After months of hell, when released by the Civil Guard, the two Nigerian women were still completely terrified.

If they didn't go back to the prostitution mafia, a voodoo curse would fall on them.

There was no convincing them that the worst was over.

So the agents, together with the Nigerian police, set up a video conference with a religious pastor in Benin City to undo the spell that the

who had captured them cast upon them. In the world of human trafficking for the purpose of sexual exploitation, technology coexists with the archaic. There are transfers around the globe in cryptocurrencies to launder money and cracks in the rooms for the "girls" to put the bills from the "service" into a safe that the "mommy" controls. Recruitment in social networks through false profiles and bots, and families that collaborate in the exploitation of their daughters or sisters; geolocated cell phones to keep them under control and locks on the doors.

Technology has been entering all phases of crime for more than a decade, making it easier for perpetrators, but the essence is the same as always: using deception, threat and violence to enslave vulnerable women. To reconstruct how, EL PAÍS has held conversations with the specialized trafficking commands of the National Police and Civil Guard, the associations that help survivors, Apramp and Diaconía, and with Beatriz Sánchez, Immigration Prosecutor —the body that prosecutes the crime, since more than 90% of the victims are foreigners—. She is clear about it: "The move to the virtual makes investigations more complex, we have to broaden our perspective and evolve, train and innovate, use the same tools as traffickers, there is no other option."

The pandemic has accelerated the technological evolution of crime, experts agree. Practically disappeared from the streets and estates, with many clubs closed, women are exploited in flats or at home (where it is more difficult for authorities and NGOs to reach them). Contacted through web pages, controlled by WhatsApp; increasingly invisible and at the same time more available and profitable. Hidden in an opaque criminal network, the size of which can only be approximated: according to the International Labor Organization (2017), it is estimated that 4.8 million people are victims of forced sexual exploitation in the world, 99% women and girls . In Spain, the statistical balance of the Ministry of the Interior (2020) reports 3.867 people in a "situation of risk of trafficking and sexual exploitation" (identified during inspections in places where prostitution is practiced), although several studies suggest that the real number could be between 20,000 and 40,000. Last year, 160 victims of sex trafficking and 415 of sexual exploitation were released (both crimes can overlap: one punishes the trade in people, the other, what is done later with them). In other words, only the tip of an iceberg is being detected that is sinking deeper and deeper thanks to globality, anonymity, encryption and the difficult traceability that technology offers to criminals.Last year, 160 victims of sex trafficking and 415 of sexual exploitation were released (both crimes can overlap: one punishes the trade in people, the other, what is done later with them). In other words, only the tip of an iceberg is being detected that is sinking deeper and deeper thanks to globality, anonymity, encryption and the difficult traceability that technology offers to criminals.Last year, 160 victims of sex trafficking and 415 of sexual exploitation were released (both crimes can overlap: one punishes the trade in people, the other, what is done later with them). In other words, only the tip of an iceberg is being detected that is sinking deeper and deeper thanks to globality, anonymity, encryption and the difficult traceability that technology offers to criminals.

Uptake |

cheated on social media

It all starts with a

. At least for the victim. The recruiters have been watching her before. His appearance, his character, where he lives, if he has a job, children, sentimental problems... Everything is in full view on his profile. "Recruitment is the essence of trafficking and technology not only facilitates it, but also broadens the spectrum," says Lieutenant Félix Durán, head of the Human Trafficking section of the Civil Guard (UCO). The key to this crime is the vulnerability of the victims, the sources repeat. When they capture in networks, traffickers no longer only look for classic vulnerabilities, but "also victims from whom sensitive information and images can be obtained, such as nudes, regardless of their socioeconomic status," explains a study by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).

On the Internet, traffickers “actively hunt” with more precision, and “passively fish” more potential victims with less effort, according to the metaphors of the latest UN report on the matter.

Those who used to walk through the slums of Romania, Venezuela or Brazil, now also comb Facebook, Tinder or Instagram, and launch massive searches and ads, sometimes using

in employment portals where they can specify criteria of location, age or level of studies.

The hooks vary, but there is always a fraud.

In the majority, an offer to be a waitress or a caretaker: in a precarious situation it is easy to sting, the OSCE study indicates that in the Philippines people trust a Facebook ad more than one from the government agency dedicated to promoting and regulating work abroad.

The deception can also be sentimental.

In a

usual

[lover] gives that first

in a vulnerable profile and starts a campaign of flattery and promises that ends in a romantic relationship.

