Multimillion-dollar homes seized in Sydney human trafficking investigation

Two homes have been seized by police after the properties were allegedly used for forced labour. Three people have been charged with human trafficking offences.

Two homes worth almost $4 million have been seized after the properties were allegedly used to keep a woman as a slave in Sydney’s suburbs.

The Australian Federal Police slapped restraining orders on the houses in Eastlakes and Mascot last week as part of a lengthy investigation.

Police will allege a man and two women kept a 26-year-old Indonesian national against her will and forced her to work as a maid without pay for more than five years.

The AFP said the woman was kept against her will for more than five years.

The woman was recruited to work as a maid in the homes from July 2014.

Her visa status expired a month later, but her passport was taken away and she wasn’t allowed to leave, it is alleged.

The AFP became involved after a tip-off to NSW Police in late 2019 about a woman being held against her will.

Last Monday, the AFP’s Criminal Assets Confiscation Taskforce obtained restraining orders on the homes because of their central role in the human trafficking allegations.

“The CACT’s mandate is to deprive individuals and criminal organisations of not only the proceeds and benefits of their crimes,” AFP national manager criminal assets litigation Stefan Jerga (above) said, “but also to confiscate instruments of crime, being property that is used in connection with the commission of their offending.”

A husband and wife, aged 35 and 36, as well as a 40-year-old relative of theirs, were charged with causing a person to ­remain in servitude and concealing or harbouring non-­citizens.

The trio is due to appear in court on September 17.