A MADAM who ran one of Southampton’s biggest prostitution rings made £750,000, the Daily Echo can reveal.

Now Sharon Moir, 47, has to pay the price – she must sell two houses and a flat – or face another three years behind bars.

Ironically she is due to be released from prison within days after serving a three-year term after being convicted of running a brothel and inciting and controlling prostitutes for personal gain.

She was caught after a police officer posed as a would-be prostitute in an undercover operation and Moir candidly told her how to work as a vice girl.

Moir was convicted following a trial at Southampton Crown Court that revealed she had up to 12 girls working every day at a flat near the city’s waterfront.

Yesterday she appeared at the same court where she faced a hearing into how much she had profited from her lucrative trade.

Prosecutors sought a sum of £754,457, based on the value of the value of her home in Sholing Road – from where she operated her escort agency called Panache – the flat in Queens Terrace, a house she had purchased in Tangmere, West Sussex, and a £16,000 sports car Moir defiantly argued that only up to ten per cent of the cash related to the brothel earnings. She claimed some of the money was the proceeds from her son’s Internet gambling.

However, Judge Tim Milligan ruled that all but a few thousand pounds was “tainted” and she had benefited by £729,227.2p.

“We’ll forget about the tuppence,” prosecutor Stephen Parish told the court.

Moir was ordered to pay £145,438 within six months or go to prison for three years.

Defence lawyer Zoe Van Der Bosch said that would mean she would have to sell three properties. She will be held liable for the remainder of the order if she comes into money at any time in her life.

Guilty Moir was found guilty in June of last year of three counts of keeping a brothel, one of inciting prostitution for gain and one count of controlling prostitution for gain.

It was estimated that Moir had used at least 350 women over some five years.

When police raided her property in Sholing Road, in April, they discovered thousands of pounds along with books detailing the agency’s dealings, the names of sex for sale girls and condoms. A pre-sentence report found that she was evasive and lacking in remorse.

Moir appealed against the sentence last December on the grounds that three years’ imprisonment was “manifestly excessive” as the sex was consensual. But the Appeal Court judges ordered the sentence to stand.