Monday January 17,2011
By John Twomey and Mark Reynolds
The youngsters can each make up to £600,000 for the gangsters in the five years before they reach the age of criminal responsibility at 10, so avoiding prosecution even if they are caught.
The terrified children are kept in squalor and forced out on to the streets, particularly in London’s West End.
They are warned they must return to the gang’s lair after release if they are ever caught.
To stop them informing on the gangs’ activities, the youngsters are fed false stories of torture at the hands of police. Some are even warned that social workers will cut out their kidneys and other organs and sell them.
The thugs who run the gangs also milk the UK’s benefits system, with each raking in around £30,000 a year per person, it has been revealed.
The horrifying details of the massive operation were laid bare in an investigation involving Europol, the European law enforcement agency.
The operation starts back in Romania, where crime barons sell trafficked children for £16,000 each to their UK-based counterparts.
Europol says each child trafficked to the UK has an earning potential of £120,000 a year.
Some gangs are exploiting up to 100 child victims.
This means a gangster living in Romania can make as much as £12million a year from flooding Britain’s streets with child pickpockets, muggers and beggars.
A Europol spokesman said: “These groups of criminals originate from south-east Europe and move around the EU with the trafficked children who they work and trade with other criminal gangs.
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