Mayfair madam facing jail

This is the Mayfair madam facing jail today over her multi-million-pound prostitution empire - pictured when she ran a market stall in Kenya.

Ann O'Brien has been found guilty of running two £250-an-hour brothels in central London.

Now, for the first time, her past in an impoverished district of Kenya can be revealed.

O'Brien quit her African home to seek her fortune in Britain. But she never told her mother that she had a career running a massive prostitution ring and instead pretended she owned a hair salon.

She went undetected despite depositing thousands each week into 29 bank accounts while managing 40 prostitutes from the top floor of her six-bedroom house in Upper Berkeley Street.

She set up a second brothel in Gloucester Place, Marylebone, and bought a hair salon in Kilburn. She used this and two other firms to conceal the ?1.6 million she made from prostitution.

O'Brien, 32, was a figure of admiration for the townspeople in Nakuru, where she was called Wambui. Although her widowed mother Veronica Muya struggled to bring up her six children, the cash Wambui sent meant the family had a luxurious standard of living.

The regular remittances funded a four-bedroom house which towers over the corrugated iron roofs of the township.

Mrs Muya also has a new sports car, discreetly hidden from public view, and two shiny new mountain bikes. But she remains convinced by her daughter's claim that she was only running a hair salon.

"I don't believe it," she said, struggling to keep her composure when asked about the conviction for running brothels. "All I know is that my daughter has a salon. That's what I saw with my own eyes and that's what I believe. My Wambui is a hardworking, God-fearing and moral young woman.

She went after her ambitions in life with zeal.

"She was always very good at marketing."

In fact, her entrepreneurial ways kicked in at an early age.

Each school holiday she and her six brothers and sisters would be given a bundle of clothing or a box of vegetables or a crate of

penny chews. Their days would be spent hawking around Nakuru to earn the next term's fees. They managed to save about ?85 each holiday.

One of her brothers, Hillary, said: " She was always enterprising."

After leaving school at 16 she ran a clothing stall. In 1995 she had saved enough to study computer science in the UK.

Shortly after finishing her course she met and married an Irishman, Patrick O'Brien.

This allowed her to have an EU passport and live in the UK. She is now divorced.

She then turned to running upmarketbrothels where the mostly eastern European women charged a minimum of ?150. O'Brien worked them for up to 10 hours at a time, raking in thousands each day.

She was found guilty of four counts of controlling prostitution. Superintendent Chris Bradford said: "A high percentage of the girls were here illegally, many brought in by gangs. Without ruthless people like O'Brien, the gangs would have no one to push their girls out to." Her family are now relying on their Christian faith to see them through the upset of their daughter's conviction.

"It says in the Bible that people brought a prostitute to Jesus and they said that she was supposed to be stoned," said Mrs Muya.

"Jesus told them that those who had never committed a sin could be the first to throw stones. We just want our daughter to be treated fairly."