All the regular customers of Gyumri’s Andranik Hotel and Restaurant know 55 year-old Toma.

The woman has been a fixture there since 2001 when she started to work as a cleaning attendant. Toma moved up the ladder in 2006, becoming a waitress.

Regular customers also know that Toma, who separated from her husband 30 years ago, takes care of her disabled daughter.

She was charged with abetting prostitution in 2010 and ordered to pay a 300,000 AMD fine. Her boss didn’t fire her. So she went back to her old trade of lining up women for men clients. Toma needed the money.

But the fee she pocketed for each arrangement was a pittance – just 1,000 AMD. During testimony when she was charged a second time, Toma told cops that restaurant owner Grigoryan wasn’t aware about her “job” on the side and that she occasionally allocated hotel rooms to several local prostitutes to use.

It’s hard to say if hotel management indeed had no clue as to what was going on under their noses.

Toma was charged with this second crime on February 2, 2012. The prostitutes were also charged.

The girls testified that they had given Toma their telephone numbers so she could call them to the hotel when clients appeared.

One of the women takes care of her pensioner mother and a disabled sister. She said she was “on the game” for the past three years to make some money for the family. This woman and Toma got acquainted at the hotel and exchanged telephone numbers.

Toma is alleged to have called her 40 times to the hotel for paid sexual encounters from January 2010 till November 2011.

The prostitute says she’s paid 5,000 for each encounter and that she gives Toma 1,000 for her services in arranging the meet.

Another woman testified that she’s been working as a prostitute for just one year, also to make ends meet. She’s a single mom with two kids. She also met Toma at the hotel and the two entered into a similar business arrangement.

At the June 12 trial, the prosecutor initially asked that the court sentence Toma to three years, since this was her second offense. He later changed this to a three year conditional sentence on grounds of leniency, taking into account that Toma had confessed to her actions and that no one would be at home to take care of her 33 year-old disabled sister if she was put away for three years.

Toma’s lawyer, Mamikon Mouradyan, also called the court’s attention the fact that his client is also taking care of her   disabled daughter as well who fell from the third floor at the age of 17 while hanging the laundry.

Toma pleaded for leniency and promised to leave her former job.

The court sentenced Toma to a three year conditional sentence.