Six men, including one of Indian origin, were convicted of smuggling hundreds of Iraqi-Kurdish migrants into the United Kingdom.
They were found guilty of being part of an organised human trafficking network based in Teesside.
The six men were found guilty by a jury at Newcastle Crown Court on July 11 following a six-week trial.
They used to charge between £5,000 and £10,000 per person to smuggle illegal migrants in vehicles, including refrigerated lorries and a camper van, from Europe into the UK in 2017.
The smuggling gang used to hide migrants inside a campervan, as well as in vans among bicycle boxes and a shipment of mattresses.
The six men are identified as – Gurprit Singh Peter Kahlon, 67, Muhammad Zada, 43, Pareiz Abdullah, 41, Khalid Mahmud, 50, Marek Sochanic, 39, and Bestoon Moslih, 41.
Five of the six convicts are from Teesside, and the other is from London.
“Zada, from Middlesbrough, coordinated at least five conspiracies to smuggle Iraqi-Kurdish migrants into the UK from mainland Europe in 2017,” said National Crime Agency (NCA).
“His associates were responsible for recruiting drivers and facilitating the movement of people into the country,” it added.
The first arrest was made in March 2017, when Milan Sochanic – Marek Sochanic’s father – drove a van from the UK to Belgium on two occasions to collect and transport people.
After being stopped by French police at Calais on his second trip, eight migrants were found hidden in the van among furniture.
Kahlon was the key associate of the gang’s figurehead Muhammad Zada, and was responsible for recruiting drivers and facilitating the movement of people into the UK.
“The crime group also duped drivers to unwittingly smuggle migrants by tasking them to transport legitimate commodities between the UK to mainland Europe. People were then loaded into vehicles without the driver’s knowledge,” said the NCA.
All six men will be sentenced on September 20.
Martin Clarke, NCA Branch Commander, said: “Our extensive investigation has seen us uncover and dismantle a major people smuggling network with ambitions of bringing hundreds, if not thousands, of people into the UK illegally.”
