I beg yours?!

From today's Age (full article here) :

Brothel shut down in council sting

• Kate Lahey
• June 28, 2008

A MASSAGE parlour operating as an illegal brothel has been shut down after a suburban council paid two private investigators to uncover the true nature of the business.

The case comes more than a year after Melbourne City and Yarra councils admitted they had been paying investigators to have sex with prostitutes and dropped the practice. Glen Eira Council paid the two investigators a total of $2275 to separately visit Shanti House on Glen Huntly Road, Caulfield, on May 14.

This week, Moorabbin Magistrates Court ordered the business to close after hearing evidence from the investigators, who each paid $90 up front for a massage.

Both investigators gave statements to the court saying they asked the women, one of whom was nude, to stop when the massage became blatantly sexual.

"I stood up from the massage table telling her that 'I am embarrassed' and 'I have to go'," one investigator said.

"This female laughed, stating, 'How about a tip? I normally get $40 for that.' I gave this female $40 and commenced to rub the oil from my body."

Magistrate Anne Goldsbrough on Monday ordered the proscribed brothel be shut down, with business operator George Hamshari, of Camberwell, to pay $6000 in costs. Mr Hamshari's lawyer Tony Burns told The Age his client maintains he was running the business as a legitimate healing massage centre and that the women involved acted on their own.

Glen Eira spokesman Paul Burke said the council imposed a no-sex condition on investigators and would continue to hire them as needed. "We don't have a huge problem with illegal brothels in Glen Eira as we rooted out most of them some time ago," he said.

Ahem.