A housewife who lived off the proceeds of a Scotland-wide sex for sale business has avoided a prison sentence.

Ana Calder's former boyfriend Jose Barbosa built a criminal empire, recruiting women from Brazil to sell their bodies in eight towns and cities across the country.

Calder laundered some of the £150,000 made from the venture through her bank account - and used about £16,000 of it to pay her "day to day expenses".

They took a cut of the women's earnings and took in a total of £150,000 before the vice ring was smashed.

Barbosa and Calder - who is pregnant with her second child - came separately to Scotland from Brazil and used women from their homeland in the prostitution business.

Their small flat in Kirkcaldy was the centre of the operation.

The couple searched the internet for women already selling sex in Brazil, contacted them through their online adverts and encouraged them to come and work in Scotland.

When the women, aged between 28 and 48, arrived, they were set up in one of a dozen rented flats.

Barbosa and Calder ran brothels in Kirkcaldy, Perth, Dundee, Dunfermline, Stirling, Hamilton, Falkirk and Alva, Clackmannanshire.

Barbosa, 44, rented the flats using a Spanish identity card, a fake letter from an employer and an alias, Alex Marques.

The flats were then sublet to the women, who were trafficked between them.

Barbosa - who was jailed for three years for his part in the scheme last year - charged the women for rent and advertising their services online.

The couple lived modestly and took care not to flaunt the large sums they were making.

Police were tipped off in 2013 about Barbosa's criminal activities and an operation, codenamed Wolfberry, was launched.

Officers watched as he toured his flats, visiting several of them in a day, collecting wads of cash from the women and putting it in the bank.

Undercover police then went to the flats and found sex workers in almost all of them.

They saw sexual paraphernalia including condoms and the women quoted them prices for sexual services.

Fiscal depute Siobhan Monks told Kirkcaldy Sheriff Court: "Large sums of money had been deposited in a bank account in the name of Calder.

"She had no legitimate source of income and the day-to-day living costs were from the proceeds of prostitution."

The court heard that Calder allowed Barbosa and the prostitutes to put money in her account.

Calder arrived in the UK on a tourist visa in 2002 and later married an Englishman.

The marriage did not last and she met Barbosa in 2008. He left Brazil after a car business he was involved in failed, leaving him with debts of £100,000.

Miss Monks said that when Calder met Barbosa, she was unemployed and not getting benefits. She was "fully financially dependent" on him.

Calder, 36, who now lives in Windsor, Berkshire, pleaded guilty on indictment to a charge under the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002.

She admitted that between August 12 2013 and February 20 2014 she "converted and transferred" criminal property - the proceeds of prostitution - totalling £16,925 while working with Jose Barbosa.

Calder admitted paying the money into a Santander bank account held in her name and using it to pay her own day-to-day living expenses.

Defence solicitor David Cranston said: "She is now back with her husband, the father of her child, and they reconciled as a result of this case.

"He came to look after their son while she was on remand and they rekindled their marriage.

"Her position is that Jose Barbosa was a good partner to her. Some people make their money in morally dubious or morally reprehensible ways.

"She fell in love with someone who did so. This case was the catalyst for them separating."

Sheriff James Williamson imposed a community payback order with two years' supervision and 160 hours unpaid work.

He said: "Jose Barbosa was the prime mover and she was to a degree used. But her role was not insignificant.

"It is the type of offence and an amount of money which would attract a custodial sentence.

"But the fact she co-operated, pled early, has no previous convictions and that it would appear it was an offence that manifested itself out of her relationship with Jose Barbosa means I can avoid a custodial sentence."