A couple who kept vulnerable people as slaves and forced them to do nearly £1m-worth of work for free have been jailed for a total of 25 years.
Maros Tancos and Joanna Gomulska, both 46, were the ringleaders of a modern slavery and human trafficking operation in Bristol.
They persuaded dozens of vulnerable people to travel from Slovakia to work for them at a city car wash.
Tancos would use his links to orphanages and camps in Slovakia to recruit victims, promising them transport, a place to live and food, and a better life.
Victims were told they would get to keep half of their wages every month, whilst the other half would go towards food and living costs.
However, on arrival, victims were kept in squalor in the couple’s three bedroom home in Brentry Lane, Bristol, and forced to work for free.
They said they were locked in the house and had identity documents and mobile phones taken from them.
Tancos’ co-conspirator, Gomulska, helped with arrangements to transport workers in the UK.
She would take their identity documents and only release them when they were needed for applications like National Insurance numbers or bank accounts.
Gomulska would accompany victims to appointments and would act as the interpreter before taking their bank cards and pin numbers.
Victims worked at Tancos’s car wash business during the day and then were sent out to other jobs at night.
These included catching chickens, packing milk or sorting parcels.
NCA investigators found that Tancos and Gomulska failed to pay a minimum of £923,835 in wages, based on calculations of what they would have earned on minimum wage for eight hours a day.
The pair also transferred almost £300,000 from their victims’ accounts earnt whilst working at the secondary jobs.
All of the money was spent on Tancos’s and Gomulska’s living costs, gambling online or in casinos, and on second hand cars.
Victims said that Tancos would be violent towards them, with some describing being threatened or hit.
They said they were too scared to leave the property and on many occasions were locked inside.
National Crime Agency (NCA) officers started an investigation in 2017 and traced Tancos’s and Gomulska’s offending back to 2010.
The couple were kept under surveillance as they transported their victims to and from the car wash and to other manual roles around Bristol.
