This is the moment a suspected sham marriage ‘fixer’ was arrested in a second day of dawn raids.

The 36-year-old Czech man, described by the Immigration and Borders Service as a main target, was held by officers at a semi-detached bungalow on Surrey Road,Blackley, just after 6am.

The M.E.N. can reveal that the investigation centres around sham marriages involving bogus grooms and brides held at Manchester and Bury register offices.

A total of 12 wedding ceremonies are under investigation, with some of them also held at register offices in Halifax and Shrewsbury.

It is understood the man, who hasn’t been named, will be questioned over allegations that he was a witness at ceremonies.

The probe is also investigating women being brought into the UK.

Supported by GMP officers and the National Crime Agency, immigration service investigators swooped on three addresses in Greater Manchester and made a total of four arrests.

All those held were arrested on suspicion of conspiracy to assist unlawful immigration and were being questioned today.

House searches were expected to continue throughout the day and the immigration statuses of suspects will be checked.

A 23-year-old Pakistani man and a Czech woman aged 28 were arrested at a house on Moss Road, Stretford, and a 25-year-old Pakistani man was arrested at Ashtree Road in Crumpsall.

Three other arrests – two men and a woman – were made in Halifax and Wolverhampton. Investigating officers were searching for paperwork and other documentation in connection with a series of other targets.

The Immigration and Borders Service said the operation was launched to investigate sham marriages between Pakistani ‘grooms’ and Czech ‘brides’.

The ceremonies involved took place between February and August last year.

Read More

A bogus bride was caught minutes before she could tie the knot with her fourth husband.

Raquel Neto Furtado De Andrade had already married three Nigerians to help give them the right to stay in Britain.

But her attempt to marry again for cash was foiled by suspicious staff at a register office. They tipped off immigration officials about the bigamous 22-year-old, who used the same wedding dress at each ceremony.

Thought to be one of the country’s most prolific sham brides, she is now behind bars serving a two-year sentence.

She will be deported to her native Portugal on her release from prison.

Her scam was exposed at Harrow register office in north London. Checks revealed De Andrade had three ‘husbands’, none of which she had troubled to divorce. The fourth groom, a 32-year-old Nigerian, was arrested with her and has been kicked out of the country.

The couple arrived at the register office on October 3 with hardly any family or friends to support them on their supposedly special day.

There were unexpected guests however – in the shape of a team of immigration officers. They pounced as the bogus ceremony was about to get under way.

De Andrade, from Tottenham, north London, was charged with two counts of bigamy, two counts of facilitation and one count of perjury. She admitted the charges in February and was jailed at Harrow Crown Court on Tuesday.

The hunt is still on for her three other husbands so they can be expelled too.

It is estimated that 15,000 of the marriages that take place in England and Wales each year are bogus. In January, an official report concluded the scams exploit a ‘massive loophole’ in border controls.

Non-EU citizens can acquire the right to live in Britain from any EU national staying here.

This provides a ‘golden ticket’ for those wanting to stay in the country, according to immigration inspectors.

Read More

One sham marriage may be happening in the UK every single hour, shocking figures revealed last night.

Official figures show that between January and October last year, a total of 7,606 fake weddings were reported to the Home Office.

Yet despite the huge scale of the problem, just 90 people were deported over the same period for engaging in false marriages to gain entry to the UK.

It means that for every 85 sham marriages, just one person is being thrown out of the country.

Experts said the appalling record sent out the unmistakeable signal to criminals that there will be no comeback if people enter a false partnership.

Labour said the figures showed the Coalition was ‘presiding over a broken immigration system’.

The party’s immigration spokesman, David Hanson, said: ‘This record speaks for itself. More sham marriages and fewer deportations.

‘People want the rules to be enforced, and these figures show the Government simply isn’t doing that.

‘The Tories are stopping half the number of people at our borders, fewer people are being deported, fewer foreign criminals are leaving and fewer employers are being fined for employing illegal workers.

Last year one of the country’s most senior registrars warned that, in urban areas, one in five civil marriages may be ‘suspicious’.

Mark Rimmer, chairman of the Local Registration Services Association, estimated that up to 15,000 of the 173,000 civil weddings each year in England and Wales could be fake unions designed to evade immigration laws.

The latest figures, revealed by the Home Office for the first time following a Parliamentary question from Keith Vaz MP, chairman of the Home Affairs Select Committee, show that the problem may indeed be as stark has he warned.

They show all the reports to the authorities about suspected sham marriages, and will therefore only be the tip of the iceberg.

In 2013, up to the end of October, some 1,824 suspicious marriages and civil partnerships were reported to the Home Office by registrars.

Extrapolated over the full year, this indicates there are will be around 2,189 cases – almost eight times the total in 2006.

Read More

Sham marriages are a “massive loophole” in Britain’s border controls and amount to a “golden ticket” into the country for immigrants, an official report has warned.

John Vine, the Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration, highlighted serious failings in the way officials are attempting to combat bogus marriages.

He found evidence it could be a “growing problem”, but intelligence on the true picture was “lagging behind”.

The report said Home Office analysts said the four main non-European nationalities involved in sham marriages were Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi and Nigerian.

