Sick people-smugglers sold £15k ‘platinum’ package with ‘Tripadvisor-style’ ratings…as victims walked through minefields

IT was a people-smuggling operation so blatant that the Brits behind it promoted a platinum service on TikTok.

Dilshad Shamo and pal Ali Khdir are believed to have helped hundreds of migrants from Iraq, Iran and Syria make their way into the UK.

They boasted about their success on social media in an operation police have described as being ‘like TripAdvisor for people smugglers’.

By day the pair worked in a legal car wash in the historic Welsh town of Caerphilly where they both lived.

Behind the scenes, they worked as fixers for crime bosses who “operated as travel agents” in the Arab world.

They relied on Shamo and Khdir to organise perilous trips through Europe in the back of lorries and on boats and also on holiday flights with fake documents.

The men last month pleaded guilty to facilitating illegal immigration and The Sun can today reveal the nefarious methods used by two who, incredibly, both have British citizenship.

Shamo is suspected of gaining a UK passport in a sham marriage to a Welsh woman while Khdir has failed in previous attempts to move his Iraqi family into the UK from Denmark, where they currently have asylum.

The global operation saw migrants charged up to £15,000 to get into Europe before making their way into Britain.

They were offered three tiers of ‘travel packages’.

Danger trips

The most basic cost around £8000 and forced illegals to walk through MINEFIELDS in the former war-torn Yugoslavia while those hiding on boats were told to carry lemons to prevent scurvy on long trips.

Bosnia and Herzegovina is contaminated by land mines used during the Bosnian War between 1992 and 1995.

Meanwhile, Kdhir, 40, who was born in Iran, and Shamo, 41, originally from Iraq, are believed to have been building up riches back in the Middle East.

The operation to nail the pair is among the most complex ever carried out by the National Crime Agency – Britain’s version of the FBI.

NCA branch commander Derek Evans said: “We have disrupted a massive network of smugglers.

“We believe these men are responsible for hundreds of people getting into the UK through Europe.

“Our investigation ran for eight months so we don’t know how many cases they were involved in before they came on to our radar.

“If you look back months, maybe even years, then you’re talking about doubling that amount, if not tripling it. 

“We’re maybe be looking at figures in the early thousands.”

Cops put Shamo under investigation in August 2022 after intelligence tip offs and bugged his Mercedes car, recording conversations between him and Khdir which revealed they were running a multi-million pound racket.

They were linked to a cartel of people smugglers who ran agents taking ‘bookings’ in Iraq, Turkey, Moldova and Belarus in Eastern Europe.

Thank God the route was easy

Migrant smuggled into the UK

Derek Evans said: “Each country had people who effectively acted like travel agents, offering trips to the UK through Europe and to Canada.

“They would then contact Shamo and Khadi who were involved in signposting and arranging travel for different parts of the journey.

“They offered different services, from platinum which involved providing fake passports for ordinary flights across Europe to the basic which would see several people in a car or cramped into the back of a lorry.

“These people would be dropped at stop off points and have to walk considerable distances to the next pick-up point.

“The migrants we identified in the Balkan states had to walk through woodland in the former Yugoslavia, which was broken up in the nineties following the civil war and where there are still land mines in the woods.

“They would be sent a pin drop on their phone to locations where they would be picked up for the next leg of their journey.

“Those who were travelling on boats, usually from Turkey to Italy, who might have been stuck hiding in small places for any length of time, were told to take a small kit onboard which included water, eight days of food and lemons to prevent scurvy.”

TikTok boasts

The gang boasted of their success through TikTok and Telegram sending potential customers clips of previous successes in videos.

In one, a family who travelled by plane stated: “We are very happy…this is the visa, may God bless him, we are very happy.”

Another migrant, who hid in the back of a lorry, said: “Crossing agreement with the knowledge of the driver. Here we have men, women and children. Thank god the route was easy and good.”

Shamo and Khdir lived modest lives in Wales despite making potentially millions from their venture.

Khdir lived in a small flat he shared with others next to the car wash where he worked, while Shamo lived in a modest semi-detached with his wife and four children, all aged under five.

Cops say Shamo had a short-lived marriage to a Welsh woman which lasted less than a year and they suspect may have been a sham marriage.

The pair are believed to have built up their riches in the Middle East as barely any cash was deposited into their accounts.

Instead, the cash was lodged with bankers in Iraq and Istanbul using Hawala, a form of underground banking in which money is passed through a network of dealers.

NCA branch commander Evans said the case was made more difficult because the pair spoke in the Kurdish language of Badini.

He said: “It was a hugely complicated case with lots of challenges.

“They met pretty much every day in cafes, restaurants and shisha bars; places where, culturally, our surveillance teams would have stuck out so we were unable to go in.

“These men were getting paid a daily cash wage to wash cars then would take a phone call and go off and talk about moving people around Europe, who they referred to as ‘batches’.

“They spoke in the Kurdish Badini dialect so we had an independent translator transcribe hundreds of conversations, some recorded by a listening device in Shamo’s car.

“It was gaining access to their phones after their arrests that really helped, seeing all their messages and Whatsapp and TikToks, which helped us build up the evidence in court.”