Human Trafficking in Canada: A Compliance Perspective (Part 1)

Greg Dent: 00:00:00

Hello and welcome to another episode of The know your

Greg Dent: 00:00:03

compliance podcast. I am extremely excited about today's

Greg Dent: 00:00:07

conversation. I'm normally excited about my conversations,

Greg Dent: 00:00:10

but this one I'm particularly excited about. It's something

Greg Dent: 00:00:12

that internally, I've felt some pressure from our team that we

Greg Dent: 00:00:17

really should be talking about this more, and I know that in my

Greg Dent: 00:00:21

own journey as a as a CEO of an anti money laundering company,

Greg Dent: 00:00:27

I've had a lot to learn, and so to be able to have jenisha Join

Greg Dent: 00:00:32

me today is terrific. So let me start with a bit of an

Greg Dent: 00:00:35

introduction our top by the way, I should say our topic primarily

Greg Dent: 00:00:39

is going to be human trafficking and the impacts in Canada. So

Greg Dent: 00:00:44

with that, Jinish thank you for joining me, and I will give you

Greg Dent: 00:00:46

a bit of introduction as to who you are in a second.

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:00:51

I'm so thrilled, Greg, thank you. Thank you for

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:00:53

having me.

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:00:55

So just to set the scene as to why Jinisha, Jinisha Bhatt is an

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:01:01

anti financial crime consultant, human trafficking investigator.

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:01:04

Does a lot of work in fraud detection, both in Canada,

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:01:08

United States, around the world. At this point in time, Jinisha

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:01:12

has worked in banks doing money laundering, human trafficking

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:01:17

investigation, and about six years ago, decided to kind of

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:01:24

join the the fight against human trafficking in a more serious

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:01:27

way, by joining forces with survivors and leaders. She

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:01:31

teamed up with group of organizations and law

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:01:33

enforcement to identify human trafficking victims using open

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:01:37

source intelligence, and is now a the leader of a collective

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:01:43

known as the Canadian anti human trafficking consortium, CA HTC.

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:01:48

And so ca HTC is a not for profit that Jinisha leads, and

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:01:55

its goal is to foster widespread collaboration among private

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:01:58

sector entities across Canada in the fight against human

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:02:01

trafficking. So I truly cannot think of a better person to come

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:02:05

talk with us about human trafficking, and I, again, I

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:02:07

want to thank you for for spending the time with us today.

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:02:11

So Jinisha, let's jump right in. what let's, let's start with,

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:02:16

for our audience, a really broad what is human trafficking, and

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:02:20

is this really something that's happening in Canada, of all

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:02:23

places?

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:02:25

Yeah, great question. Let's start here. What is human

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:02:29

trafficking? You know, the universal definition that

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:02:33

everybody talks about, right, is human trafficking is the

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:02:38

unlawful act of transporting or coercing people in order to

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:02:43

benefit from their work or service, typically in the form

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:02:47

of forced labor and sexual exploitation. I do like to

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:02:50

challenge things, and so I'm going to challenge the

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:02:52

definition, and many people do. It's not the unlawful act of

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:02:57

transporting. I think that's where we get conflated does not

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:03:04

require transport. So let's just say three words that are truly

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:03:07

important for to understand human trafficking, force, fraud

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:03:10

and coercion. And the world unanimously agrees on this, it's

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:03:15

compelling a person, a victim, to use their bodies in ways they

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:03:23

do not consent to, whether it be for sex or labor or marriage or

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:03:29

organ donations and so on.

Greg Dent: 00:03:33

That's a pretty like scary list, pretty quickly, in

Greg Dent: 00:03:36

fact, like and, and I think a lot of indeed, yeah. For the

Greg Dent: 00:03:42

audience, we're taping this on November 1. So fully appropriate

Greg Dent: 00:03:45

for kind of a more of a more of a topic from, from when you

Greg Dent: 00:03:49

start to talk through these, like organ harvesting, I hadn't

Greg Dent: 00:03:52

even considered, but Yeah, certainly sex trafficking is the

Greg Dent: 00:03:55

one that gets a lot of the the nastiest of the press, I

Greg Dent: 00:03:58

suppose. But, and we've talked about this a little bit, but

Greg Dent: 00:04:03

it's not just that, so I think maybe, maybe delve a little

Greg Dent: 00:04:06

deeper on, if you could, on some of these other facets of human

Greg Dent: 00:04:10

trafficking that I don't think people necessarily associate

Greg Dent: 00:04:12

with human trafficking.

