AN alleged people smuggler who is believed to be behind the majority of small boat crossings has been unmasked as an Iraqi Kurd going by ‘Kardo Ranya’.
The 28-year-old is believed to lead a major gang network who take cash from migrants to transport them across Europe to the UK.
He has evaded arrest for several years by operating under an alias.
His gang of smugglers is believed to charge people £15,000 for transport all the way from Iraq to the UK.
A BBC News investigation has unmasked him as Kardo Muhammad Amen Jaf, with pictures posted on social media showing him posing in dark sunglasses.
Jaf’s routes are understood to stretch from Afghanistan to the UK and he advertises his smuggling services on social media.
Videos of a life of luxury in London are accompanied by testimonials from reportedly satisfied customers.
The network also offers an optional VIP package for those who can afford it.
The more expensive option costs around £160,000 for a whole family, according to the BBC who posed as a potential customer.
It includes a flight to an airport outside the capital and transport from the airport to wherever the customer needs.
Jaf’s alias is based on what is thought to be his hometown, Ranya in the autonomously governed Iraqi Kurdistan.
The region is said to be a hotspot for smuggling networks and “the majority of the small-boat criminal business model is controlled by Kurds,” said Dan Cannatella-Barcroft, acting deputy director of the UK’s National Crime Agency (NCA).
The NCA is targeting several smugglers who operate in Ranya, he added.
One smuggler said the sprawling network in charge of cross-Channel trade had been dubbed the Ranya Boys.
The gangs tempt young people into making the journey to mainland Europe with the help of high unemployment rates in the area.
The region’s interior minister, Dr Hemn Merany said: “The voice of the smugglers is louder than the voice of the media and the voice of the government.”
The investigators obtained Jaf’s true identity from another low-level smuggler, who they believe saw a chance to climb up the ranks by exposing his boss.
When confronted over a call by the BBC over his involvement in the Channel trade, Jaf denied being a smuggler and said he only ever advised people on how to leave Iraq.
The podcast series, called Intrigue: To Catch a King, began after BBC journalists were invited to a meeting with police in Europe who deal with organised crime.
The unnamed force told duo Sue Mitchell and Rob Lawrie that they had been investigating the man but had reached the end of the line when trying to find out his identity.
The UK’s National Crime Agency told The Sun: “The NCA engaged closely with the BBC during the production of their series as we recognise that media engagement can be an important tool for law enforcement in disrupting and influencing criminal behaviour, particularly where criminals are operating in jurisdictions which are more difficult to reach.
“NCA officers, rightly, have to operate under a legal framework which is very different to that faced by journalists.
“At the same time, the NCA has demonstrated we can disrupt criminal networks in places where they thought they were untouchable, for example in Libya and the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, and there should not be an assumption that individuals like those highlighted by the BBC are out of our reach.
“The NCA currently has more than 100 investigations ongoing into networks or individuals in the top tier of organised immigration crime, including those based in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, and we are devoting more resource to it than ever before.
“This is bringing results with the arrest and prosecution of numerous significant individuals in the UK and overseas.”
This comes as small-boat migrant arrivals hit 200,013 over the weekend since the crisis began eight years ago.
The milestone – equal to the population of Norwich – comes as data reveals just 7,612 illegal migrants have been deported since 2018.
Last year 24 people are known to have died while making the crossing, which makes millions for criminals like Jaf.
Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour has promised to smash the gangs behind the small boat crossings, but hundreds of migrants continue to make the journey.
So far this year 7,476 people have arrived in Dover, down 37 per cent from the same time last year.
Between 2018 and 2025, citizens of six countries – Iran, Afghanistan, Iraq, Albania, Syria, and Eritrea – made up 65 per cent of people crossing in small boats, according to the Migration Observatory at the University of Oxford.
A small boat with 70 people onboard carried the 200,000th dinghy migrant from a beach in Braek, near the Belgian border, at around 7am on Friday to Britain’s shore.
The average number of migrants packed into each dinghy has increased year-by-year from just seven in 2018, to 41 in 2022, and 64 so far this year.
Lucy Moreton from the Immigration Services Union told BBC Radio 4 that Brexit had made it harder to get information on the criminal records of small boat migrants who come to the UK.
She said: “We’re no longer in Europe, we no longer have a data-sharing agreement with many of the countries in Europe. So we don’t see lower level [criminal] records.
“Also we don’t see their immigration records. Where once we would know if someone had claimed asylum elsewhere in Europe and been unsuccessful, or even been successful… we don’t have access to that data any more.”
