Irish slave gangs are targeting young British men and forcing them to work on paving and tarmac scam projects, reports the Daily Mail.

The men are being recruited in pubs and on streets and promised a free place to sleep and lots of money. However, the men are trafficked abroad and end up working 16 hour days for as little as £10, with the threat of violence hanging over them if they do not stay in line.

A report of the trafficking was leaked by authorities in Sweden, where many of the captives end up.

The Project Troy report said: 'Many homeowners around Sweden report the same thing: the knock on the door and a well-dressed English-speaking man offering to pave the driveway.'

The work is often left incomplete or poorly done and such workers have been dubbed the 'tarmac cowboys."

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There have been at least 72 reports in Sweden alone of trafficking and forced labour by members of the traveler community since 2007.

Twenty-two-year old Oliver Hayre, from Stamford, Lincolnshire, died in 2005 after a fire started in his caravan while he was working for Irish travellers in Skane, Sweden.

Police determined that there was no evidence of foul play, but the report says that the people living there were "impeding rescue efforts."

Hayre had been told that he would earn £900 a week, but his family said he was treated like a "slave."

"They sent one of the family's grandfathers to the house to meet Oliver's mother, my wife. If he didn't do what they wished when they wished, ill would fall on his mother," said his father Martin.

A source from the UK Human Trafficking Centre disclosed that there is evidence of 213 people being trafficked into, out of and within the UK by gangs between 2007 and early 2010.