Vanity Soho strip club shut by council after alleged spikings

The strip club claims the spikings could have happened at brothels rather than at the venue

A central London strip club has been shut down for three months after several customers claimed to have lost a total of £250,000 after being spiked.

Vanity Soho's licence has been revoked by Westminster City Council after complaints were made to the police.

But the venue suggested these had come from men who did not want their wives and girlfriends to find out they had "spent summer holiday money" on strippers.

The club denies any wrongdoing.

The Met Police has shared details of at least 10 reported incidents in which Vanity Soho customers checked their accounts to find huge sums of money missing, according to the Local Democracy Reporting Service.

Some also said they had woken up in unexpected locations.

• Do men know enough about spiking?

Police logs shared with the council show one victim claimed he woke up in a brothel after visiting the club. Later, he said he realised £98,000 had been transferred from his bank accounts.

Most recently, a man claimed to have blacked out when he visited the club in November. When he checked his account, he saw that £16,000 had been sent to a number of other accounts he did not recognise.

He said he remembered drinking, dancing and being led to a separate area, but said he had no other memories until he woke up in a street near his home the next day.

Tracing his movements with Google Maps, the man said the app showed he had spent two hours at a car wash before being dropped off near his home.

A police report read: "The victim does not know how he arrived at these locations or how he has returned home."

'It wasn't me'

At a council licensing committee meeting on Monday, Vanity Soho's lawyer Gary Grant said men who visited the venue had come up with excuses to make to their loved ones.

"There are instances of when the wives, girlfriends and partners have found out because they've been pinged by their bank about what's going on," he said.

"It is not uncommon during allegations for those men to say: 'I'm sorry it wasn't me, I must have had my drink spiked and that explains why I spent our summer holiday money on strippers.'"

The strip club has argued the spikings could have happened at brothels rather than at the venue.

The Met's lawyer said Vanity had a "heavy burden" for letting people leave the premises in a vulnerable position, regardless of whether they had been spiked.

Following the seven-hour meeting, Westminster City Council suspended the venue's licence for three months and banned the bar's managers from working there.

The council also added 23 conditions to the strip club's licence including staff having to be retrained.

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