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:04:14

Yeah, well, let's, let's talk about what the

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:04:17

United Nations says about Canada. And you asked me whether

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:04:20

trafficking happens here, we'll get into that. But United

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:04:24

Nations has said Canada is a breeding ground, our temporary

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:04:29

worker permit program, our temporary, sorry foreign worker

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:04:34

program, is a breeding ground for contemporary slavery. And

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:04:39

they're asking us. They have been asking us what we're doing

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:04:42

about it. So we are systematically exploiting

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:04:47

temporary foreign workers for labor, and this is, may or may

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:04:52

not even be trafficking, because here is a government that says

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:04:56

to businesses, hey, we are going to allow people to come here

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:04:59

without. Any labor rights, without any human rights, and

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:05:02

you can exploit them. No one will find out, because they have

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:05:05

no mechanisms to complain. But if you look at other forms of

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:05:09

human trafficking, yes, sex trafficking gets a lot of PR and

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:05:14

definitely we should be concerned about that, because an

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:05:17

average victim's age is about 12 to 17 years, right? And many,

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:05:26

many young people are exploited in this act. Go on,

Greg Dent: 00:05:30

My oldest daughter is 12, so this is a terrifying

Greg Dent: 00:05:32

statement you've just made. Tell me more. Oh, my goodness.

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:05:36

And that's why I challenged the very definition.

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:05:39

See, the idea is someone is forcefully brought somewhere to

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:05:43

be trafficked. The way many young people are exploited these

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:05:46

days is online. They are lured into sharing content or forced

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:05:55

to sell their content when someone else is profiting,

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:05:58

right? They are extorted or sextorted,

Greg Dent: 00:06:01

right? That Okay, well, that's that really

Greg Dent: 00:06:04

broadens the scope of of what we're talking about all of a

Greg Dent: 00:06:06

sudden. Because you do take that, that transport definition,

Greg Dent: 00:06:09

that transport piece out of the definition, and suddenly we're,

Greg Dent: 00:06:12

I can see how this becomes very real and and is something that's

Greg Dent: 00:06:15

happening in Canada. There's, there's no question about it,

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:06:19

how often it happens?

Greg Dent: 00:06:21

Yeah, let's, let's go to prevalence. What's the what's

Greg Dent: 00:06:23

the numbers? What do you know?

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:06:25

Yeah, so last time we met, I told you about

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:06:28

prevalence, but turns out I looked at the study again. This

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:06:32

is a global database. They do a global slavery index. And you

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:06:38

know, they've studied all these countries, including Canada. If

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:06:41

you go to Canadian sources like stat scan, you would see numbers

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:06:45

like there have been, I think it's under 1500 cases in the

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:06:49

last 10 years. So since we started measuring between 2003

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:06:53

and, sorry, between 2013 and 2023 there have been under 1500

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:06:59

cases. So that kind of sounds terrific, right? Yeah, which,

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:07:03

which only places about 1.1 individuals per 100,000 people

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:07:09

at risk or or at risk of having been trafficked. However, if you

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:07:13

look like the global, global slavery index, and this is an

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:07:18

index that studied comprehensive factors like poverty and

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:07:22

people's living conditions and debt, and even things like

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:07:26

corruption index and services available. They are saying that

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:07:31

at least 69,000 people in Canada are actually living in modern

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:07:36

day slavery. They're not, this is not a prevalence study.

