Smugglers guilty of trafficking people in lorries

Two members of a human trafficking gang have been convicted of smuggling people in lorry trailers.

The National Crime Agency (NCA) said Duc Quang Ta, 36, who was also guilty of money laundering, was arrested near Leatherhead, Surrey, in September 2020 while travelling to pay co-conspirators £56,000 in Kent.

Police in Birmingham arrested Sarfaraz Sardarzehi, 58, the following day in a car with men he admitted knowing were illegal migrants, who investigators believed were linked to Ta's attempted payment.

A jury at Birmingham Crown Court found Ta, of Norton Road in Reading, and Sardarzehi, of Plough Way in Southwark, London, guilty on Monday.

Their gang worked by hiding migrants in lorries, which travelled to the UK via ferries or the Channel Tunnel, according to the NCA.

The migrants were then transported by car away from the south of England.

The migrants paid significant sums of money for the crossings, the NCA said, and were kept in safe houses, mostly in Belgium, until space was available in a lorry.

Investigators said the case related to Ta's involvement in transporting 22 people on 16 occasions between 18 August and 6 September 2020, with Sardarzehi assisting on three occasions, but the gang is suspected of operating for much longer.

The said the gang communicated using encrypted social media and used slang such as "siblings", "chicken", "pork" or "things" to refer to migrants; "dogs" to mean police; and "horses" to mean vehicles.

NCA senior investigating officer David Cushway said Ta and Sardarzehi's gang "exploited migrants at every step of their dangerous journeys to the UK, all for the sake of profit".

"They placed these people at enormous risk by putting them in HGVs, with the language they used to describe them indicative of the disdain they held them in," he said.

Ta and Sardarzehi are expected to be sentenced in July.

The NCA said it was leading approximately 100 investigations into organised immigration crime or human trafficking.

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