Pimp for beauty queens imprisoned in HCMC

Le Hoang Long, 32, from the northern city of Hai Phong, received the sentence for "brokering sex services."

According to the verdict, Long was the manager of several Vietnamese artists and a representative of South Korean artists operating in Vietnam.

Thanks to his showbiz connections, Long was found to have operated a transnational prostitution ring to connect models and beauty queens with customers.

Police tracked Long down in August last year after catching two women, identified to have provided sex services at a high-end hotel in downtown HCMC.

Long admitted to being the broker after two men contacted him seeking sex with female models.

Long said the two women he introduced for the service were a winner and a runner up of two beauty pageants.

He charged customers $15,000 each and paid each woman VND60 million ($2,570). He also told police he had linked several foreign women with local men at the price of tens of thousands of dollars.