Vicar guilty of 360 UK marriage visa scams

United Kingdom, 2nd August: A Vicar has been found to be guilty of conducting nearly 360 sham marriages in the UK.

As per the reports, this is being regarded as one of the biggest UK marriage visa scams involving eastern Europeans and African nationals.

The aim of all such sham marriages in the UK was to gain permanent residency in the UK by illegal immigrants. 
360 fake marriages were presided over by 61-year-old Rev Alex Brown over a period of four years. These cases of sham marriages in the UK also include a person who married two different persons on a single day and also several people who were involved in more than one marriage after cancellation of the previous one.

Apart from Brown, two co-defendants involved in this UK marriage visa scam include Solicitor Michael Adelasoye and Vladymyr Buchak.

The role of 33-year-old Buchak, a Ukrainian national was to pay up to £3,000 to Eastern European nationals for marrying African nationals hailing from Nigeria so as to enable them get UK marriage visas from UK immigration department. It may be noted that Buchak himself is an illegal immigrant living in the UK since 2004. Those who participated in these marriages of convenience include poor migrant Eastern European workers living in the region in deplorable conditions and wanting to get money desperately.

Adelasoye was involved in helping the illegal immigrants in the UK marriage visa application process as he had sufficient knowledge of the UK immigration laws.

Although, the main organizer of the whole UK immigration scam was found to be Buchak, but there is no doubt to the fact that Brown had knowledge of the marriages being conducted at church as totally sham.

The illegal immigrants had shown proofs of forged documents as their local addresses. Nearly 90 couples lived as neighbors in the same street while another 56 lived in another road nearby.

Meanwhile, Brown said that he was totally innocent as he arranged marriages of those couples only who had genuine reasons with the only exceptions being those brides-to-be who were pregnant. However, he does admit that he failed to see the passports of foreign citizens involved in the marriages.