The "courtship" culminates in a journey whose destination has nothing to do with love.

The Civil Guard created in 2017, prior judicial authorization, its first "virtual infiltrator agent" to be seduced by a

Romanian that they had recorded thanks to a woman released in a previous operation in the Marconi neighborhood. "We did not know how to do it, it is a more common practice in investigations against international terrorism," they explain. With the “fundamental” help of a translator, they created a false profile, “that complied with all the rules of Galati”, the city where many of the exploited women in Spain come from: “A girl like the ones he liked, tall , dark-haired, light-colored, with the economic and family vulnerabilities I was looking for.” They managed to maintain a virtual romance with the recruiter, who invited the invented woman on a "tour of Spain". The operation was finally cut short, but the experience served to open up a new way of operating.

Recruitment through networks coexists with another more traditional one in which the basis is previous relationships: family members cheating on family members, friends of friends, religious leaders... And fraud also occurs when the victims do know that the end is prostitution, because the promised conditions have nothing to do with the atrocious reality that the victims encounter when they arrive in Spain. In a March ruling of the Provincial Court of Madrid, several protected witnesses captured in Paraguay by a compatriot explain how they landed with the promise of earning 3,000 euros a month as "escort girls" with total autonomy, to save something and return home in a few months Once at their destination, deprived of their mobiles and passports, they were locked in apartments from which they could not leave alone, "available 24 hours a day,from Monday to Monday”, without being able to “refuse any client or sexual service” and ordered “to use drugs”. One of them was forced to have an abortion, an intervention that added to the debt acquired by the trip.

In return, they received "meager amounts" of money, having to repay most of their earnings to pay, in addition to the debt, the flat, the food, the photos for the web ads... There are numbers: they received about 10 or 12 clients a day, who paid 80 euros an hour. However, they only managed to send home, and only for a few months, 200 euros at most. When they complained, the

"made them see that she knew where their families lived, that she could harm them, and that she would show them the photos that had been taken of them for the advertisements." One of the girls says that “her sister told her that she was going to come to work as an escort girl, not the conditions. It did not occur to him to enter the website, he did not know that it was done online, he thought he would have to be in a square.

A victim of trafficking for the purpose of sexual exploitation after an operation by the Civil Guard.

/ Photo courtesy of the Civil Guard

control |

Mobile is a chain

"You are never alone, the phone is a constant control tool, the chains are mental." Marcela, a Brazilian survivor of trafficking, works as a mediator in Apramp, at whose headquarters, in the middle of Calle Ballesta in Madrid, a dozen women hustle on sewing machines or receive Spanish classes. The association has a 24-hour mobile phone (609 589 479) to which WhatsApp of all kinds does not stop arriving: requests for bureaucratic help (“how do I report such a person”), social (“I am 25 years old and have a baby, I have left prostitution but I can't find a job”) or directly to the police (“I'm in jail, I can't call, he attacks me”), a conversation that ends with the association sending a location and a call to the authorities.Apramp reaches exploited women thanks to word of mouth and the “closeness” work of its mediators: “We have thirty hired survivors who detect women even in the most hidden places and accompany them in their reintegration process, since who have been through the same thing”, explains its director, the lawyer Rocío Mora.

Marcela, who was given a cell phone by the organization that controlled her, has seen it all: constant messages to the girls in the bars of the clubs ("you've been with that one for a long time", "make her order another drink", "smile more"), women on the street connected all the time to the pimp with the earpiece of the mobile, cameras in the rooms of the flats... It is no longer necessary for the pimps to prowl, the GPS informs where the women are. The prosecutor does not remember that the coercive WhatsApps have served as evidence in any sentence, although there is one in which it is said that the pimps regularly delete them. Other times it is not even necessary: ​​"How is your son Mateo, the one who lives in the 4th block of Medellin with his grandmother?', It is enough to intimidate any victim", illustrates an agent.When the survivors arrive at the shelters, they have to hand over their mobiles (which are replaced by others) and preferably destroy the SIM so that they cannot be located by the organizations. In the NGOs they explain that it is common for women to return to the pimps when they recover their mobiles.

