CHILDREN'S SMUGGLING GANG BUSTED BY BRITISH POLICE

London - Police yesterday smashed a huge trafficking ring sending an army of children to beg and steal on Britain's streets from Romania.

In an extraordinary modern version of Oliver Twist, children as young as seven are being kidnapped or bought from their parents in poor gipsy communities.
They were being smuggled to Britain for pick-pocketing, shoplifting sprees and prostitution and the profits used to build giant ‘gipsy palaces'. British

• Police estimate that 168 youngsters aged seven to 15 were trafficked.
• Yesterday 26 officers from the Metropolitan Police joined 300 Romanian officers for a series of dawn raids to arrest 17 men suspected of running the operation for the last four years.
• Inside 34 fortified properties in Tandarei, a gang heartland in the south of the country, they found an incredible stash paid for by the children's work.
• A fearsome cache of weapons included AK-47 machine guns, high-powered hunting rifles and knives, pistols, gas bombs and rounds of ammunition including rubber bullets.
• Enormous bundles of cash with hundreds of thousands of pounds in sterling, Euros and Romanian lei were found scattered around the rooms.
• Officers also recovered luxury cars, jewels and hundreds of false British passports and fake documents from parents giving the gang members permission to look after the children.
• Armed officers wearing balaclavas battered down doors, hauled the stunned suspects from their beds and handcuffed them on the floor.
• Police acted after a tip-off about the huge sums of money flowing into the gipsy community in the impoverished village where massive homes called ‘gipsy palaces' by locals, were being built.
• A Romanian police spokesman said: "The children were told their families would be at risk if they tried to flee, and families were told the children would be harmed if they made a complaint to authorities."
• Romanian officials estimate that a pimp operating 15 girls can earn about £2.7million a year if their trade is prostitution and slightly less if they are pickpockets and thieves.
• Scotland Yard is now hunting for the missing 168 children believed to be living in the UK, as well as the gang's associates in Britain.
• Met Commander Mark Gore said: "This was a massive child trafficking operation.
• "These people have been brought up in the Romany community. The evidence suggests they were taken from their communities by force or without their parents' consent."
• Traffickers began targeting the UK when Eastern European countries including Romania and Bulgaria joined the European Union.

Source: Daily Mail