In October 2019, British police arrested a couple who had lured sixteen men from the Czech Republic — all of them struggling with homelessness, drug addiction, or both — with promises of jobs and a new life. Instead they were forced into slavery.

The couple forced the men to work at factories supplying local grocery stores and at a McDonald’s in Caxton, a village just west of Cambridge. When the couple was arrested, laws intended to protect victims’ privacy barred journalists from gathering much information on the case, but a recent BBC investigation has brought new details to light. The investigation makes clear that both the McDonald’s and factory employers either egregiously failed to notice or willfully ignored red flags associated with modern slavery.

The Czech men spoke little to no English, so another person sat in for interviews and filled out their applications. At the Caxton McDonald’s, nine men worked up to seventy or one hundred hours per week, but had all their wages deposited into a single bank account that none of them controlled. It was four years before the traffickers were arrested, and only then after one of the men called Czech police for assistance.