UK model kidnapped in Italy and put up for sale on the Dark Web
A BRITISH model was drugged and kidnapped in Milan by a captor who sought to auction her on the “dark web” and demanded a $300,000 ransom.
Italian police said the model, who has not been named, was sent by her British agent to Milan for a photo shoot on July 10 and was kidnapped the next day by a man posing as a photographer.
When the 20-year-old model arrived at a fake studio near the city’s central railway station on July 11, she was injected with the drug ketamine before being undressed and photographed.
Her kidnapper and an accomplice handcuffed her, taped her mouth shut and stuffed her in a large bag in the boot of their car and drove her more than two and a half hours away to a remote house in Borgial, a tiny hamlet 120 miles from Milan close to the French border.
She was kept handcuffed to a wooden chest of drawers inside a rented house for a week, while her kidnappers sought to “auction” her through a “dark web” network named as “Black Death”, a group that investigators claimed had been previously investigated by Europol. Police said she was not raped.
Her agent notified police when he received a ransom demand for $300,000 (£230,000).
Lukasz Pawel Herba, 30, a Polish national from Szczecin who lives in Birmingham, was arrested and charged over the attack. Police said he had confessed to the kidnapping, which investigators described as an elaborate plot that involved months of planning.
“Europol found traces of this group on the ‘dark web’ a couple of years ago,” Lorenzo Bucossi, the chief of the Milan branch of Italy’s state police, told The Sunday Telegraph. “We don’t know if the accused is linked to an organisation or created his own version of Black Death.”
Paolo Storari, Milan prosecutor, described Mr Herba as “dangerous”. He added: “The accused was about to create an auction online. We have evidence he had contact with people who have kidnapped women in the past. His ver- sion of events is barely credible but clearly he does not deny that he was with her for the time she was missing.”
Police alleged there were three other cases of women being auctioned for sexual slavery on his computer, but this was the only concrete case of an auction they had found.
When the plot to sell the woman appeared to have failed, the kidnapper sent encrypted messages demanding a $300,000 ransom from her British agent, police said. The model was then apparently released because she had a young child. “You have a two-year-old child and our rules exclude mothers,” the kidnapper allegedly told her, according to a report in the Corriere della Sera newspaper.
When she was released, the captor demanded £38,500 and threatened to kill her if she reported the incident. Police found a warning in what appears to be a contract on the accused’s computer.
“You are being released with a warning. You are certainly aware of your value on human slavery market. A mistake was made by capturing you,” the document said in English.
“You have agreed to pay outstanding costs of your release of $50,000. We expect that money to be paid in Bitcoin within one month. Any sort of disobedience will result in your elimination.”
Milan police swooped when the kidnapper accompanied the woman to the UK Consulate in Milan on July 17. It is unclear why he accompanied her.
Italian police said British and Polish investigators had been working with them closely on the investigation. Police are now seeking to identify and trace at least one accomplice.
Mr Herba’s neighbours in Birmingham described him as a loner who had few friends. One resident, Sinead Boyce, 23, described Mr Herba as “a strange, strange bloke” who would walk around with rat on his shoulder.
“He would come and go all the time with his brother. They just seemed to use the flat as a bit of a base. During the summer months in particular, he’d have this rat on him. It was bizarre.”
Police confirmed that a raid was carried out on Mr Herba’s flat early in the morning of July 18.