Offer | A huge online market

"There is no operation in which pasion.com does not appear," says the chief inspector of the National Police Femín Treceño. At the entrance to the room where the seven agents of the Cybertrat Group, inaugurated this spring, work glued to the PC, there is a poster that they themselves have designed in which a female face appears drawn with microchip-like circuits. On the floor, two huge hammers with which they will smash the physical door of a clandestine flat where there are women forced to work as prostitutes. The new brothels no longer need neon lights for everyone to see. Pasion.com is among the 50 most viewed pages in Spain, just behind Netflix and above the RTVE or Carrefour websites. The portal, which was born as a spin-off from Milanuncios and advertises itself as "leader in contact ads", claims to contain 700,000.Putting them up is free, although making them go up in the very long stream of photos, many of bodies with blurred faces, costs money. There are several similar portals that monetize intermediation with clients, with more or less careful designs and more or less lax controls (verification of images and age of advertisers).

The word "independent" appears in some advertisements, although experts point out that it is easy to verify that many telephone numbers are repeated and that behind a number of contacts there are undoubtedly situations of trafficking and exploitation, even of minors, as confirmed by several sentences in the that these types of websites appear.

Three years ago, the FBI closed the classifieds website backpage.com in the United States, and the personal ads section of Craigslist.com, for facilitating the trafficking and exploitation of people, after the approval of two controversial laws approved by Trump (FOSTA -SESTA Act).

"In Spain, prostitution is not illegal and it is not punishable to profit from the prostitution of others, unless there is coercion," explains the Police inspector, noting that until not so long ago the general press included a contacts section (EL PAÍS left to do so in 2017).

The Internet has only expanded the target audience, reduced the risk perceived by customers and lowered the costs of the mafias to advertise their offer.

Bleaching |

From briefcase to bitcoins

"There is everything, briefcases with bills and bitcoins," says the prosecutor. Again the coexistence of the usual with the new. Money laundering through cryptocurrencies worries all the sources consulted. It is perhaps the most technologically sophisticated part, because in all the other phases of the "business" it is enough to have a user level ("You don't have to be a

, or hire computer scientists, to cheat on Facebook or send intimidating whatsapps, they are the same dogs with new collars”, in the words of a source).

Asset investigations are complicated by

"The most opaque that exist, seem designed for evil," according to a police officer. Even more so when they are combined with ancestral networks of informal fund transfers such as

, a credit system common in criminal networks that works based on trust and passwords and does not go through legal banking channels. It is supposed to date from the 8th century and the Silk Road, and that is where the word endorsement comes from etymologically.

How do you balance the innovation of the mafias? Using the same weapons, the experts agree, although they all assume that they are always "a few steps behind the bad guys." Collaboration between the authorities of the different countries and with the technology companies that provide the services is also key. The OSCE report, half signed with Tech Against Trafficking, a collaboration of entities such as Amazon or Microsoft with experts in human trafficking, lists 300 private (mostly) and public technological initiatives to fight crime.

Last month, the Deactivate trafficking seminar, organized by the NGO Diaconía, included a round table on the role of technology in activism. "We have to sneak the messages into the places where they get into," says Eva Márquez, director of the Women's Area and the fight against trafficking in Diakonia, showing off the views of her latest campaign on Instagram. "We can't keep handing out flyers when we don't know half of what's going on on the internet." At the seminar, an academic and an expert from the United Nations detailed a couple of initiatives: a digital folder for survivors to better manage the procedures they face in their reintegration and some

in which university students from different disciplines thought of “disruptive” solutions to the problem.

Small steps in an unequal struggle that begins, according to all sources, by making visible a problem that remains hidden in plain sight.

'Camgirls', “a melon to open”

and subscription porn sites

skyrocketed. Mobility restrictions pushed consumers, and the economic crisis many new creators of adult content. Among sexual exploitation experts, no one doubts that among the thousands of profiles, some may be the result of coercion. All institutional reports on technology and trafficking mention it, the latest campaign of the NGO Diaconia on Instagram directly points to the "false idea of ​​empowerment" of the popular Only Fans. Pedro J. Conellie, a police officer specializing in human trafficking and the author, along with Mabel Lozano, of the book

, which details some cases, admits that the issue of

[women who make live sex videos] is "an unopened melon."

Convinced that there are coercive videos, he admits that it is a phenomenon "very complicated to pursue, investigate and prove" since the victim, the client, the platform and its servers may be in four different corners of the globe and there may be apparently legal contracts.

Although the police and judicial authorities do not deny that there may be some cases in which women are being forced into virtual prostitution, no evidence of any specific case has been found.

If you are suffering or want to report a situation of trafficking or sexual exploitation, you can contact:

Apramp > Telephone 24 hours, also by WhatsApp: 609589479

Diakonia > 91 764 32 69

National Police > 900 10 50 90 and tú@policia.es

Civil Guard > 062 and tú@guardiacivil.es