hearing just how manipulative and deceitful people can be,’ Daniel said. 

‘Absolutely nothing shocks me anymore. I think it’s probably made me a tad cynical though.’

In the last few years, Daniel and his Birmingham-based team have witnessed a stark rise in the number of romance scams, which he believes has been exacerbated by the cost-of-living crisis and the rise of online dating apps. Scamming has become almost a side-hustle for some.  

He said: ‘We noticed a difference just after Covid. I think with people being at home more, interacting online and using dating apps.

‘But there’s been an even bigger influx again over the last 12 to 18 months, and almost by accident we’ve become a tracing company. There’s such a high demand for traces and background checks.

‘I think it’s the way the way the world is now. More people are single, more people are looking to find somebody online and there’s more of a demand and so there’s more opportunity for scammers.

‘I don’t think it will ever die off, I think it’s only going to get worse. It must be a minefield for single people in their twenties and thirties at the moment.

‘And these scammers, they’re doing it on their phones while they go about their daily business. They’re doing it while they’re in the gym or whatever. It’s so easy for them to create an alias online and they trawl through social media apps looking for someone who fits their profile’.

The majority of Daniel’s clients tend to be women in their 40s and 50s. They are often women who have recently lost loved ones or been through a divorce and may be vulnerable. 

Dan recently had a female client from London who was being catfished for around two years. 

‘She knew something wasn’t right, and she told the guy she thought she was talking to that she was going to have him investigated,’ Dan said. 

‘It was so bizarre because the person catfishing would buy her expensive gifts, including a £1,500 espresso machine sent to her home address. 

‘She went out for a meal one Saturday night with her friends and she was sat in a shisha bar and a couple of days later the catfish sent her a photograph of her in the bar with her friends with the caption: ‘I’ve got eyes on you all the time, you’ll never find out who I am.’

‘The lady went back to the shisha bar and went through the CCTV footage, but it was a really busy bar with lots of groups of women and men — and she was getting nowhere with it. She just couldn’t tell who had taken this picture.’

Dan and his team carried out a background check and managed to identify who the individual was through a PayPal payment which had been made.

‘It was a woman who my client knew,’ Dan said. ‘My client would often see her around town and while on the school run. She’d never spoken to her, but she’d obviously become obsessed with my client.’

A different female client came to Daniel because she was suspicious of her husband’s behaviour and thought he may be having an affair. 

The woman had been married to her husband for 30 years. He was a taxi driver who was rarely at home, working six or seven days a week from 6am until midnight.

‘We were quickly able to establish that 25 years ago he had bought another house in a nearby town,’ Daniel said. 

‘A female had been living at the address throughout that 25-year period. We then focused our searches on the female and were able to obtain photographs of the children from social media where it was quite obvious the children were his. He had, in fact, been living a complete double life throughout the entire marriage.

‘We conducted further investigations via surveillance on this address to strengthen our client’s claims against her husband. 

‘There were days where he wouldn’t work at all, and he’d drive straight to the address, pick the two younger kids up and do the school run. 

‘He’d then spend the day at home, in the garden or out shopping and on local trips with his second wife. 

‘We handed everything over to our client and advised that she seek legal advice and report him as soon as possible.’

When asked about the signs to look out for, Daniel said ‘I think one common theme is that they love bomb’.

He said: ‘They lead people into a false sense of security, hidden behind the alias of being very successful (doctors, surgeons, bodyguards, working offshore, property investors etc) and always using images of desirable men.

‘Their backstories, however, are always different and varied’.

Daniel urged anyone who has sparked up a conversation online to do their due diligence. 

‘Listen to your gut feeling,’ Daniel said. ‘If it doesn’t feel right then it isn’t. And if it’s the case that you’re already invested in someone then get in touch with somebody like us because we can give people the answers’.

‘People tend to think that they don’t happen but it’s happening all around us, all the time, and we take phone calls daily.’

Founded in 2019, Anderson & Co has helped almost 2,500 people across the UK and abroad, with trips to North America, Lisbon, Jersey, Ghana, Malta and Croatia to find clients the answers they so desperately crave.

They offer services including matrimonial surveillance, insurance fraud, corporate surveillance, people tracing, background checks and more.

In some matrimonial surveillance cases, installing a GPS tracking system can be an important part of an investigation.

According to Anderson & Co, it is ‘certainly not illegal to install a tracking system in a vehicle if you are the vehicle owner and you can track other users such as your spouse so long as they give permission.

‘If the vehicle is co-owned by both parties, either party may install a GPS tracker to secretly track the other.’

Trackers do not record audio, nor do they take photographic evidence and are deployed onto the exterior of a vehicle.