Organised Immigration Crime (OIC)
In early 2023, the National Crime Agency requested support from TOEX after 12 Vietnamese children were issued visit visas to attend an English course at a school in London.
However, the group did not arrive at the school, and there was no lead agency responsible for locating the children around the UK as there was no intelligence indicating which force area they might be in.
Over the course of the intelligence development, 10 of the children were identified or came forward to immigration or police, some in circumstances which were indicative of modern slavery or other forms of exploitation.
The TOEX Response
The TOEX team were asked to fill intelligence gaps to identify the location of the missing children, to understand whether there was evidence of immigration crime or modern slavery, and to determine if the victims had been subjected to any form of organised exploitation.
Extensive intelligence work revealed the complexity of this case, including revealing the identities of international visa sponsors, professional enablers, and an organised paternity fraud ring.
In addition, a male suspect was identified as to using his British national status for different Vietnamese females to obtain right to remain in the UK and had been named as father of 14 children. Furthermore, it was found that this male, who is a registered sex offender, was being paid for providing his details on birth certificates. An additional two males were identified as organising, facilitating, and benefiting from assisting Vietnamese females with obtaining birth certificates stating the father is a UK national.
As a result of TOEX and partner agency involvement, all the original missing persons have been located and safeguarding activity initiated.
Many systemic issues contributed to the exploitation of these victims which have now either been addressed or are in the process of being reviewed at a national level by law enforcement and relevant professional partners. This includes issues such as schools having no obligation to report children as missing, no police force being responsible for people that go missing from airports, and loopholes within the birth registration process which is enabling mass paternity fraud.
TOEX has received the below feedback from Home Office Intelligence colleagues in relation to this operation: “As well as providing specific technical support around locating missing children, [the operation] focused on the collaboration of intelligence teams across multiple agencies.
“National TOEX led on pulling this intelligence together into a single intelligence product, making connections between OCGs, persons of interest and other connecting entities. This was crucial in identifying multiple avenues for mitigation across government. They also led with the management of the multi-agency response, which was a significant piece of work, but resulted in a number of outcomes and demonstrates the worth of national TOEX as a co-ordinating role in large scale complex exploitation investigations.”