SLEEPING in a freezing shed, made waterproof using a blue tarpaulin held down by gym weights, a group of migrants lived in squalor while earning thousands of pounds for their traffickers. It was a far cry from the life they had been promised when they were lured to the UK by Zdenek Drevenak, 47, his brother Ernest Drevenak, 46, and four other gang members, all from the Czech Republic.
Over the course of seven years from , at least 16 people from the country were turned in modern slaves in Britain, with no money or passports to escape their traffickers, who ruled over them using horrendous violence and threats.
Now, after a tip-off from Czech police in brought the evil trafficking operation crashing down, victims have spoken out about their terrifying ordeal.
All they care about is money, money, money. Roman and five others all worked at the same McDonald's franchise, near Cuxton in Cambridgeshire, where their employers failed to notice all their wages were being paid into the same bank account that didn't belong to any of them. It is estimated that about 80 per cent of the chain's restaurants are run by franchisees, who pay the company a small fraction of their annual turnover in rents.
Other victims - when not hunkering down in the freezing sheds or static caravans provided as 'accommodation' by the traffickers - were forced to work at the fast food restaurant, pitta bread factories or in a north London car wash.