Men made up more than eight out of 10 of the non-European half of the arrangement. They were typically trying to marry someone from the newer eastern European states.

The report described how many of the women arrived in the country only a few days before the ceremony, and were referred to by immigration officials as “awayday brides”.

A significant number of sham marriages may be going undetected because register offices are failing to report suspicious couples to immigration officials, the report added.

“A Home Office senior manager described the obtaining of residency through sham marriage as akin to a ‘golden ticket’,” it said.

“All staff we interviewed … stressed the importance of receiving co-operation from registrars in tackling sham marriage.

“One went so far as to decribe sham marriage as a ‘massive loophole in the immigration rules’.”

Read More

A charity worker who spent £5,000 bringing his new Jamaican bride to the UK was left heartbroken after she abandoned him within 20 minutes of walking through his front door.

Johnny Gannon spent thousands arranging a visa for 24-year-old Patrice Chambers so they could live in marital bliss in his council flat in Perth, Scotland.

But as soon as Patrice arrived in Perth, she sent trusting Mr Gannon, 57, out to buy Pot Noodles. When he returned she grabbed her bags and told him she was going.

Within 20 minutes of arriving through his front door she had flagged down a car and caught a train. He found out she had also run up a £500 bill on his mobile phone.

Heartbroken Mr Gannon, who married Patrice in Jamaica early this year, believes his new wife fled to Bristol to meet a Jamaican boyfriend with whom she had organised the scheme.

He told the Daily Mirror: ‘I was looking forward to spending the rest of my life with Patrice but I think she had planned all along to do this.

‘My relationship with her wasn’t something I’d done by mail order. I’ve known her for two years and it seemed very much like the real thing to me. She has used me and I feel humiliated.

‘I had a vision of happiness laid out. I feel like a bit of a fool.’

Mr Gannon takes regular holidays in Jamaica and met Patrice there two years ago.

A friend set them up on a blind date but despite the 33-year age gap he fell in love with her after their first meeting in a romantic bar in the resort of Treasure Beach.

As the couple watched dophins playing in the water he believed he had found the girl of his dreams.

‘She ran a little bar and I’d hang out with her there,’ he said. ‘She was intelligent and I myself thought she had the potential to be a great life partner.

‘Of course I was pinching myself over how lucky I’d been to end up with such a beautiful young woman. But the relationship was getting better over time so I wasn’t suspecting any kind of sting operation.’

He heard from a friend that she had a boyfriend back in the UK but when challenged she said it was in the past.

His love for her meant that he trusted her and he continued to see her on trips to Jamaica.

In fact, it was her who first brought up the subject of marriage and a ceremony was organised on one of his trips to the country.

He had paid for her dress and hair on the big day and when he returned to Scotland worked on getting a visa for her.

In the end he sent her £700 for paperwork in Jamaica and even more money when she said it had been stolen.

This year alone he has spent more than £4,000 on her.

Friends met the couple off the plane and they flew to Edinburgh to start their new life together but she told him she didn’t want to be with him and when he returned from shopping for her he took her to the railway station.

He has reported her to police and plans to contact the UK Border Agency and now he is considering how he will tell his mother.

A British woman with the mental age of a child was forced to marry a Pakistani immigrant and have his baby so that he could gain the right to live in Britain.

A secret court heard that the 37-year-old, who has a reading age of seven, was slapped around the face by her mother to make her smile for her wedding photograph.

The judge’s ruling, seen by The Mail on Sunday, reveals that fears were raised she was being ‘manipulated’ and her parents were being paid £20,000 to marry off their daughter to the Muslim student, who was facing deportation.

But despite concerns, registrars allowed the ceremony to go ahead and the woman’s husband, 33, is now using his human right to a family life as a reason to remain in the UK, despite the ‘grossly cruel’ ploy.

The case came to light in the Court of Protection – which has the power to make life-or-death decisions on behalf of people deemed to lack mental capacity – and can be revealed today after an anonymised judgment was published.

The judge in the case, Mrs Justice Parker, said: ‘I think there is a very significant possibility that this marriage was entered into, and indeed this child created, for reasons solely to do with immigration status.’

She added: ‘To put an incapacitated person in a position whereby she bears a child which she cannot look after is grossly cruel.’

The case has lifted the lid on the grim exploitation of people with severe mental health problems who are being ‘groomed’ and then forced into marriage for passports, money or free care.

Crime Prevention Minister Norman Baker told The Mail on Sunday last night: ‘To force anyone into  marriage without their consent or the capacity to consent is wrong and is a serious abuse of human rights.’

The court was told that the British woman, who had been a Sikh but later converted to Islam, had been married and divorced twice before.

In 2011, she entered into a Muslim marriage with the man from Lahore, who was facing deportation after his student visa ran out and an appeal was rejected.

She became pregnant ‘almost immediately’ and the following year they were about to have a civil wedding in a register office when social services tried to stop the ceremony.

The UK Border Agency was also informed by registrars of suspicions that there was ‘money changing hands’ and the husband’s immigration status was the reason for the wedding. Registrars also said the woman was ‘confused about her husband’s name’ and spoke in a  ‘simplistic way’.

Read More