Traffickers don't just ship cocaine from Latin American countries.

Currently, in Colombia, police are not charging suspects with international drug trafficking, but with trafficking dozens of girls and women from Medellín and Bogota, who have been sent to be exploited as sex workers in Albania. This fact is revealed by journalist Anila Hoxha.

With full willpower at the start, but without knowing what "circle of hell" they would end up in, hundreds of young girls, including from other Latin American countries, fell into the net of trafficker Lucas Betancur and his father. They are considered leaders of one of the criminal groups that used all forms of exploitation in the forced sex industry.

According to investigations, almost 1 million euros are estimated to have been transferred by the victims of this network, who worked as escorts in Albania and practiced prostitution throughout the country. The girls were seduced, deceived and then kept in slavery for the exploitation of the body, to then be circulated in other countries such as Serbia, Croatia and Spain. For Albania, this phenomenon is becoming a serious concern, especially over the last four years.

Betancur's network is not the only one. Girls from Venezuela, Ecuador, Brazil, Ukraine, China, Afghanistan, Turkey and Romania are registered every day in Albanian police files, where shocking data on the methods of exploitation are described.

The first form of recruitment is seduction through deception, with promises of a better life, or holding hostage through a fictitious and irrevocable debt. This is enough for these girls, aged between 19 and 40, sometimes presented as masseuses and sometimes advertised "at will", to practice prostitution in an invisible world, but at the same time openly exposed on escort sites.

One of them tells her story:

"My name is Valentina. I came to Albania with a friend, who was the person who suggested I travel. In Colombia, she was practically a friend of my house, so I decided to come with her. I didn't know I was coming for this job and that it wasn't even legally prohibited. We were waiting for her contact. I needed money and, above all, I trusted my friend."

"When we arrived here, the trafficker warned us that the work we were going to do could get us into trouble with the law and that we had to be careful. He even threatened my friend when he found our apartment. They lied to both of us. We came to a place we knew nothing about."

“The day the police came to the apartment was a shock to me. In Colombia, prostitution is allowed, so I didn't know that in Albania it was forbidden. My real job in Colombia was aesthetics, but I have a child to raise and four other family members who lived only on my salary. The living wage in Colombia is not enough for anything.”

“The traffickers convinced me that money is made here and I came with the intention of opening my own beauty center when I returned to Medellín. I stayed in Albania for four months. During this time, I couldn’t even pay my family’s rent there, because I didn’t see the money when it was paid or when it was received. In this whole story, I am a victim, because in Albania prostitution is a crime; now we have problems with justice and the boss is in prison.”

The 23-year-old's story is the same as that of many other girls arrested in at least 75 police operations within a year in Albania.

Many of them, the moment they take the plane from their homeland, know that in exchange for money they will work as sex workers. They are presented as "experts", paid by the hour or day. Without their real name and with fake identities, the girls appear on digital platforms, offering themselves in virtual escort showcases, reports TCH.

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