Every year organised crime gangs rake in millions trading in human misery, smuggling women into the UK to work as prostitutes.
At least 6,000 offenders a year are involved in modern slavery in Britain alone, police estimate – including sex trafficking and human smuggling.
The problem is how to hunt them down when their victims are often too terrified to speak out. As the organised crime gangs continue to get ever more calculating, so too must the law.
Officers from the South West Regional Organised Crime Unit reveal how they smashed one operation after an anonymous tip-off sparked a three-year, multi-national surveillance operation.
Ringleader Mark Viner is now in jail after being tracked down to his palatial Spanish hideaway far from the misery of the women trafficked from Brazil to work in a brothel in Cheltenham, Glos.
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Cameras were allowed to capture every moment of the intense investigation for new Channel 4 series Taken: Hunting the Sex Traffickers.
Now investigator Detective Inspector Peter Brown opens his case files to the Daily Mirror to show step by step what it takes to put a trafficker behind bars.
The anonymous tip-off
Evidence including a letter, pictures, names and locations of brothels was delivered anonymously to Glos police station, alerting officers to a human trafficking operation in Cheltenham.
While the source of the information has never been identified, officers believe it was someone within the organisation trying to reach out for help.
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Peter says: “If they hadn’t had the bravery to come forward and do that, we wouldn’t have got anything like the result we’ve got.
"Because we had that person inside telling us what was going on. They were integral to our success.”
The ringleader
The brains of the gang was Mark Viner, 62, who police believe to be a career criminal, making his fortune shipping goods after developing links in South America –particularly Brazil, where he lived for seven years.
Peter says: “What he’s done for the last 20 years, as best we could tell, is move stuff around the world and sell it.
"That’s how he’s made his living.
“He clearly saw that one of the commodities he could trade was women – and he could make a lot of money doing it.
"This is an international trade in human misery.”
The accomplices
While Viner concentrated on bringing women into the country to work as prostitutes, he relied on others for the day-to-day operation.
Officers identified that Lezlie Davies, 61, would help set the trafficked women up on sex websites to sell their services and Rosana Gomes, 45, acted as a receptionist taking all their bookings and logging their income.
Peter says: “You wouldn’t look at them and think they’re part of an organised crime group.
"That’s the problem, it’s not like how people often see it in the movies.
"It’s subtle. Rosana had an extensive ledger keeping track of all the customers the girls saw.
“That list of names, numbers and times – every one is a person coming to see that worker.”
The victims
Women were brought from Brazil to work in brothels, servicing up to 15 men a day.
Officers identified some 100 South American sex workers linked to Viner’s network.
Peter says: “Human trafficking is hard to convict, so we had to focus on the two girls we knew Viner had specifically brought to the country and who then worked in a brothel.
“We tracked a few girls down and went to see them elsewhere, and they told us they’d been robbed by criminal gangs, because they’re an easy target.
"They’d been raped at knifepoint.
“None of that happened at the premises in Cheltenham, that we know of, but once you bring somebody in, and they’re illegally here, they’re moved from place to place, and sometimes they’ll be linked to more violent criminal gangs.”
The money men
Officers identified a gang hired by Viner to deposit cash into different accounts then transfer it to his own account.
The investigation found £1.2million had passed through just one account.
Peter says: “If you use enough different accounts it’s less likely to look suspicious because it goes in as a smaller amounts.
“It’s then transferred between several accounts before finally ending up in one. Viner was convicted for £388,000 worth of money laundering.”
The Spanish getaway
Viner lived a life of luxury in Barcelona where he had a multi-million-pound six-bedroom villa with a swimming pool, a garage full of Porsches, two yachts and several jet skis.
Surveillance showed he would flash rolls of cash whenever he hit the shops.
Peter says: “We think he probably retired out there because he had just turned 60.
"He had a wife and child that were fairly new on the scene.
“The way I see it is every note he carried came from a woman having to see a client.
"We’re applying to the Spanish authorities to confiscate the assets that are over there.
“It’s a long process but we’ll take his whole retirement, based off the back of other people’s misery, off him.
"For me that’s as good as a prison sentence because we know it will hurt him.”
The evidence
In the three-year investigation officers monitored every move made by Viner and his gang – tracking him when he left the country to bring girls back, following his money trail and using covert tactics to establish what was happening inside his brothels.
Peter says: “It was painstaking but worth it.
"There were two key pieces of evidence; we had surveillance of him actually bringing two Brazilian women into the country, and then phone records showing those women were registered on a sex trade website.
“When we arrested Rosana we recovered a ledger detailing the girls, their appointments and prices, plus several phones lined up ready to take calls on behalf of those girls.
"It all linked up and it was very satisfying to know we’d got them.”
The sentence
Viner pleaded guilty at Bristol crown court to two counts of human trafficking, one of keeping a brothel and one of laundering the proceeds of other criminal activity, and was sentenced to nearly six years in jail last year.
Davies and Gomes admitted assisting the running of his brothel and were handed 12-month community orders and a 10-week curfew, and were ordered to pay £500 costs.
Peter says: “The public might look at that sentence and think it’s pretty low for the misery he caused but human trafficking is so hard to prove.
"I’m pleased we got the conviction.”
He now hopes that by speaking out about the investigation it will make other criminals think twice.
He adds: “I hope it will show the hard work teams like mine invest to getting justice.
“But also to let anyone involved in this kind of crime know that we could be watching you and you don’t even know it.
"The next knock on the door could be us.”
- Taken: Hunting the Sex Traffickers, starts Monday at 9pm on Channel 4.
Thousands in slavery
SOME 10,616 people in Britain have been identified as victims of modern slavery in just one year.
But the National Crime Agency has once again warned the actual 2020 figure could be much higher.
It is estimated between 6,000 and 8,000 offenders in the UK are currently involved in modern slavery.
Their victims are often human trafficked and used for cheap labour and prostitution or forced to join criminal gangs.
It is hoped trafficking may have reduced slightly during the pandemic, but the NCA has warned of a surge in reports of Albanians being used on drug farms.
One tip-off to detectives potentially saved dozens of women from being forced to become sex workers.
- If you have concerns, call the Modern Slavery Helpline on 0800 0121 700 or visit modernslaveryhelpline.org
