Story originally published on July 17, 2014
The FBI recently arrested four men
in Arizona following a sting operation that uncovered a human trafficking
scheme. The FBI began preparing the sting after it
learned last summer about an attempt by several persons to buy sex slaves from
Malaysia. Though that offer turned out to be a scam, the FBI was able to gain
the contact details of the suspected traffickers. They lured one, Edward Kandl,
to a fake sex slave auction after he attempted to buy a mail-order bride for
$5,000 from the same website in December 2013. Kandl expressed interest in
attending the auction and he arrived at the auction venue with $10,000, where he
was subsequently arrested. A
search of his home revealed a bed with chains, locks and a room with
blacked-out windows. George Steuer of the Phoenix FBI field office stated that
"We realized that there was this group of individuals in the U.S who were
interested in owning a human slave both for sexual exploitation and domestic
labor". According to the annual State Department report, there has been a
rise in the prosecution of human traffickers in the U.S. with the Justice
Department winning 174 convictions for sex and labor trafficking in 2013.
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