Babies and young children are being trafficked into Britain by foreign criminals and used to make fraudulent benefits claims, it has been reported.
Forged immigration documents and employment records are used in the multi-million pound scam, according to a Sunday Times investigation.
In many cases the children are taken from families with the knowledge of their parents, the paper said.
They are trained in street crime and placed with unrelated adults to enable fake benefit claims to be paid into accounts controlled by the trafficker.
A special team set up to investigate the problem in London has identified 119 potential child trafficking victims in the capital with more than 1,500 convictions between them.
Operation Golf is a Metropolitan Police investigation into a Romanian crime network believed to control a human trafficking ring.
Earlier this month four suspected child victims of trafficking from Romania were taken into foster care as part of a Met swoop.
More than 20 addresses in Westminster, Enfield, Haringey and Redbridge were visited and evidence of benefit crime in excess of £100,000 was found, the force said.
Fraudulent claims for housing benefit, tax credits and child benefit supplement revenue from other criminal activities such as ATM fraud, pickpocketing and shoplifting.
Anthony Steen MP, chairman of the all-party parliamentary group on trafficking of women and children, told the Sunday Times: "This is an appalling scandal of desperately poor people being trafficked here to siphon off money from the benefits system. The current checks are totally inadequate and there needs to be an EU-wide response."
