The main character is Juliana Miguez, a girl from the (fictional) Argentine village of Río Manso, who is kidnapped and forced to work as a prostitute. Juliana's parents, Rosario Soler and Juan Miguez, begin to search for her, but manage very little, as the local police is involved in the whole network and allows them to operate.
The network of human trafficking is managed by Ástor Monserrat, who conceals his activities and source of wealth under fake activities as a businessman, even to his own daugther.
The other main character, Bautista Amaya, gets involved when Monserrat's two henchmen, Nicolás Duarte and Dante Mansilla, kill his wife by hitting her with his car while Bautista was saving Duarte's wife on the mountain. Bautista seeks the killer of his wife, and is not initially aware of the network, or Duarte's relation with Monserrat, and begins dating Monserrat's daughter, Ana.
Later he joins forces with his two friends, the retired prosecutor Fabio Pontevedra and the former police Tano Cigliotti, to bring Monserrat down.
Like other previous argentine novels, fiction was used as a means of social criticism. The series was declared of social interest by the city legislature of Buenos Aires and the House of Representatives of Argentina, and also won numerous awards, like the Martin Fierro de Oro (top Argentine TV award) in 2009.
Vidas Robadas contains examples of:
- Death by Origin Story: Carla, Bautista's wife prior to the start of the series, who was killed in a car accident while Bautista rescued Ana.
- He Who Must Not Be Seen: Claudio Kurtz, the main head of the network, over even Monserrat himself. He is seen at the last episode, and captured.
- Honey Trap: Dante seduced Alejandra in order to get closer to her, drug her, convince her she's insane, and eventually kill her (although he failed on the last task).
- Missing Mom: Helena abandoned Ana when she divorced Astor, leaving the country to move in with Kurtz.
- No Communities Were Harmed: There's no such a city as "Río Manso" in the Buenos Aires province, it's fictional. Still, it's an allegory of the small cities in the Buenos Aires province, distant from the main city of Buenos Aires.
- Rasputinian Death: Duarte was shot SO many times at the ending... it took a round of a machine-gun and being in the very last episode to take him down for good.
- The Bad Guys Are Cops
- Villain with Good Publicity: Deconstructed. Ástor Monserrat has legitimate business activities, but only as a trick to launder the money he gets from the network of forced prostitution. He does not have good publicity any longer when his real activities get into the public light towards half the series.
