A trafficker and brothel boss kept his eyes to the ground as his cruelty and depravity were laid bare across a lengthy sentencing hearing.
Ionut-Robert Marghiol, 37, had run brothels across Tonge Moor, Bury and North Manchester, where women he enticed over from Romania and enslaved were subject to appalling treatment.
Manchester Crown Court heard about two named witnesses who had been helped to break free and give evidence to bring Marghiol down, but many other nameless victims went unknown.
But as prosecutor Hayley Parkes set out how women were forced to at times "service" multiple clients, seven days a week, all year round, another group also went nameless and numberless.
No figure was put on how many so-called clients themselves had passed through the doors of Marghiol’s brothels, nor how many could have seen something was very wrong.
Yet it took the bravery of the women themselves, not those who Marghiol - who listened through a Romanian interpreter - would have seen as customers, to prove his undoing.
In a victim impact statement, one of the young women said: “After I arrived in the UK, I started having panic attacks, and even now after so long, if somebody screams near me or is talking to me in an aggressive manner, the panic attacks come back.”
She added: “I don’t have any relationship with my relatives; my mum, my sister and one lady friend, who I have known for a long time, are the only ones I speak to.
“My biggest regret is that I hurt my mum, and she has suffered so much.
“When she heard me on the phone, she didn’t know if I was well, if I had anything to eat, and so I had to lie to her.”
Another of the women had been marked horrendously with a tattoo at Marghiol’s behest.
She said: “He told me that if I had that tattoo, then no one else would want to be with me.
"He and his friend used to joke that when they had put their name on a girl, they had ‘marked’ them or ‘registered’ them like a car, meaning he owned me.
“His friends said a small name on the girls, but he went next level.”
Marghiol has maintained the fiction that he was a legitimate car dealer, while his real business was luring young women from Romania to sexual slavery, first in Spain and then in the UK.
Ms Parkes said his “particular modus operandi” was to flatter younger women online, before putting them to work in horrendous conditions in brothels across the North West.
Throughout the hearing, Ms Parkes said that though Marghiol subjected the women to virtually daily beatings and regular rapes, he had been careful not to leave marks.
Evidence from Marghiol’s phone messages showed degrading comments he had made about the women to his associates, including claims his abuse was “softening them up” for sex work.
The men passing through the brothels may not have picked up on signs that horrendous abuse was taking place, may not have realised that the women servicing them were doing so by force.
But that was not an excuse Marghiol’s lackey Denis Vatafu, who ran the Radcliffe brothel on his behalf in 2025 while claiming to be running a legitimate loan business, could rely on.
Vatafu, a married father of two, had been key to Marghiol’s operation, running the brothel while his boss continued to oversee operations while already on bail that year.
Sitting beside his former boss in the dock, appearing at times close to tears, Judge Kate Cornell told him he may not have participated in violence but must have known it was happening.
Vatafu had profited from Marghiol’s campaign of rape, abuse and trafficking, just as in a more minor way others involved in his network had been.
Part of that network involved married couple Nicolae and Maria Branovici, 33 and 27, who had both been involved in trafficking a woman to the UK.
It took not an attack of conscience or concern from any of the men they had been forced to service to bring down Marghiol’s network but the bravery of two of the women themselves.
Both women, who had originally been tricked into coming to the UK by Marghiol, fled home to Romania in 2024 only for him to track them down and bring them back.
In another bid for freedom later that year, they fled to one of the women’s aunt’s houses in Essex before presenting themselves at a police station.
After his second arrest in 2025, Marghiol tried from prison to enlist his brother to force one of the women to retract her statement.
At first, it seemed he succeeded, but officers’ suspicions were stoked when the woman asked for a document to prove her retraction.
On speaking to her further, she decided that she would continue with giving evidence and, along with the other woman, helped to convict the sex trafficking boss after a three-week trial.
Marghiol, of Oscar Street, Moston, was convicted of four counts of rape, many of which included more than one incident.
He was also found guilty of four counts of arranging or facilitating the travel of another person for exploitation.
He confessed to two counts of keeping a brothel and was found guilty of a third count of the same offence.
Marghiol, who has no previous convictions in the UK, was also found guilty of three counts of forced labour, one count of assault and a single count of perverting the course of justice.
Judge Cornell told him he had no mental health issues, no trauma in his past, and that there was “no explanation or mitigation” for his crimes and jailed him for 25 years.
She also put him on the sex offenders register for life, told him he is likely to be deported on his release and made him subject to a lifetime trafficking prevention order.
Vatafu, of Windsor Road, Harpurhey, was convicted of keeping a brothel and of arranging or facilitating the transportation of another for exploitation.
Judge Cornell told him he had shown “no insight or remorse” for his actions and jailed him for eight years and made him subject to a 15-year trafficking prevention order.
Nicolae Branovici, of Great Clowes Street, Salford, confessed to two counts of arranging or facilitating the travel of another with a view to exploitation and to possession of cocaine.
He was jailed for three years and hit with a ten-year trafficking prevention order.
His wife Maria, of Bennet Drive, Salford, arranged or facilitated the travel of another with a view to exploitation and was jailed for nine months.
She was also handed a ten-year trafficking prevention order.
Senior Investigating Officer Detective Inspector Abigail Thomas, from Greater Manchester Police's serious and organised crime group, said: "This investigation was launched when two women came forward to report the horrific sustained abuse and exploitation that they had endured.
“I would like to pay testament to their courage throughout the criminal justice process, in particular giving evidence at the trial, which was crucial in securing justice and ensuring that the two defendants are now safely behind bars and unable to cause harm to other women.
“Criminals committing these offences reap massive profits by preying on and exploiting vulnerable women.
"We remain committed to working with partners to tackle modern slavery and violence against women and girls, and to relentlessly pursuing offenders and disrupting organised crime groups committing this type of offending.
"We are also committed to working with partners to ensure that victims and survivors receive the protection and support they need.”
Judge Cornell ruled that a mention hearing to set a Proceeds of Crime Act timetable will be set for March 15 next year.
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