Database navigabile sui casi di tratta di esseri umani

CASES

Case 01

CASE N°
01
Title
STS 3750/2020 (Resolution Number: 565/2020)
CONTRIBUTOR
Patricia Bueso (FUNDEA)
Assessed case number:
Crimes of trafficking in human beings for the purpose of sexual exploitation, coerced prostitution, and sexual assault
Brief description of the case
The accused formed part of an organized group that was dedicated to recruiting, by means of deception, women in Bulgaria, who were offered work in Spain, in order, once in this country, to exploit them in the exercise of prostitution, by means of aggression and threats. Within the framework of this activity, one of the perpetrators made contact in Bulgaria with the victim, with whom he established a sentimental relationship with the sole purpose of achieving his illicit objective, for which he convinced her to move to Spain, where she could develop a job and earn money, telling her that he would also travel to this country to start to live together. In the belief of such statements, the victim travelled from Sofia (Bulgaria) to Madrid. Once in Spain, she was told the real purpose of her journey, which was none other than to work as a prostitute, and was told that she had no other choice. They told her that she had no other option, as she had to pay them the money she had spent on her journey, warning her that if she did not obey something bad could happen to her and, given the fear generated and being in a country she did not know and in which she had no contacts, with no knowledge of the language, she had no other choice but to agree to the indications of the defendants. The victim was mistreated and raped on several occasions and other victims were recruited by the same method.

Case 02

CASE N°
02
Title
Offences of Trafficking in Human Beings for the purpose of sexual exploitation, prostitution-relating and document fraud.
CONTRIBUTOR
Patricia Bueso (FUNDEA)
Assessed case number:
Roj: SAN 630/2019 - ECLI:ES:AN:2019:630
Brief description of the case
The accused perpetrators, since at least 2015 and together with other unidentified persons in Nigeria and Spain, had been acting jointly and carrying out different functions and tasks, to recruit young women in their country of origin, Nigeria, with the aim of bringing them to Spain and other European countries, such as Norway, Denmark and Italy, using false documentation, all this in order to force them to prostitution. In this way, they achieved their aim of making them leave their country of origin, taking advantage of their precarious economic situation and offering them false promises of work conditions and legal status. Once they were in Europe, they forced them to work as prostitutes for the benefit of the criminal group. The perpetrators told the women that they had to repay the financial debt they had with the traffickers for taking them out of Africa, and kept them in a state of constant intimidation through the ritual of "voodoo", which was deeply rooted in their country, generating a state of intense fear in the victims, serving as a mechanism of control that the traffickers exercised over the girls that were thus controlled and remained loyal to the trafficker and his associates. In this way, the victims were forced into prostitution for the benefit of the group, since all the money obtained by the girls through prostitution was distributed among the different members of the criminal group. The investigation of the trafficking network was initiated thanks to the statement of a witness and the network was dismantled through the financial investigation that was carried out.

Case 03

CASE N°
03
Title
Crimes of trafficking in human beings for the purpose of sexual exploitation, coerced prostitution and sexual assault
CONTRIBUTOR
FUNDEA
Assessed case number:
STS 63/2020 (Resolution Number: 63/2020)
Brief description of the case
The accused individuals were members of a network which smuggled illegally females from Nigeria, mainly to Spain and to other Schengen States. The members of said network asked the victims to pay a certain price and, in exchange, they arranged the displacements and transfer of the victims from their country of origin and then their reception and further necessary procedures in Spain, supposedly to study in Europe. After those steps, the perpetrators completely controlled their victims. It is worth to mention that one of the perpetrators, as well as one of the victims were minors when the criminal group started to act and to arrange the issuance of the fake documentation and the trip of the victims. The criminal organization finally exploited sexually the victims forcing them to prostitution, controlled the income of those activities and benefited from them. They controlled their victims first convincing them that they had a considerable debt to them, as they had arranged their transfer to Spain and the required documentation. In order to tighten the control over them, they used severe threats against the families of the victims, threatening to kill them, with the use of voodoo techniques as a means to make the threats more plausible for the victims. One of the perpetrators also repeatedly raped one of the victims. Phone conversation records showed that the accused individuals “tricked” the victims convincing them that they would come to Europe in order to study. Once the victims arrived to Europe, they were told by the perpetrators that they had a 50,000 EUR debt to them and then were forced to prostitution. Apart from the aforementioned method of voodoo techniques, the perpetrators also used sexual violence, aggression and intimidation against the victims in order to control them and prevent them from talking to the law enforcement authorities. The authorities found several fake passports issued by the perpetrators, which were linked to several bank accounts. The authorities also detected various bank transfers through the aforementioned bank accounts, namely digital money transfers to other accounts outside Spain. During the same investigation, in one of the apartments linked to the perpetrators, the authorities found folders with suspicious home addresses written on them, in places not related to the perpetrators or the victims, such as Austria. They also found documents related to a supposed lottery prize of almost 1,5 million GBP, whose beneficiary was supposed to pay a considerable amount of money as taxes in order to reclaim the prize. Various bank transfers were detected, to various bank accounts linked to false bank and state official documents. The perpetrators had also carried out money transfers through Wester Union to various, unidentified receivers, of over 50,000 EUR each. The records of some telephone conversations through a prepaid mobile phone (Lyca Mobile) revealed that the perpetrators were discussing topics such as the issuing of fake passports, and the bank transfers to different accounts. Further conversations were explaining in detail the way in which the perpetrators used the voodoo method to threaten and control the victims and their families. Likewise, the modus operandi of the criminal network regarding the sexual exploitation and the forced prostitution of the victims was also revealed through the conversations. Among others, the authorities detected conversations with clients, with intermediaries, and clarified the established prices and the distribution of the earnings from the prostitution. The phone conversations also showed the journey of the victims since they were recruited in Nigeria, to Morocco as a transit country and then to Malaga as the entry place to Spain, as well as the registry of various residencies and rented properties by the accused criminal network.

