I was kidnapped by sex gang, says model

Ms Ayling made a statement to Italian police soon after she was freed. She recalled losing consciousness at the “shoot” in Milan when she was injected in her right arm as someone put a hand over her mouth to stop her screaming.

“When I woke up I . . . was in the boot of a car with my wrists and ankles handcuffed, adhesive tape on my mouth,” she said. “I was inside a bag and was only able to breathe through a small hole.”

Ms Ayling said she was driven to the countryside outside Turin, where she was kept handcuffed to a wooden chest of drawers inside a rented house.

She told police she believed that there were four or five people in the gang and that Mr Herba eventually freed her, explaining that her kidnapping was against the rules of the Black Death Group because she was the mother of a young child. She was taken to the British consulate in Milan, and Mr Herba was arrested near by.

Ms Ayling, who has a Polish mother, said her captor had boasted of earning at least $15 million over five years selling women to the Middle East. “At least three a week are sold, and when the buyer tires of the girl he passes her on to someone else,” she said. “When there is no longer any interest she is consigned to be eaten by tigers.”

Lorenzo Bucossi, head of the Italian investigation, said it was not clear whether Mr Herba was “a disturbed individual or someone who had a real plan”, but he was “certainly a dangerous person and carried out a real kidnap”.

He said that police were looking for at least one accomplice but refused to comment on a report in La Repubblica that police wanted to interview Mr Herba’s older brother, who is director of a logistics company based in Oldbury.

Mr Herba allegedly told police he was drawn into the plot by three Romanians in Birmingham. He admitted he wrote the ransom demands on his computer, but said he did so under duress.

A spokesman for the National Crime Agency said: “NCA officers in Italy and specialists from our anti-kidnap and extortion unit are providing support to [Italian police].

“A house in the Oldbury area linked to Lukasz Herba was searched on July 18. Computer equipment seized is being forensically examined.”

A sinister crime ring or fantasy?
The Black Death Group boasts that it masterminds international trafficking of drugs, weapons, explosives and sex slaves. The group, which operates on the dark web, is either one of the most dangerous criminal gangs in the world or the depraved fantasy of people who rarely leave their keyboards.

Lorenzo Bucossi, who is running the investigation into Chloe Ayling’s kidnap, said there was evidence of an organisation called Black Death, but no proof of real-world crimes. A document purportedly produced by the gang, found after police arrested Lukasz Herba, said the group would auction her on July 17 and could “kidnap specific targets”. The auction was open only to those “able to prove you know someone who dealt with us”.

The dark web is a part of the internet accessible only using a covert browser such as Tor, allowing users to be untraceable. The UK National Crime Agency (NCA) has said the use of the dark web as a “marketplace for firearms, drugs and indecent images of children” is rising.

Joseph Cox, a writer for the website Motherboard, tried to infiltrate Black Death in 2015 when it was offering to sell a woman called Nicole for $150,000. Adverts, with details of victims’ nationalities and physical descriptions, were similar to those used for Ms Ayling.

The NCA told Mr Cox that the photos were probably staged. It turned out that the image of “Nicole” had been lifted from a pornographic video.