The Spanish National Police have freed 15 victims of sexual exploitation who were recruited by a criminal organisation through adverts on social media.
According to a police statement, the gang further increased its earnings through the sale of ‘sexual performance enhancers and narcotic substances’.
The victims, women of Asian origin, reported that they were being held in brothel apartments in the city of Palma de Mallorca (Balearic Islands), where they were being sexually exploited and assaulted.
The police said that the victims were held under conditions of slavery, required to be permanently available and forced to provide outcall services, while being constantly transported and monitored by members of the gang.
A total of 14 people have been arrested – 12 in the Balearic Islands and two others in Barcelona. Seven of those arrested have been remanded in pre-trial detention. 10 properties were also searched, and three of them have been ordered closed.
Police said that the investigation began in April 2025 following information received through the email address trata@policia.es – operated by the National Police’s Service for Assistance to Victims of Human Trafficking. Two anonymous messages requesting help were received.
At the same time, one of the victims, having managed to escape from the premises where she was being held and forced into prostitution – and where she had suffered physical and sexual abuse – approached the police to seek help. The testimony and cooperation of this victim proved crucial in initiating the investigation.
During the investigation, carried out with the collaboration of the NGO Our Rescue, the police established a link with an operation carried out in 2024, in which part of a criminal network trafficking women of Chinese origin for the purpose of sexual exploitation in clandestine brothels in the city of Palma de Mallorca had been dismantled.
Specifically, the owner of one of the premises investigated at that time was identified as one of the main leaders of the criminal organisation now under investigation, ultimately leading to the complete dismantling of the network in Palma.
The victims were recruited through adverts on social media and deceived about the true nature of the work they were expected to perform, before being forced into prostitution.
Some of the victims stated that they were already in mainland Spain, while others had travelled from China to Spain after accepting supposed job offers as therapeutic massage therapists, with an approximate salary of €2,000 per month, or as cooks or caregivers.
The criminal organisation covered the cost of travel, generating a debt that the women were then required to repay by engaging in prostitution.
The organisation arranged the victims’ transfer from mainland Spain to the city of Palma. Once on the island, the women were collected and transported to the brothels, where they were forced to provide sexual services 24 hours a day, seven days a week, without freedom of movement and without the possibility of refusing any client.
They were subjected to physical and sexual abuse and were also forced to provide outcall sexual services, including, in some cases, without condoms – services for which the organisation charged clients higher fees.
All income generated had to be handed over in full to the organisation. The women received only 50% of the remaining profits after deductions for rent and living expenses.
The network also offered the victims the possibility of regularising their immigration status in Spain through fraudulent marriages, in exchange for large sums of money. Once their status was regularised, the organisation used their identities to register utility services, bank accounts, and phone numbers, in order to conceal the identities of the main figures responsible for the prostitution businesses.
Members of the criminal network also profited from the sale of sexual performance enhancers and narcotic substances to clients attending the brothels, which substantially increased their earnings. In one of the three brothels investigated, it was confirmed that profits reached €1.2 million over a one-year period.
Investigators also established that the organisation maintained meticulous financial control over its criminal activities, using various websites to interact with clients while concealing the identities of the ringleaders. Money transfers were made to Chinese nationals responsible for converting the funds into yuan, which were then deposited into bank accounts in China.
Officers seized five high-end vehicles, €190,000 in cash, taser and air pistols, daggers, knives and other weapons, as well as jewellery, watches, mobile phones and other luxury items.
Among the items recovered were several point-of-sale (POS) terminals belonging to the main suspects, which were linked to commercial businesses with no real activity and used exclusively to collect payments for sexual services.
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🚩Liberadas1⃣5⃣víctimas de explotación sexual captadas por una organización (de origen asiático) a través de anuncios en #rrss
— Policía Nacional (@policia) January 24, 2026
🔹Gracias a 2denuncias anónimas recibidas en📧trata@policia.es y a la colaboración de una víctima fugada
🔹Hay 12 detenidos en #Palma y 2 en #Barcelona pic.twitter.com/FhHYtmO5oV
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