Iran Press/ Europe: A human trafficking ring which made £2m by exploiting hundreds of vulnerable victims has been dismantled following the UK’s largest modern slavery investigation.
According to Independent newspaper, more than 400 people – many of them homeless, ex-prisoners or alcoholics – were forced to work for almost nothing after being lured to the west midlands by a well-organized Polish gang.
The ringleaders told victims they would earn good money in the UK but instead placed them in cramped, rat-infested accommodation and forced them to work on farms, rubbish recycling centers and poultry factories.
They were paid as little as 50p an hour for their labor and in one case a worker was given just coffee and a chicken for redecorating a house.
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The victims – aged between 17 and 60 – had to use soup kitchens and food banks to eat, while one man was forced to wash in a canal because he had no other access to water.
Meanwhile, the gang’s bosses enjoyed a lavish lifestyle off the back of the exploitation, wearing expensive clothes and driving luxury cars including a Bentley.
Eight gang members – who police say were part of two Polish crime families – have been jailed for modern slavery offences and money laundering, it can now be reported, after the second of two trials ended.
Jurors heard the accounts of 88 victims, but it is believed at least 350 more had passed through the gang’s hands and could either not be traced by UK police or were too scared to come forward.
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