Fraudsters advertising as transport companies are looking for social media drivers to transport tourists in the Balkans. On the spot, it turns out that passengers are actually migrants who want to get to the European Union illegally. Our information shows that only 40 Polish citizens are currently in Slovenia and prisons.
Key facts
- We talked to Polish drivers who believed in job offers consisting in carrying tourists and were in the smuggling of migrants.
- We easily found advertisements of alleged transport companies in social media. We responded to one of them. The earnings offered are up to 10,000 euro per month.
- Smuggling people is currently the most profitable business of international criminal groups operating in the Balkans.
– Yuri, Five Minutes! Five minute! Sorry, but everyone wants to reach the phone here – says Maciej Skibicki, a taxi driver from Poznań. He calls us from the custody in Maribor, a city in the north Slovenia. He has been sitting there since October 2024. Waiting for the sentence. He faces up to 12 years in prison.
In a similar situation, Polish citizens are already around 40 in Slovenia, among them several women and even marriage. Some are already with sentences, others are just waiting for the trial in full arrests. Since a few years ago Slovenian law changed, the rule is simple: if they catch you with migrants in the car, you are guilty. This is why the number of sentenced drivers is growing rapidly. The Polish embassy even warns against taking someone on the foot.
We talked to several detained Poles. They claim that they did not know who they would transport. In 2024 they found on Facebook ads of the same transport company, offering the transport of tourists and hotel guests. The scheme of fraudsters was identical in all cases.
The company is still recruiting, we were able to hire it without any problems. You needed a photo of the car, a profile on a telegram and an account number, preferably in Revolut. That's enough to earn up to 10,000 euros a month. There is no shortage of “tourists” because the West Balanan trail is one of the main routes of illegal migration to the European Union.
Balkan trail
Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina are the soft lower abdomen of Europe. Both countries do not belong to the EU, but they have signed visa -free contracts with many countries from which migrants come from, including with Turkey or North Africa. So migrants come to Serbia or Bosnia, and then – already illegally – try to get through Croatia, Hungary and Rumunia to Western Europe.