Duc Quang Ta and Sarfaraz Sardarzehi have been sentenced at Birmingham Crown Court over their roles in a people smuggling operation that hid Vietnamese migrants in the backs of HGVs to reach the UK, with an investigation revealing the group used coded slang to evade detection while moving tens of thousands of pounds in cash.
Two men convicted of smuggling Vietnamese migrants into the UK concealed inside lorries have been sentenced following an investigation by the National Crime Agency. Duc Quang Ta, 36, from Reading, and Sarfaraz Sardarzehi, 58, from London, were found guilty of people smuggling and money laundering charges by a jury at Birmingham Crown Court on 23 February this year. Ta was sentenced to eight years in prison, while Sardarzehi received a two-year sentence suspended for two years, both handed down at the same court on 10 July.
How the Operation Worked
The criminal network Ta and Sardarzehi belonged to concealed migrants in the backs of lorries travelling to the UK via ferries or the Channel Tunnel. Once migrants had arrived, they were quickly moved away from the south coast by car in order to reduce the risk of detection by Border Force officers. Ta played more of an organising role within the group, described by the NCA as acting like an agent or operations manager, coordinating drivers, lorries, safe houses and migrants. Sardarzehi, meanwhile, worked as a “taxi driver” for the group, transporting migrants once they were in the UK and moving cash on the network’s behalf.
Migrants paid significant sums for their crossings and were held in safe houses, mostly in Belgium, until a space became available for them inside a lorry. Ta was found to have been involved in the transport, or attempted transport, of migrants on 16 occasions between 18 August and 6 September 2020, with Sardarzehi assisting in three of those attempts. A total of 22 people were successfully smuggled into the UK during that period, though investigators suspect the true scale of the group’s offending extends well beyond this timeframe.
A Coded Language to Avoid Detection
To evade law enforcement, the group communicated through encrypted social media apps and used slang to disguise the nature of their conversations. Migrants were referred to as “siblings,” “chicken,” “pork” or “things,” while police were called “dogs,” refrigerated trucks were known as “fridges,” ferry crossings were described as travelling by “water,” money was termed “paper,” and vehicles were referred to as “horses.”
The Arrests
Ta was arrested after being stopped as the front seat passenger of a BMW X5 by Surrey Police and Thames Valley Police on the M25 near Leatherhead on 3 September 2020. He was detained as an illegal immigrant, and officers discovered £55,020 in cash stuffed inside a plastic bag in the rear passenger footwell, along with a further £1,000 found in Ta’s pocket. A forensic examination of his phone later revealed messages showing he had been carrying around £56,000 in cash just hours before his arrest, en route to Kent to hand the money to co-conspirators who had arranged for migrants to be smuggled into the UK inside an HGV. The plan appeared to involve delivering the migrants to Gillingham, where they would then be moved on to safe houses elsewhere in the country by car.
The following day, Sardarzehi was stopped by West Midlands Police while driving a silver Vauxhall Corsa in Birmingham. The men travelling with him were believed to be the same individuals Ta had been on his way to pay for. When first stopped, Sardarzehi claimed he had simply picked the men up because they wanted a lift, though he later admitted during police interview that he knew they were migrants. He was re-arrested by NCA officers in June 2022, with the subsequent investigation revealing that the wider criminal network spanned from Europe into south-east England and up into the Midlands.
NCA Response
NCA branch commander Sara-Jayne Moore said the sentences reflected the seriousness of the group’s exploitation of vulnerable migrants. “Ta and Sardarzehi have paid the price for being part of an evil organised immigration crime group that exploited migrants, all for the sake of making money,” she said. “They put them in great danger by hiding them in HGVs, and the way they were described shows the utter contempt they had for human life. The National Crime Agency will continue to bring individuals like Ta and Sardarzehi before the courts and disrupt the organised crime groups behind this despicable trade.”
The NCA said it is currently leading around 100 ongoing investigations into networks or individuals operating at the top tier of organised immigration crime and human trafficking, targeting those responsible for the greatest harm and who are hardest to reach, with some among the agency’s highest priorities. The agency said it continues to target and disrupt organised crime groups at every stage of the smuggling route, from source countries through transit countries near the UK border in France and Belgium, to networks operating within the UK itself.
