“Traveling sales crews” a new twist on slave labor
By Michael P. Mayko
Connecticut Post, Bridgeport
FAIRFIELD — They recruit teenagers to work long hours at little pay soliciting adults in one of the oldest professions in inner cities like Bridgeport and suburbs like Milford.
But it isn’t prostitution.
Just a twist on slave labor called traveling sales crews.
“They take kids far away from their homes,” said Bradley Myles, of the nonprofit Polaris Project in Washington, which works with victims of human trafficking. “They drop them off in neighborhoods and force them to sell things, mostly magazines and household products.” U.S. Attorney Kevin J. O’Connor’s office has charged people like Corey Davis, who is slated to be tried in December, with bringing New York females as young as 12 into Bridgeport to work its strip clubs. The office has convicted Dennis Paris and nine others in connection with a Hartford-based prostitution ring that coerced women with drugs and then forced them to stay on with beatings.
They’ve even convicted Jose Calhelha, 47, of Guilford, for encouraging Portuguese citizens to illegally enter the U.S. and staff his 10 Dunkin’ Donut shops, including two in Derby.
But they’ve never gotten any leader of any of these sales rings.
“This is a whole underground world,” said Myles. “Kids are taken from their homes within an hour after they are hired and driven to states far away. They are dropped off in unfamiliar neighborhoods using a scripted sales pitch claiming they are selling magazines for points. After two hours the van comes to pick them up. On Saturday nights they are driven by van to another state.”
The discussion occurred during one of the workshops conducted Wednesday as part of a Human Trafficking Conference at Fairfield University. The conference, which focused on the impact of human trafficking on the victims, the economy and law enforcement was sponsored by Fairfield University and the International Institute, which provides social services work to law enforcement.
“This is the first one in southwestern Connecticut,” said Myra Oliver, the institute’s executive director, of the conference. “We are trying to build awareness.”
Oliver said trafficking in humans is both a domestic and international problem.
“It’d be nice to say man’s inhumanity to man has stopped but it’s not true, not here, not overseas.”
She said criminals can make more money out of human trafficking than drug trafficking because “once the drug is used it’s gone. A human being can be recycled thousands of times over.”
The Rev. Richard Ryscavage, director of Fairfield University’s new Center for Faith and Public Life, said the conference is the “kickoff event” for getting people involved.
In a conference involving law enforcement’s role, FBI Special Agent Walter Grattan Jr. said Connecticut’s location between Boston and New York City positions this state as “as pass-through point for operators.”
That was shown by Assistant U.S. Attorney Krishna Patel, who with Myles led the conference on Trafficking of Americans. Last month, Patel produced evidence during the trial and conviction of Aleksander Dubogryzov that he was providing daily transportation of female Russian aliens from New York to Connecticut to work in massage parlors. But Grattan, and others like Special Agent Dave Mello of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement and State Police Sgt. Paul Killoran, said a key to investigating human trafficking cases is getting nonprofit social service agencies involved.
“You have to treat the people as a victim first,” said Grattan. “We can not go in and put together a case with bank records, tolls records at the end of the day we have to get these victims prepared to be in a mindset to testify against these bad guys.” Myles admitted that police who respond to a call from a person approached by one of these traveling sales rings might help return a teen to his parents. “It’s possible that an arrest for solicitation can be used as a means to talk to the victim and get to the people responsible,” he said. Often the crew members are teens with little education and from low economic levels. They answer ads promising “fun, money, travel” and “lots of money.”
“It’s all a scam,” he said. “The kids are trained on scripts. They’re even trained to steal when they ask for a glass of water.” Their life in the crew, he said, involves working shifts of 12 hours a day, seven days a week; living on $5 a day meal money; sleeping 10 to a hotel room with the beds given to the top sellers; and being punished with verbal and physical abuse, if daily quotas are not met. Often the magazines, household goods or vacuums are never delivered. “When we think of human trafficking in slave labor, we think of farm work,” he said. “No one thinks of these magazine sales crews.”
Copyright 2007 Connecticut Post