Foday Musa looked broken as he listened to the last voice message he received from his son. It is 76 seconds long and the young man sounds desperate. He is crying, begging for his father's help. 'It's so hard to hear. Hearing his voice hurts me,' Musa told BBC Africa Eye, which was given exclusive access to a police unit that helped him as he searched for two of his children who had fallen victim to scammers. It was in February 2024 that Musa's 22-year-old son and 18-year-old daughter, along with five others, were recruited from their remote village in the Faranah region of central Guinea by agents promising them work abroad.
The jobs never materialised and the so-called recruiters turned out to be human traffickers. The group was taken across the border into Sierra Leone and held captive. 'My heart is broken. I can't stop crying. If you look at my eyes, you can see the pain,' Musa said. His case was picked up by the global policing agency Interpol in Guinea, which asked their unit in Sierra Leone to help. So last August Musa traveled to Makeni, in central Sierra Leone, in a bid to find them.
Thousands of people across West Africa are being lured by a human trafficking scam, commonly known as QNET. Founded in Hong Kong, QNET itself is a legitimate wellness and lifestyle company - it allows people to sign up to buy their products and sell them online. Its business model has faced some criticism; however, in West Africa, criminal gangs are using its name as a front for their illegal activities. The traffickers target people with the promise of work opportunities in places like the US, Canada, Dubai, and Europe, asking them to pay large sums of money for administration costs before they start the job.
Once they have paid, they are often trafficked to a neighboring country and told they can only travel abroad once they recruit others into the scheme. Yet even when they bring in family and friends, the jobs never materialize. Musa and his extended family had already given $25,000 (£19,000) to the traffickers - this encompassed the joining fees and extra money paid to try to get his children home. Traveling to Sierra Leone himself was his last hope.
Mahmoud Conteh, the head of investigations at the anti-trafficking unit of Interpol within the Sierra Leone police, said the case was a priority for his unit. 'It's very easy for these traffickers to manoeuvre across each of our borders at these illegal crossing points,' he told the BBC. When Conteh received a tip-off that a large number of young people were being held in a location in Makeni, Musa joined the police as they raided the property, hoping to find his children...
The story highlights a harsh reality faced by many families in West Africa, revealing the desperate lengths parents will go to find their children amidst an epidemic of human trafficking.
The jobs never materialised and the so-called recruiters turned out to be human traffickers. The group was taken across the border into Sierra Leone and held captive. 'My heart is broken. I can't stop crying. If you look at my eyes, you can see the pain,' Musa said. His case was picked up by the global policing agency Interpol in Guinea, which asked their unit in Sierra Leone to help. So last August Musa traveled to Makeni, in central Sierra Leone, in a bid to find them.
Thousands of people across West Africa are being lured by a human trafficking scam, commonly known as QNET. Founded in Hong Kong, QNET itself is a legitimate wellness and lifestyle company - it allows people to sign up to buy their products and sell them online. Its business model has faced some criticism; however, in West Africa, criminal gangs are using its name as a front for their illegal activities. The traffickers target people with the promise of work opportunities in places like the US, Canada, Dubai, and Europe, asking them to pay large sums of money for administration costs before they start the job.
Once they have paid, they are often trafficked to a neighboring country and told they can only travel abroad once they recruit others into the scheme. Yet even when they bring in family and friends, the jobs never materialize. Musa and his extended family had already given $25,000 (£19,000) to the traffickers - this encompassed the joining fees and extra money paid to try to get his children home. Traveling to Sierra Leone himself was his last hope.
Mahmoud Conteh, the head of investigations at the anti-trafficking unit of Interpol within the Sierra Leone police, said the case was a priority for his unit. 'It's very easy for these traffickers to manoeuvre across each of our borders at these illegal crossing points,' he told the BBC. When Conteh received a tip-off that a large number of young people were being held in a location in Makeni, Musa joined the police as they raided the property, hoping to find his children...
The story highlights a harsh reality faced by many families in West Africa, revealing the desperate lengths parents will go to find their children amidst an epidemic of human trafficking.
