A dog breeder who made more than £100,000 by trafficking women on to a “sexual conveyor belt” across England and Wales has been jailed for four years.

Malaysian Hong Chin, 45, helped to fund his daughter’s private education by organising the prostitution of mainly Chinese women.

Following a trial at the Old Bailey, Hong was found guilty of controlling prostitution and plotting to traffic for sexual exploitation, along with his former lover, Ting Li Lu, 47, and his child’s mother, Li Wei Gao, 44.

Hong was sentenced on Thursday by Judge Philip Katz QC, while his co-accused will learn their fates on 3 November.

The court heard how Hong ran a pitbull dog breeding kennel on a country estate in Esher, Surrey, where Li lived in a converted barn with their daughter. At the same time, the pair raked in thousands of pounds through the trade in trafficking women for sex work until the operation was shut down by Sussex police in June 2015.

They were helped by Ting, with whom Hong lived in Walton-on-Thames, Surrey, jurors heard.

Sussex police were alerted to the illicit operation in February 2015 after one of the women reported being debt-bonded. Following extensive investigations, they identified 18 women from China, Hong Kong and Korea who were exploited for prostitution.

The women advertised sex services on adult websites and the contact number was fielded by the defendants, who would organise and notify them of jobs. The gang would use false details when they reserved rooms online at hotel chains including Premier Inn, Travelodge and Holiday Inn. Between August 2013 and February 2015, Hong made a total of 92 hotel reservations on Booking.com, the court heard.

The women were sent to perform sexual services in hotels all over southern England and Wales, including Maidstone, Cardiff, Brighton, Gatwick, Eastbourne, Southampton, Woking, Exeter, Guildford, Windsor and Bournemouth. The customers paid in cash on arrival and some of it was channelled to the accounts of Hong and Li.

When police visited the rooms they frequently found them in disarray, with the detritus of prostitution, including condoms, in evidence.

In his summing up, the judge described the operation as a “sexual conveyor belt”.

The victims have since returned to their home countries, except for one woman who gave evidence in the trial and who has claimed asylum in the UK.

Hong, of Dunstall, Burton upon Trent, Li, of Oxshott in Surrey, and Ting, of Portsmouth, had denied the charges.

DI Andy Richardson of Sussex police said: “I’m delighted with the sentence and I’m delighted we were successful in our application for a slavery and trafficking prevention order against [Hong] Chin, which will stop him exploiting vulnerable women again.

“It also sends out a clear message that this sort of activity will not be tolerated and that anyone caught doing so will be dealt with robustly.”

Kevin Thomson from the Crown Prosecution Service said: “This was an organised operation designed to traffic women into prostitution, as shown by the variety of bank accounts used to run it and the sheer amount of funds it generated.

“These elements helped to provide compelling evidence of what these defendants were doing. The gang exploited vulnerable women, putting them to work in situations which exposed them to serious potential risks.

“Once the women were caught up in the prostitution ring, it was invariably almost impossible for them to escape the life they had been forced into. All the time, they were then earning what turned out to be huge sums of money for the defendants, who were responsible for running the operation without any regard for the women’s wellbeing.”