9/28/2021- 11:30 p.m.
A recruiter who made almost £1 million supplying Polish slave workers to a parcel delivery company has been jailed alongside two other human trafficking kingpins.
David Handy, 54, acted as a ‘legitimate employer’ through his agency ASAP 24/7 to provide workers for Birmingham-based logistics firm XDP.
The workers were sent to him by Mateusz Natkowski, 29, and Lukasz Wywrinski, 38, who used violence and intimidation to keep them in line while forcing them to live in squalid bedsits scattered around the West Midlands.
Handy would skim off some of his victims’ rightful earnings while paying their wages into bank accounts run by Natkowski and Wywrinski, leaving them victims with incomes of just 50p an hour.
Up to 400 Polish nationals including teenagers and a man in his 60s are believed to have been trafficked into the UK – many of whom were ‘homeless, vulnerable, and desperate to earn money,’ prosecutors said.
One man was promised £300 to £450 a week and accommodation in the UK and forced to squeeze into to a two-bedroom house with 11 people with no beds, heating, hot water or cooking facilities.
Over three weeks he worked 12 to 13 hours a day and was paid a total of £10.
Some of the slaves said they were forced to use nearby canals to wash and defecate due to the lack of water and toilets in the properties.
The court heard how the exploitation drove some victims to self-harm, while others believed their families would be targeted if they went to the police.
The trio were convicted across three trials following the UK’s largest ever prosecution for modern slavery, which exposed what is thought to be the country’s largest human trafficking ring.
David Handy, 54, of Oxford Street, Penkhull, Stoke-on-Trent was found guilty of conspiracy to force people into forced labour, conspiracy to traffic people for the purpose of exploitation and money laundering and jailed for seven years on Friday.
Mateusz Natkowski, 39, of no fixed abode, was found guilty of three charges, including conspiracy to require another to perform forced or compulsory labour and conspiracy to control another for the purposes of labour exploitation.
Another man, Shane Lloyd, 47, of Newcastle-under-Lyme, pleaded guilty to two counts of money laundering after cashing out nearly £140,000 for Lloyd via his own bank account.
He was handed a suspended sentence of 20 months and ordered to do 200 hours of unpaid work.
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