A former police informant has been found guilty by a jury of helping traffic women at brothels, including one behind Surbiton station.

Michael Dalton, 43, claimed he was trying to free trafficked prostitutes from the brothels and had been "duped".

His Taiwanese girlfriend Nikki Chen, 55, had pleaded guilty to running brothels and trafficking women, at the outset of what was to be a joint trial.

On July 1 last year, when police carried out dawn raids at the brothels, the pair's shared home in Kingston Road, Leatherhead, and properties in Dursley, Gloucestershire, they found two Ferraris and evidence of £160,000 banked by the pair.

The court heard evidence that Dalton had been seen on numerous occasions at the brothel in Glenbuck Court, Surbiton, that was advertised in newspapers as Aloha, as well as brothels in Sunbury, Egham, and West Drayton.

Once, when an undercover officer entered the Surbiton brothel, he shouted "customer" to the prostitutes.

But he stuck to his alibi of passing information to the Metropolitan Police and Surrey Police about his girlfriend and a shadowy network of traffickers forcing Thai women to pay debts of up to £28,000 before they could be free.

He was able to show the court that he had provided information as far back as 2001 which led to the closure of a brothel in Sycamore Grove, New Malden, run by Ms Chen's sister, known as Sindy or Sandy.

That raid led to the imprisonment of a £1m ring of people traffickers, including former hooker Monporn Hughes, known as Par, who was sentenced to three-and-a-half-years’ prison for deceiving hundreds of women into sexual slavery in a chain of brothels.

He claimed he was able to befriend prostitutes and find out important information about trafficking.

But police insisted they had de-registered him as from their official informants' list, between October 2007 and January 2008, and warned him not to commit any crimes.

After retiring this afternoon to consider their verdict, the jury of five men and seven women at Croydon Crown Court, delivered a unanimous guilty verdict this afternoon.

He will be sentenced on June 11 and is facing prison.