Snakeheads (Chinese: 蛇頭 shé tóu) are Chinese gangs who smuggle people to other countries. They appear often especially in the Fujian region of China and smuggle their "customers" often into more wealthy Western countries like the United Kingdom or the United States. The rate of payment for successful smuggling can sometimes be as high as US$50,000 or more. Snakeheads use various methods to get their customers to the West. They may employ the use of stolen or altered passports, improperly obtained visas, and the use of bribes to move people from nation to nation until they finally arrive in the destination of choice.

The name snakehead comes from the people being smuggled, often called "man-snake" (Chinese: 人蛇 rén shé) in the Chinese language. The people who organize the smuggling are therefore called snakeheads (head of (man-)snakes), which is in fact a word-by-word translation of the Chinese term.

Cheng Chui Ping is known as the "Mother of the snakeheads" ^*.

See also

• Trafficking in human beings
• People smuggling

External links

• Havocscope breakdown of fees paid per person to be smuggled into the United States from China during the 1960s till present.

Gangs | Chinese American history

Slangekop | 蛇頭