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Three Czechs were convicted in Britain. They financed a luxurious life from the slave labor of their compatriots

The trio of men aged between 38 and 49 were caught in Britain based on a tip from the Czech police, according to which the gang had been exploiting people since 2012, the Evening Standard wrote.

British police have been investigating the case since 2019. Three men and one woman were convicted in May of this year for exploiting 12 people from the Czech Republic and Slovakia. The men learned the amount of the punishment on Friday, the court will decide on the punishment for the woman later, the date of the trial has not yet been set.

The victims were men and women from vulnerable backgrounds. They were mostly homeless or drug addicts and hardly spoke English. They worked either in a fast food restaurant or in a factory that supplied pastries to supermarkets, one woman was forced into prostitution.

Although they earned at least the statutory minimum wage, the gang confiscated almost all of it from them and they received only a fraction of the wage. They lived for a few pounds a day in cramped conditions in a leaky shed and an unheated caravan. The police discovered that the gang financed luxury cars, gold jewelry and real estate in the Czech Republic from their work.

According to the prosecutor’s office, the gang earned up to 400,000 pounds (over 12.1 million CZK) a year from exploitation. As part of gathering evidence, the investigators combed through more than 1,500 hours of video footage from security cameras.

There was already a trial with two other members of the same gang, when one man was sentenced to 12 years and his partner to ten years in prison, writes the Daily Mail.