Within the trafficking industry the trafficker roles are:

 

The recruiter

Finds and brings women into the industry, usually by deception, but sometimes by force.

Recruiters sell their recruits to brokers or directly to employers, such as a brothel or bar owners or managers.

 

The broker (agent)

A go-between or a middleman. Brokers typically buy women from a recruiter and then sell them to an employer. There may be more than one go-between (e.g. a broker may buy from a recruiter and then sell to another broker, who then sells to the employer.

 

The contractor

Organizes and oversees an entire trafficking transaction, or more typically, a set of transactions. This role is usually played by a relatively professional criminal organization or group.

 

“Contractor” is the term for this role, which is comparable to that of a “general contractor” in a legitimate business – a project overseer who contracts out some of the labour for the project.

 

The employment/travel agent

Arranges for the trip and its alleged purpose (e.g. job, job training, tourism). An employment agent arranges for a “legitimate” job and job description; a travel agent arranges for a “legitimate” trip.

 

Employment and travel agents may serve as “fronts” for the criminal trafficking activity. Sometimes employment or travel agents arrange for the traveller's visa, passport and other identification papers.

 

The document thief/forger

Arranges for and obtains “legitimate” documentation for travel to another country. Document specialists may steal or otherwise illegally obtain legitimate documentation, or they may create false documentation.

 

The transporters (escort, “jockey”)

Accompanies women on the trip – by airplane, train, bus and car or on foot – to their destination. Transporters may take the woman through one or more transit cities or countries.

 

They usually deliever the women to a broker at a border or inside a destination country, but sometimes the delivery is directly to an amployer.

 

The employer (procurer)

Purchases and then sells the “commodity” to the customer, and provides a place of business for sex. Employers provide the women with a place to live and work; set up and tell them about the conditions of their work, living arrangements, and lifestyle; and inform them that they must work in the sex trade, while they pay off their debt.

 

Employers are most commonly bar, club, or brothel owners or managers; a small number of employers are street pimps and have no business establishment, and thus the sex transaction may occur in a public place.

 

The enforcer (guard, “roof”)

Provides protection for the place of business, and to a lesser extent, the trafficked women.

 

Enforcers protect the business from other criminal gangs, from extortionists, and from police or immigrant raids; they see that the women follow the house rules, and in particular, that they do not escape.

 

The enforcer may also make sure that the customer pays what he owes and otherwise abides by the house rules.

 

Enforcers – particularly if they are members of organized crime groups – may also be extrters; that is, on behalf of their crime group, they extort or demand money from brothels or bars, and if the owners don't pay, the crime group retaliates (e.g., burns down the business, murders the manager, arrange for a police raid on the business).

 

Extortion may be either a specialized enforcer role or one of several tasks of an enforcer; the line between extortion and payment for enforcement is thin.

 

 

 

The text above is a mix of - and re-written from two exceptional and very good books; "Sex trafficking: Inside the business of modern slavery", Siddharth Kara, 2009 and the book "Sex trafficking", Kathryn Farr, 2005.