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:07:40

They're, they're claiming they're living in modern

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:07:42

slavery, like currently, as we speak. That's a that's a lot

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:07:46

more than the stats can number that's, that's downright

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:07:48

depressing all of a sudden, yeah, and that should tell you,

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:07:52

that should give you an idea of what kind of systemic issues we

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:07:54

face. The number one issue is enforcement. And the number one

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:07:58

issue, actually, I'd say the number one issue is

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:08:00

identification. We haven't even identified more than 1% more

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:08:05

than half a percent of victims worldwide and Canadians stats,

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:08:09

if anything, are more abysmal, and we haven't really done a

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:08:13

good job of prosecuting. The prosecution rate global is also

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:08:16

1%

Greg Dent: 00:08:19

that's a lot to digest. So you're saying that

Greg Dent: 00:08:22

the stats can numbers are pretty low, but by all reasonable

Greg Dent: 00:08:27

metrics are way too low, way lower than the actual. And the

Greg Dent: 00:08:31

actual might actually be vastly still under representing the

Greg Dent: 00:08:34

truth of the situation, if we could actually get to the core

Greg Dent: 00:08:37

of it. If I'm hearing you correctly,

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:08:39

exactly, and I know your listeners are going to

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:08:41

challenge that. How does you know this lady know? Well, I

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:08:44

know because it is my job to look at the data and to get the

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:08:48

data, and we could get into that in a bit, if you like, Yeah,

Greg Dent: 00:08:52

well, let's, let's do a little bit of that, because I

Greg Dent: 00:08:54

don't want people to, you know, one of the, one of the risks of

Greg Dent: 00:08:58

talking about something like this is that you don't people

Greg Dent: 00:09:01

just wash their hands say, Oh, this is so uncomfortable. I

Greg Dent: 00:09:03

don't want to consider this possibility. So tell me why I

Greg Dent: 00:09:07

should believe you. Let's, let's go very core like, what? What

Greg Dent: 00:09:10

data do you bring that that allows you to make that

Greg Dent: 00:09:13

statement and gives you the confidence that you're on the to

Greg Dent: 00:09:16

doing something worth doing, which, by the way, I'm on board

Greg Dent: 00:09:18

with. I just want to, I just want to, want to make sure that

Greg Dent: 00:09:21

our listeners kind of follow through with it.

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:09:22

So okay, so I think the gloomy stuff has to

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:09:27

end now. So let's talk about what is being done. This is

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:09:30

really a more sanguine picture of where Canada could go in the

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:09:34

future. I found it the Canada anti human trafficking

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:09:37

consortium after I learned from many survivor leaders, you know,

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:09:42

who desperate to find victims how to actually use data. So,

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:09:46

you know, we have to realize we have people have vulnerabilities

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:09:49

that are exploited by traffickers, but so do

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:09:52

traffickers, and their main vulnerability is that they have

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:09:56

to market their product. The product is a the human being.

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:09:59

Is, yeah. And so you look at the way these people are marketed,

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:10:05

of course, there are independent sex workers also marketing

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:10:09

themselves, but they are not describing their bodies as a

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:10:16

product, as an object. There are many indicators that would tell

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:10:20

us what kind of ad you're looking at, the type of emojis

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:10:23

used, or the number of times a phone number shows up, or even

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:10:27

their area codes. And you know, trafficking is a transient

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:10:31

crime, so we're looking at all of these factors. And it said

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:10:35

that every 30 or actually every minute. So every minute you can

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:10:42

see multiple ads being posted online in canada, okay? And this

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:10:47

is also very aligned with with global stats. Wherever human

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:10:51

trafficking is prevalent, every minute you have multiple new ads

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:10:53

posted. And, yeah, and these are human trafficking ads, is what

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:10:57

you're saying. So there are sex ads, but then in this pile, you

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:11:03

know, you can look at indicators that show you how exploitation

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:11:06

happens, like, who are the people behind these ads? Why is

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:11:09

the same person showing up over and over again on multiple forms

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:11:13

in multiple cities, for example, and what kind of language is

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:11:17

being used? And then you look at the metadata. There's so many

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:11:22

indicators, like the tattoos or tattoos that traffickers put on

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:11:29

their on their victims. These are like ownership,

Greg Dent: 00:11:32

like a brand.

