West Africans freed from human trafficking ring
Recent police raids in Ivory Coast have led to 33 West Africans being freed from a human trafficking ring, reports ABC. Ivory Coast and Ghanaian authorities successfully carried out the rescue thanks to a joint investigation, close cooperation, and support from INTERPOL spurred by a tip off from an escaped victim.
Fake job ads and staged photos
It began with fake job ads online in Benin, Burkina Faso, Togo, and Ghana. Paying up to $9,000 USD, new hires were supposedly traveling to Canada for work. The recruiting agency used a Canadian phone number to make their offers seem credible. However, on arrival, new recruits found they had instead been trafficked to Ivory Coast. But the deception didn’t stop there. The exploitative pyramid scams forced the victims to commit fraud against their will.
“To conceal the exploitation from friends and family, the organizers provided victims with Canadian contact details and prevented them from speaking openly about the situation. Victims were taken to upmarket shops or luxury hotels in Abidjan and made to pose for photos to falsely suggest a life of comfort abroad.”
An exploitative pyramid scam forces trafficked victims to prey on others by using their own “success story” as bait. Therefore, maintaining a successful image is crucial for the scam’s operation. Significantly, these types of scams are a growing threat in West and Central Africa. As with pig butchering, victims are usually promised employment or educational opportunities overseas, often going into debt to pay for the travel and administration costs required. Then they are forced under physical and psychological coercion, to perpetuate the same pyramid scam they fell for by enrolling new victims.