Human Trafficking Scams

A woman named Brittani Louis Taylor was engaged to a trafficker named Milos. In multiple YouTube videos, she explains that he was everything she wanted. He was reliable, kind, and considerate. Then, she got pregnant. After she became pregnant, they got engaged. During the pregnancy, she says that Milos became extremely violent with her. Brittani was scared to leave him because he had told her that his family was apart of the Serbian mafia. It wasn’t until his mother came to visit her when she was giving birth when she realized something was wrong. He and his mother kept on wanting pictures of Brittani and her son’s profile and wanting him to get a Serbian passport when he is 6 months old. His mother also wanted to bind his hips so that they were perfectly straight. Brittani’s birth certificate was missing from her house too. When talking to multiple police officers and lawyers, they all agreed that he was going to traffic her. She got a restraining order on him and every year she to renew it. She cannot leave the country, she always has to pick up her son from school, and she cannot be alone. Her life has changed significantly from this.

For the past few years, many people have been taken and have been trafficked. Traffickers are getting smarter with how they try to lure people into their trap. They target who are alone on their college campus. Students are then sold on the dark web, butchered on the dark web, or anything that’s associated with the dark web. The extreme lengths traffickers go through are insane and that colleges are not helping their students stay safe from potential traffickers on their campus.

Traffickers are manipulative and vindictive people. Most of the time, traffickers are selling people on the dark web. There have been many posts online that explain that traffickers will put a honey bottle upside down on their potential victim’s car and will take them when the victim is trying to clean their car or traffickers will tie zip ties onto their potential victim’s car door. But there are many other tactics they use on people in order for their victims to trust them. According to a CNN article posted in 2016, there are 5 different “disguises” traffickers use to gain people’s trust. There are the Pretender and Provider. These two pretend two be someone’s boyfriend, sister, father, etc and is someone who takes care of the victim’s needs like their finances. The Promiser promises the victim things like a job or that they can travel. The Protector and Punisher use intimidation and violence to manipulate their victim. (Riley, CNN). People who are in a vulnerable state will be the first ones who are targeted. Traffickers will not only use one of these traits, but they will also use multiple on the same person.

Colleges need to take action in helping prevent human trafficking on their campuses. I’ve been looking for articles that explain how some colleges are preventing human trafficking, but I can’t find any. I can only find articles about how colleges need to acknowledge that there is a possibility that there are traffickers on campus. I believe it’s important that students should be aware of the signs of a trafficker. Even if someone doesn’t go to college, it is still important to educate themselves so they can be safe.