Case 04

CASE N°
04
Title
Crimes of trafficking in human beings for the purpose of sexual exploitation, coerced prostitution and sexual assault
CONTRIBUTOR
FUNDEA
Assessed case number:
STS 178/2016 (Resolution Number: 178/2016)
Brief description of the case
The accused individuals were members of a poly-crime and pyramid-structured transnational criminal network which, among other criminal (mostly white-collar crime) activities, smuggled illegally females from Nigeria to Spain. Namely, the group was recruiting young females from Nigeria, arranging their transfer to Spain and forced them to prostitution. There were four phases of the operations of the criminal organization responsible for the trafficking of Nigerian women for purposes of sexual exploitation. First, the recruitment, which was taking place through personal contact in the country of origin and the recruiters were Nigerian women, building that way more trust with the victims. Second, the transport and management of the trip, logistical arrangements such as maintenance, clothing, housing and migratory routes. The transit countries and transfer routes included mainly Morocco, Senegal and Turkey. Third, the exploitation phase, the prostitution of the Nigerian girls against their will, forcing them also to perform other criminal activities (i.e. robbery), in order to be able to pay back the alleged debts they had towards the members of the criminal group for arranging their transfer to Spain. Fourth, the last phase of the operations of the organization was the “regularization” of the victims in Spain, meaning the issuance of administrative documents needed for them to be able to legally stay in the country. They managed that through “white marriages” with Spanish citizens and were blackmailing the victims that they would be deported if they did not accept the “white marriage”. One of the responsible persons for controlling the girls was a female of Nigerian origin. Another member of the criminal organization, a male, was using violence against the victims such as “knives and guns” as the phone records revealed. Moreover, the perpetrators threatened the victims and their families due to the supposed debt and, therefore, the victims were not free to decide for themselves. The perpetrators were using voodoo techniques to threaten both the victims and their families back in Nigeria and further control them. The perpetrators also instructed the victims on how to dress for the prostitution activities, how to treat their clients, how to talk to the authorities and how to behave in general. Various text messages were detected in which the criminal network members instructed the victims on how to use their fake personal data. The autonomous police force of Catalonia (Mossos d'Esquadra) initially identified an individual, of Nigerian nationality and member of the criminal group, who had paid various businesses with false 20 & 30 EUR bank notes and was already condemned for falsification of bank notes. The police also recorded phone conversations between the perpetrators speaking in a closed Nigerian dialect and trying to encrypt it, mentioning that the police could be listening. The same members have also travelled to Napoli in order to import false bank notes for the purposes of the organisation and the Police later also found false credit, debit cards and bank accounts of the bank La Caixa, linked to the main defendant mentioned above. Moreover, the criminal network members conducted various transfers in Nairas (Nigerian currency) equal to 250 EUR through the platform MoneyGram. Some of the payments of the group in Nigeria were arranged through the Hawala transfers method, according to the police investigation findings. Activities of the group were also detected in Dakar, Senegal, as the contact person responsible for the arrangement of the journey of the victims was based there. Another interesting element of the criminal group´s activities was that some of its members were involved in card “skimming”, meaning the theft of credit and debit card data and PIN numbers when the user is at an automated teller machine (ATM) or point of sale (POS), manipulating the magnetic strips. In the houses of the perpetrators, police found “skimming” equipment, various credit cards, USB drives with software for card falsification, documentation linked to manipulated accounts in Swiss banks, many false cards linked to Spanish banks without their chips, numbers info of beneficiaries etc., false Nigerian passports and driving licenses, considerable amounts of cash, receipts of Western Union money transfers to third countries such as Greece or Norway, more than 12mobile phones and SIM cards, as well as bank books containing amounts of over a million EUR and thousands in GBP, among others. The police investigation also showed that the perpetrators kept the victims “liquidity” at all times, making sure that they would always carry notable amounts of cash money. Finally, the registered phone records of the networks shown incoming and outgoing calls from and to Morocco, Iran, Turkey, Greece, Netherlands, Canada, France, Italy and of course Nigeria.

Case 05

CASE N°
05
Title
Sexual exploitation from Romania
CONTRIBUTOR
HfÖV/IPoS
Assessed case number:
330 Js 65853/15
Brief description of the case
1 Romanian men and 1 Romanian woman (not married, both 41 years old) brought 2 Romanian women (19 and 20 years old) with the false promise of work to Germany for sexual exploitation in an official brothel. The Romanian male perpetrator was known to the German authorities (comparable previous cases). He had only occasional jobs, officially.

Case 06

CASE N°
06
Title
Human Trafficking and Prostitution, Pimping
CONTRIBUTOR
HfÖV/IPoS
Assessed case number:
ECLI:DE:BGH:2021:210421B1STR27.21.0
Brief description of the case
The Regional Court convicted the defendants of 25 counts of smuggling foreigners into the country, each in combination with exploitation of prostitutes and pimping, of which five counts were in combination with aggravated trafficking in human beings and 20 counts were in combination with aggravated forced prostitution, of withholding and embezzlement of wages (employees' shares) in combination with withholding and embezzlement of wages (employers' shares) in 70 cases and of tax evasion in 17 cases, and sentenced the accused B. a total prison sentence of eight years and nine months and against one defendant a total prison sentence of four years and six months. In addition, the Regional Court ordered the defendants to confiscate an amount of €1,165,270.60 against the defendants as joint and several debtors.

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