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:11:33

Essentially, yes, victims are branded in the sex

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:11:36

trafficking game here and in the US. And so we look at all of

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:11:41

that. We also look at particular keywords. Like someone would say

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:11:46

no law enforcement or no, if you really want to get into it, some

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:11:51

of them would say no, no African American man or no on black

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:11:56

Canadians. And this is not to say that I discriminate against,

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:12:02

you know, certain types of clients. This is the trafficker

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:12:06

or the advertiser suggesting telling other pimps. Hey, this

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:12:10

is a pimp control person, so don't try to come here and steal

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:12:14

my pimp. Because, wow, yes, or sorry, steal my victim. So this

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:12:18

is also signal. So we're looking at all of these types of

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:12:22

indicators, and then we're trying to process the data,

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:12:26

figure out where these people can be found, and then

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:12:29

ultimately Hand over that data to nonprofits, to survivor

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:12:34

leaders who are in the business of doing outreach. That's how we

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:12:37

actually get the victims out, and that's why we know these ads

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:12:41

are working, because when the victims come out, they're

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:12:43

corroborating all this information, right? They're

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:12:46

telling us how they were trafficked.

Greg Dent: 00:12:48

And that's insane to me. And so your team of

Greg Dent: 00:12:52

volunteers are actually doing this open source work of reading

Greg Dent: 00:12:57

through and sifting through these ads and looking for some

Greg Dent: 00:12:59

of these indicators on these ads, and are then passing that

Greg Dent: 00:13:03

on to people who can affect change in the like, who can

Greg Dent: 00:13:06

actually get these, these victims out of their situations.

Greg Dent: 00:13:09

Is that what I'm hearing you tell me that your organization

Greg Dent: 00:13:12

does, that's so cool, by the way, but

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:13:14

yeah, we're all about making a tangible impact.

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:13:17

And by impact, I mean how many people we've saved so or not

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:13:22

saved is definitely not the right word extracted, I would

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:13:25

say. But remember, I told you, there are two very troubling

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:13:28

stats here, victim identification and prosecution.

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:13:32

So handing over that data to nonprofits is just one piece of

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:13:36

the puzzle. You cannot solve this problem simply by placing

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:13:40

victims in safe shelter, there will be more victims, and

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:13:44

typically, an average victim will be revictimized about five

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:13:48

to 13 times in her lifetime. And so yes, and that's because of

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:13:54

very complex issues, challenges like, say, trauma bonding or

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:13:58

debt or lack of services, or having children with a person

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:14:02

who is a trafficker, all of those zones.

Greg Dent: 00:14:05

So it occurs to me that, and this is true of so

Greg Dent: 00:14:09

many different ways of fighting crime, that the actual solution

Greg Dent: 00:14:14

would be to go after the traffickers somehow. And it

Greg Dent: 00:14:18

sounds to me like that's even more challenging is that, is

Greg Dent: 00:14:23

that what I'm hearing you kind of because if people are being

Greg Dent: 00:14:26

re victimized by the same traffickers, that tells me that

Greg Dent: 00:14:31

there's some sort of systemic problem that continues to exist

Greg Dent: 00:14:34

here. Would that be fair?

