20-Year-Old Kidnapped Model Rescued from Deep Web Auction

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The young woman, who has not been named by Italian police to protect her privacy, came to Milan July 11 after her modeling agency in the United Kingdom set up a photo shoot with what they believed was a legitimate company looking for young women for an ad campaign, according to Corriere Della Sera, which first reported the story Saturday after the man was arraigned in a Milan court on Friday.

But when the woman got to Milan, there were no cameras. There was only a man, said to be of Polish origin, with a syringe full of Ketalar, a common anesthetic drug often used to sedate horses. Police say he jabbed her in the arm and put a pillowcase over her head before stuffing her in a large suitcase.

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He then drove her, still inside the suitcase, in the trunk of his car to a southern Milan suburb where he kept her in a room at an events hall he had rented with false documents, according to Italian media, and listed her on a dark web auction site for a starting price of €300,000 ($353,000) in Bitcoin.

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She was held for several days while the auction ensued until she came out of her drugged state long enough to tell the man she had a two-year-old child, which, according to testimony given during Friday’s hearing, was “against the rules” of the criminal organization for which the Polish man apparently worked.

Because the man was then stuck with a woman he could not sell according to what might be called company policy, he contacted the modeling agency and demanded €50,000 for her release, threatening that he would kill her if they did not comply.

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