A FORMER call centre worker who set up a brothel yards from the local police station made half a million pounds in just three years, a court has heard.

Mark Cass handed out timesheets to the Thai callgirls so they could keep track of their busy schedules and he bought condoms in bulk online.

Cass even registered his business - the Thai Exotic massage parlour - with Darlington Borough Council and his six staff, aged between 26 and 36, earned enough money to send sizeable sums home to their families.

The thriving trade netted him an average of £166,000 a year while bobbies in Darlington went about their business at the station 200 yards away - completely oblivious to Cass's vice den.

He made the brothel a family business by paying his brother £300-a-week as manager of the girls and was so open about what he was doing because he didn't realise he was breaking the law.

His operation was rumbled by immigration officials and undercover police officers were eventually drafted in, discovering the girls were charging for sex.

Cass was jailed for a year for living off the proceeds of prostitution but now police are trying to seize assets they believe were earned from his days as a brothelkeeper.

In an application under the Proceeds of Crime Act, the authorities say Cass must surrender his £47,000 home in Norton, near Stockton-on-Tees and a BMW car worth £4,000.

When jailed Cass was hit with a confiscation order for £87,499 and ordered to pay £5,000 costs but it is suspected he did not declare his house.

Prosecutor Nigel Soppitt told Teesside Crown Court: "If these assets were not disclosed the Crown say they could be subject to further proceedings."

Dan Cordey, for Cass, said since the offences he had been working honestly as a coach driver and had been earning a legitimate income.

Mr Cordey said: "He would be deprived of the only home he has got, he would be rendered homeless, rendered without a car and unable to work.

"And of course he would have to seek local authority accommodation and that is at a premium.

"He has not bought a very expensive house and car with no one knowing where the money came from, that is not the case."

The case was adjourned until November in an attempt to find documents relating to Cass's original declaration of his assets.

Cass, a former Orange call centre worker, was jailed for his crimes in 2006 after the court heard he made nearly £500,000 in three years.

Prosecutor Ian West then told the judge: "They (Thai girls) were coming to the country lured by the prospect of making large sums of money working in a massage parlour, and some of them were frank enough to admit that they knew they were coming to work as prostitutes.

"Every customer paid extra for sexual services which obviously they had gone there for."

He added: "The prosecution accept that they were not under duress, not corrupted and not imprisoned."

Mark Cass's brother, now in his mid thirties, was the £300-a-week manager who also went shopping for the girls' lunches, the court heard.

Mr Cordey told the original hearing that Exotic Thai was a popular place to work and Cass got calls from Thai girls in London asking for jobs.

He said: "In a sense it was so open and so many other people were doing it throughout the country that he lost the criminality of it."

Cass admitted living off prostitution between February 2002 and April 2004, controlling prostitution for gain between May 2004 and January 2005, and conspiring with others in the trafficking of prostitutes between London and Darlington.

He was jailed for 12 months with an £87,499 confiscation order for proceeds of crime and £5,000 costs.

His brother, of Whitburn Road, Stockton, was given six months' jail suspended for two years after he admitted keeping a brothel between May 2004 and January 2005.