126 Beelarong Street Morningside, where it is alleged a Taiwanese nationals were forced to work in a call centre. Credit:Glenn Hunt On August 9, about 5am, he made a break for it, flagging down two women driving home from work. "Help, help help," a frantic witness said. "Wallet, phone, ID, passport, taken. Share house. Other people, about 20 of me. Locked doors, run away." The witness told police he'd asked to leave the house before but the so called "cadres" allegedly running the operation, Yu-Hao Huang and Bo-Syun Chen, refused, abused him and made him stand in the middle of the room for five hours.

40 Dorchester Street South Brisbane, also alleged to be a slave house, Credit:Glenn Hunt Within two hours police were at the Beelarong Street property, a $3 million 700-square metre colossus, dubbed "the largest known house in Morningside". The marble-walled bathrooms and polished timber floors, with a suspended pool and tennis court in the sprawling grounds, belied the alleged existence of a slave-run scam operation inside. According to federal police, the alleged slaves were operating a "post office and police station scam", to swindle mainland Chinese. People contacting the "post office" would allegedly be told there was a package waiting.

When the confused caller said they weren't expecting a package, the residents would allegedly tell them they were victims of "money washing" and take details and account balances. A "police officer" in another room would then allegedly tell the victims they were actually suspects and extort a fine out of them, swindling them out of their entire savings. Investigators allegedly found workers hidden behind locked doors, eventually discovering 23 people had been crammed into three upstairs bedrooms, while Mr Huang lived in a downstairs room with their passports and mobile phones. They subsequently discovered another alleged slave house in Dorchester Street, South Brisbane, with another 35 Taiwanese inside. Some victims told police they'd been threatened after speaking about their time in the houses and one radically changed her testimony.

Prosecutors alleged the operation was run by a "transnational Taiwanese organised crime syndicate". Yu-Hao Huang and Bo-Syun Chen remain on remand on charges of conducting a business involving servitude. But they couldn't run the whole scam on their own, prosecutors alleged, namingWu-nan "William" Chen as a driver for the group and Sheng-Jiun "Katsu" Huang as an associate who helped out the "bosses". Sheng-Jiun "Katsu" Huang, a successful sushi chef at Hamilton's highend Sono Japanese restaurant was charged, accused of having a role in organising the lease for the similarly high-end South Brisbane home and providing support to an organisation to conduct an offence. It was his bail application, rejected by Justice Jean Dalton on March 23 that revealed the shocking alleged details of the slave operation.

Prosecutors alleged the 28-yearold supplemented his $18 an hour income with more than $300,000 from the syndicate but his lawyers argued he had no idea the house would be used for crime. Wu-nan "William" Chen, whose alleged role in the scam was to pick up the Taiwanese workers from Brisbane Airport and drop them at one of the two houses, had bail refused in November. His lawyers argued the case against him was "by no means overwhelming". "There would appear to be a reasonable case that a 'scam' was being conducted from the premises," they submitted to the Supreme Court. "Whether it amounted to keeping the call-centre workers in 'servitude' is less clear."

Slave house residents told police they'd been threatened since the witness made his escape and the operations were shut down in August. An unknown person, who AFP officers believed to be part of the syndicate, contacted a key Crown witness and threatened him to withdraw his testimony, Taiwanese police told the AFP. Another two men, one believed to be a relative of the escaped witness, were refused entry to Australia in October because police feared they had come to intimidate witnesses. As four men await further hearings in custody and dozens of Taiwanese try to get their lives back together, both houses are back on the market. For independent news coverage, be sure to follow our Facebook feed.