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:14:37

Yeah, I think traffickers seem to have an

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:14:39

impunity up until now, up until very recently, since we changed

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:14:45

our legislation a bit in 2014 we also had been really good at

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:14:50

punishing victims, right? Because victims are easy to

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:14:52

find. They are prostituting themselves. So you're going

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:14:57

after the lowest hanging fruit as law enforcement or. Used to

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:15:00

at least, and wow, you're quite right. When you change your

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:15:03

legislation, we say we decriminalize sex work for

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:15:07

victims. We only want to go after the traffickers. Now,

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:15:10

people are even more confused, because now we need a different

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:15:13

set of skills to actually uncover the complex like layer

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:15:18

of a trafficking network. And that's why the second piece that

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:15:22

we really care about is prosecution. And that's also

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:15:25

where our data is really very useful to a law enforcement, but

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:15:30

B, to anybody who is in the business of doing anti financial

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:15:34

crime and anti money laundering, like myself,

Greg Dent: 00:15:38

well, and this is where there's an intersection

Greg Dent: 00:15:40

that's that becomes interesting, and really Why, certainly,

Greg Dent: 00:15:45

we've, as a company, have become interested in this conversation

Greg Dent: 00:15:48

is, where is that intersect? What does that look like? What

Greg Dent: 00:15:51

Why Should those of us working in anti money laundering "A" I

Greg Dent: 00:15:57

mean, I think you've made, I think you've elegantly made the

Greg Dent: 00:15:59

case of why we should care. So I think we've probably covered

Greg Dent: 00:16:02

that. But then, what should we be doing? And what could we be

Greg Dent: 00:16:04

doing differently, and what, what are the indicators we

Greg Dent: 00:16:09

should be kind of thinking about as we go about our businesses?

Greg Dent: 00:16:13

Okay, that's a whole bunch of questions nested in one. So

Greg Dent: 00:16:15

unpack them as you want, and we can come back to some of them

Greg Dent: 00:16:18

for sure.

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:16:19

No, you're quite right. We don't always have to

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:16:21

appeal to your humanity to do something. Yes, everybody should

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:16:25

care. But what I find fascinating about our industry

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:16:29

is we are the best equipped to care because we have access to

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:16:34

data that I don't have as an open source investigator, I

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:16:39

don't have access to someone's PII, someone's transactions, and

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:16:43

so suppose I give you a whole bunch of data.

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:16:47

We are working on an API, right? So one day, say your firm comes

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:16:52

across an suspicious character who's trying to get buy a

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:16:57

property, and you use our API to look up the phone number, for

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:17:02

example. Now I can only give you the data that I see online that

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:17:08

is not privately personally identifiable information, but

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:17:12

you are equipped to then take that data, match it with your

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:17:16

consumer database and say there were some suspicions here and

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:17:19

now maybe we'll flag this person as a high risk or a person of

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:17:23

interest, and do our due diligence, do our enhanced due

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:17:26

diligence. So I think we are very well equipped to actually

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:17:30

make a difference and what we're missing, and maybe we will talk

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:17:36

more about that. What we're missing at the moment is

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:17:39

collaboration. We can all do this already, like a lot of

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:17:43

firms, private companies, have these transaction monitoring

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:17:47

tools that might very well be catching the data we do, but

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:17:51

ours is a bit more sophisticated in that we're looking at layers

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:17:55

upon layers of data that traditional adverse media

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:17:59

companies may not be looking at, and then we are also doing our

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:18:03

own manual investigations to supplement that. So I think we

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:18:07

can actually make a big difference by talking to each

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:18:10

other, talking to law enforcement and talking to

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:18:12

FINTRAC,

Greg Dent: 00:18:14

yeah. I mean, I think this is this has gone from being

Greg Dent: 00:18:17

a perfect Halloween episode to being kind of really kind of

Greg Dent: 00:18:21

positive, and giving me some hope, because I think we, and I

Greg Dent: 00:18:27

think a lot of our definition around human trafficking there,

Greg Dent: 00:18:29

our conversation around focused a little bit on sex trafficking

Greg Dent: 00:18:33

primarily, but I think there's just no question, and I guess

Greg Dent: 00:18:37

maybe that's one thing we should have delved into, and maybe

Greg Dent: 00:18:39

shouldn't, wouldn't mind going back to for a second, is what

Greg Dent: 00:18:44

other offenses are involved, are associated with human

Greg Dent: 00:18:47

trafficking, and what's the like? What's the harm to

Greg Dent: 00:18:49

society? We talked about the harm to the to the victims,

Greg Dent: 00:18:51

certainly. But what else has what is, what else happens as a

Greg Dent: 00:18:54

result of this, and what, what else is involved there? What are

Greg Dent: 00:18:56

the other predicate offenses?

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:18:58

I love that question. I think I should have

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:19:02

defined earlier, human trafficking is the second most

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:19:05

profitable crime after drug trafficking. So currently, you

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:19:09

know, we're talking about a two, $50 billion industry for all we

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:19:14

know now, that means this is one of the biggest predicate

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:19:18

offenses to money laundering, right? Or, if you like, the US

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:19:22

term, this is a specified unlawful act. Sua, it's one of

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:19:27

the big ones. Now, it's not just the exploitation of human beings

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:19:33

for sex and labor. There is a slew of other sorts of crimes.

