middleman

The country had a reputation as a marketplace where local middlemen paid impoverished mothers to hand over their infants.

They explain that intermediaries, or middlemen, may offer them as little as $5.50 per bag, but after paying for thread and transport, they often earn as little as $1.50 - excluding the time spent weaving.

The travel certificates showed how a network of resellers replaced pet stores as middlemen while disguising where puppies were actually bred.

But in recent decades, something more controversial has emerged in the US: a network of for-profit businesses that act as middlemen, acquiring bodies from individuals, dissecting them, and then selling them on.

She's also known to cut out the middleman, illustrated in her decision to go directly to AMC Theatres to release The Eras Tour concert film rather than distributing it through a studio.