You thought no one cared about your victims..you were wrong

Five members are jailed for 68 years for their sickening crimes

- BY GRANT MCCABE

A GROOMING gang who sexually exploited 10 vulnerable women in Scotland have been jailed for a total of 68 years.

Mircea Cumpanasoiu, 37, Christian Urlateanu, 41, Alexandra Bugonea, 35, Remus Stan, 35, and Cataline Dobre, 45, were convicted following a six-week trial at the High Court in Glasgow.

Their victims included a woman who was trafficked into prostitution while another was gang raped by three of the predators.

The Romanian gang, who were based at flats in Dundee, left a number of those they preyed upon hooked on crack cocaine, leading them to be blackmailed into sex.

Ringleader Cumpanasoiu, known as Mario, was found guilty of 15 charges, Urlateanu nine, his then partner Bugonea five, Stan eight and Dobre, known as Luigi, also five.

Campanasoiu was jailed for 20 years, Urlateanu for 18, Bugonea for eight, while Dobre received 10 years and Stan got 12 years for the crimes, which took place in 2021 and 2022.

Stan was separately given a five-year trafficking exploitation order.

Sentencing them yesterday, judge Lord Scott said: "By offering them an unending supply of mostly free crack cocaine, you exacerbated their vulnerabilities and proceeded to exploit them for your own sexual gratification and in some cases for financial gain.

"No doubt you assumed rightly for some time that the drug-related lifestyles of the women meant that you were not reported or detected."