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:19:38

Just like any other criminal enterprise, there is an

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:19:40

intersection, usually, of fraud, of identity fraud, of what we

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:19:45

call forced criminality. So now the victims, if they don't meet

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:19:49

their quota or to enhance their revenue, the victims will who

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:19:54

are serving all these clientele at night, they might be forced

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:19:58

to go and steal merchandise during the day. A and then their

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:20:01

accounts are used, and I've seen this in many Canadian cases.

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:20:05

Their accounts are used to conduct check fraud and all

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:20:08

sorts of wire fraud and all of that, and they're the ones who

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:20:11

have charges on their rap sheet. So there is this

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:20:14

intersectionality between I find, between drug trafficking,

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:20:18

especially on the west coast, where you are, and human

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:20:21

trafficking and fraud, and even narcotics trafficking and like

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:20:27

any kind of gang related activity, because here you have

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:20:30

a surplus of revenue which you can now use in any way you like,

Greg Dent: 00:20:36

well, and then you have a free pool of labor to if

Greg Dent: 00:20:39

that, and a free pool of labor that shields you from potential

Greg Dent: 00:20:43

criminal or that gives you some layer of protection from

Greg Dent: 00:20:45

protection from potential criminal charges, as it were,

Greg Dent: 00:20:49

it's funny, I, as we're talking through this, I remember a case

Greg Dent: 00:20:53

out of Ontario a handful of years ago where there was a home

Greg Dent: 00:20:58

listed by Somebody fraudulently, and it turned out that that

Greg Dent: 00:21:02

person was a human was being trafficked. There was no

Greg Dent: 00:21:05

question that that person was forced into that activity. They

Greg Dent: 00:21:08

had nothing to do with the actual fraudulent selling of the

Greg Dent: 00:21:11

house, made none of the proceeds of it, and their idea they were

Greg Dent: 00:21:14

just being used as the as the pawn in the whole kind of

Greg Dent: 00:21:17

scheme. So it definitely, I, I I have seen this case in in the

Greg Dent: 00:21:23

media, so it definitely is happening in Canada. And I

Greg Dent: 00:21:27

wanted to kind of step back to that, because I don't think we'd

Greg Dent: 00:21:29

fully tied that not together. So

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:21:32

about what it looks like, I think, yeah,

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:21:34

that's, that's where I think the next place, what

Greg Dent: 00:21:37

if I'm conducting my business? I'm I'm a mortgage

Greg Dent: 00:21:40

broker. I'm a real estate broker. My day to day practice

Greg Dent: 00:21:45

doing whatever it looks like. What? What is it going to look

Greg Dent: 00:21:49

like for me? And how might I be helpful in this whole thing?

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:21:54

Let's talk about some behavioral red flags first,

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:21:57

and then we'll talk about money laundering indicators. Too. So

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:22:02

behaviorally, suppose you're a realtor. You go to a place, and

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:22:08

if you're aware of the general signs of vulnerability, let's

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:22:12

forget that you're looking at different types of trafficking,

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:22:16

because here you could be exposed to sex trafficking or

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:22:19

minor trafficking, you know, child abuse material production

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:22:23

of that, which usually happens in a person's home, because it's

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:22:27

usually the family, right, that's conducting this activity.

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:22:30

Now, what are the signs of vulnerability? These are things

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:22:33

that are good to know. So you have a very average looking

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:22:37

people in a home, but then one person stands out. One person

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:22:40

looks vulnerable, malnourished, afraid, they don't seem to

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:22:45

really belong there. Or you may see multiple people. If you're

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:22:49

looking at a pimp controlled place, you may see that this one

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:22:55

is really interesting. You may see that there are internal

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:22:58

locks in a big house.

Greg Dent: 00:23:00

This one really stuck with me, and I was thinking

Greg Dent: 00:23:03

about this because I've, I've shown many homes over the years

Greg Dent: 00:23:07

that I thought were just student housing, and there's locks on

Greg Dent: 00:23:12

all of the internal bedrooms door, internal bedroom doors,

Greg Dent: 00:23:15

excuse me, but this is stuck with me because I'm I have seen

Greg Dent: 00:23:20

these houses, and I thought, that's probably student housing.

