Lured to China: Colombia police break up sex-trafficking ring
- Poor and vulnerable women sent to work in Guangdong nightclubs with offers of well-paid modelling jobs
- Seven suspects arrested and charged with luring at least 30 victims into prostitution
Colombian police broke up an accused sex trafficking ring that recruited women in Colombia and forced them into prostitution in China, authorities said on Tuesday, exposing a plot of criminal deception that preyed upon poor and vulnerable women.
Seven accused traffickers were arrested and charged with luring and sexually exploiting at least 30 Colombian women and migrants who were sent to work in nightclubs in the Chinese province of Guangdong, authorities said.
The women were recruited on social media and on WhatsApp messaging with offers of well-paid work as models in China by traffickers who staged fake photo shoots in Colombia before sending them abroad, authorities said.
“At these places, the young women were allegedly held against their will,” Colombia’s attorney general’s office said in a statement. “Their passports and personal documents were taken away.”
The traffickers imposed debts on them of US$14,000, which they were forced to pay off by making US$600 a day in sex work, the top prosecutor said.
The traffickers preyed on young, unemployed and poor women with “perverse deception”, the office said.