Greg Dent: 00:23:22

It never even would have occurred to me until our

Greg Dent: 00:23:24

conversation that this is something that might be an

Greg Dent: 00:23:28

indicator that should at least cause me to think a little bit

Greg Dent: 00:23:30

more about it. But I don't want to interrupt completely. So

Greg Dent: 00:23:32

please carry on, because these are super useful, but I really

Greg Dent: 00:23:35

wanted to highlight that. So

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:23:37

no, thank you for that interjection. And that

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:23:40

reminds me, it's just like a list of indicators when you get

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:23:44

them from FINtrack, a single indicator alone wouldn't tell

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:23:48

you what you're looking at, so you very comprehensive

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:23:51

understanding, and that's why looking at people and their

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:23:53

behavior, if something sticks out to you and somebody you know

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:23:57

that look of vulnerability when you see a person, a troubled

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:24:00

child, a bullied child, you know that you're looking at somebody

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:24:07

who needs help, but may not quiet, believe that he's a

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:24:10

victim or She's a victim herself, then there are some

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:24:14

tattoos. Like I said, teams or traffickers would have typical

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:24:19

tattoos. We know at least what some of them look like. Maybe we

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:24:23

can add them to show notes later. But you have these crown

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:24:28

tattoos. They are very or were very popular at least a couple

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:24:32

years ago, and still might be. You have usually, like,

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:24:35

someone's initials followed by the money, the dollar sign, or,

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:24:39

like, I've even seen something like property of this person and

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:24:44

tattoos in strange places too, like here, close closer to their

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:24:50

chest area or their shoulders. And then there is this question

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:24:55

about injuries, like, if there is force involved, for. Uh, in

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:25:00

typical cases, you know, no trafficker wants to damage their

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:25:05

products. And pardon me for sounding so coarse. I think,

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:25:09

because I speak to a lot of survivors, like this is the

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:25:12

language I pick up on, but no trafficker wants, yeah, so when

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:25:16

the beatings happen, when the disciplining happens, same with

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:25:19

children. It's usually going to happen in unusual places, like

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:25:24

but buttocks, or like the back, that people are not exposed to

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:25:28

their their thighs, or sometimes, if there are signs of

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:25:31

being dragged, then you see the knees can be scraped, but that

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:25:34

can happen to an average person. And then, if you're dealing

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:25:38

looking at a victim, who's dealing with a lot of buyers.

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:25:41

Buyers seem to exert force on their on their victims, I want

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:25:49

to say, and that's when you might see some typical injuries,

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:25:53

like you have the wrist injuries when people are restrained,

Greg Dent: 00:25:58

so that one could be visible to somebody just, you

Greg Dent: 00:26:01

know, I'm thinking through some of these indicators, and I don't

Greg Dent: 00:26:04

often see the buttocks of my clients, but probably better

Greg Dent: 00:26:09

that way, but certainly the risks that risks that's easy to

Greg Dent: 00:26:13

observe. And you know, if I were thinking through a situation

Greg Dent: 00:26:18

where, you know, you go into that house, and maybe somebody

Greg Dent: 00:26:21

does look like they're out of place, and then you observe the

Greg Dent: 00:26:24

locks on the doors. Maybe then I would start to pay attention to

Greg Dent: 00:26:27

the wrists. And hey, if there's some bruising on the wrists or

Greg Dent: 00:26:31

some chafing on the wrists, that would be another like I'm

Greg Dent: 00:26:34

starting to paint a puzzle here that starts to look compelling

Greg Dent: 00:26:39

and scary,

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:26:40

black burns like a lot of buyers, have this

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:26:42

paraphilia. You know, it's a very popular paraphilia. But you

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:26:46

know what really has stood out to me in my experiences, the

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:26:51

victim, who's truly a victim, doesn't have a lot of personal

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:26:55

possessions, so you might see someone has her all her clothes

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:26:59

in a garbage bag, and that means she's a transient person, and

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:27:03

now she's using a room, and all you see is a garbage bag or

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:27:06

someone who's wearing PJs in a very casual setting, but then

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:27:11

she doesn't have regular comfortable shoes, so PJs and a

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:27:16

pair of heels while she's limping Like all of these signs,

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:27:20

wow. Okay, now we've mostly talked about sex trafficking,

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:27:24

but what about labor trafficking? I think I was

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:27:27

asking you if you ever run into, like, say, new properties or new

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:27:31

new buildings, if you ever look at labor workers there? So

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:27:34

that's one place where you could find people who are scared or

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:27:37

malnourished again, people who look extremely exhausted. And

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:27:40

I'll give you an example. If you go to a really nice resort in

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:27:44

the Bahamas, you may not notice this, but say you go to a

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:27:47

relatively like average, below average resort in the Dominican

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:27:51

Republic, you will see a lot of migrant Haitian workers. They're

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:27:57

extremely exploited for labor. They have 15 hour shifts. See if

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:28:01

you can have a conversation with them in French Creole, and

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:28:04

you'll come to to see the signs of labor trafficking. So that's

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:28:09

what a construction worker looks like when they're fourth. ut

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:28:13

then they're also living in residential properties, right?

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:28:16

Like, seen one in Hamilton, Ontario, about, I think 10 years

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:28:21

ago, actually, yeah, one of the survivors, I know very well, he

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:28:26

was extracted from that ring. This was a family in Hamilton,

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:28:32

and they were in the construction business. They had

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:28:34

about 15 to 20 Hungarian men in their basement right sleeping on

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:28:40

these mattresses, and all of them had interacted with a major

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:28:45

Canadian bank, because they'd all open these debit accounts

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:28:50

where they were collecting some sort of benefit. I don't, I

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:28:55

don't remember which one it was, and the traffickers had access

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:28:58

to their debit cards in their bedroom. So like you might see

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:29:01

some of these signs, like, why are there so many mattresses in

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:29:04

the basement?

Greg Dent: 00:29:05

I was gonna say that's a really good one that

Greg Dent: 00:29:07

you could easily as a as a realtor, you go through a house

Greg Dent: 00:29:10

for whatever reason, thinking, listing it, working with a

Greg Dent: 00:29:13

buyer, whatever it is that would that wouldn't necessarily have

Greg Dent: 00:29:18

stood out without this background of how that actually

Greg Dent: 00:29:21

plays out in real life, in our Canadian society, already,

Greg Dent: 00:29:25

that's a that's a fascinating indicator for sure.You would

Greg Dent: 00:29:31

talk to we talked a little bit about behavioral stuff, and I

Greg Dent: 00:29:34

think that's probably where I think it is. Realtors and

Greg Dent: 00:29:39

mortgage brokers have the most opportunity to learn, because

Greg Dent: 00:29:42

Realtors do actually physically get into homes. And there is

Greg Dent: 00:29:45

some some stuff there. We've talked a little bit about that,

Greg Dent: 00:29:47

but the behavioral stuff was interesting, too. And I think

Greg Dent: 00:29:49

one of the things you'd mentioned when we first talked

Greg Dent: 00:29:52

was around this idea of like somebody clearly puppet

Greg Dent: 00:29:55

mastering a transaction from and maybe not ever being present.

Greg Dent: 00:29:59

During showings, walk me through why that might be important to

Greg Dent: 00:30:04

as an indicator.

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:30:06

Okay, so you're looking at an organized crime

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:30:10

here, and let's talk about the most successful of human

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:30:15

traffickers. We'll get into, like, particular types of human

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:30:19

trafficking in a bit sex trafficking in a bit, but let's

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:30:22

just say, an average trafficker can make one to $2 million a

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:30:26

year per victim, and if they're multiple victims, that's a lot

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:30:30

of money. So that's a lot of money they have to move. But

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:30:34

that also means to manage all of these victims and this business

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:30:38

enterprise, they also have a lot of conspirators or a lot of

Jinisha Bhatt: 00:30:44

brokers, nominees, all of that.