Church of England vicar jailed for sham marriages scam

A Church of England vicar was jailed for four years yesterday for his part in Britain’s biggest sham marriage fraud to help hundreds of illegal immigrants stay in Britain.

Reverend Alex Brown, 61, abused his position to marry hundreds of African men to hard-up Eastern European women at his small parish church.

Over a four-year period, the “massive and cynical scam” involved women being paid up to £3,000 to wed to help illegal immigrants gain permanent residency in Britain.

He presided over 383 marriages at the Church of St Peter and St Paul in St Leonards-on-Sea, East Sussex, between July 2005 and July 2009, a 30-fold rise in marriages held over the previous four years.

He was sentenced to four years in jail after being found guilty at Lewes Crown Court in July of conspiring to facilitate the commission of breaches of immigration laws, alongside solicitor Michael Adelasoye, 50, and “recruiter” Vladymyr Buchak, 33.

Judge Richard Hayward also handed Rev. Brown a five-month sentence after he pleaded guilty to solemnising a marriage according to the rites of the Church of England without banns being properly read. The two sentences will run concurrently.

Earnings for the church rocketed from £1,000 before the hundreds of marriages occurred, to around £22,000 for the first six months of 2009.

One bride told how she had to hand back her borrowed wedding dress hours after she had gone through with a ceremony, while one husband-to-be went under the name “Felix Spaceman”.

Through gaining indefinite leave to stay in the UK, the Africans, mainly from Nigeria, would be able to enjoy Britain’s education, healthcare and social benefits systems.

A large proportion of the Africans who went through with the sham marriages had arrived lawfully in the UK, either through the asylum process or by gaining a student visa.

Investigators said it was when they had “reached the end of the line” in their legal applications and appeals to stay in the UK permanently that they went through the sham marriage process.

Files recovered as part of the inquiry showed that, in some cases, Africans were already married and had children in their homeland.

Following a seven-week trial at Lewes Crown Court, jurors found Rev. Brown guilty of conspiring to facilitate the commission of breaches of immigration laws, along with co-defendants Mr Adelasoye and Mr Buchak.

The gang were caught following an investigation by the UK Border Agency (UKBA) after caseworkers noticed a surge in immigration applications involving people who had married at the church.

Detectives said the investigation was “unprecedented”, describing the three men as “happy to exploit and take advantage of other people’s desperation for their own ends”.

Jurors heard that “recruiter” Mr Buchak, a Ukrainian national who had himself been living illegally in the UK since at least 2004, was responsible for “cajoling and persuading” the Eastern Europeans into the marriages of convenience.

He preyed on migrant workers who were living in the area and were desperate to earn money by offering them cash to wed the Africans.

Although Mr Buchak was seen as the principal organiser, prosecutors said there was no doubt that Rev. Brown must have been aware the majority of the weddings he was conducting were shams.

He was arrested on June 30 last year and his vicarage home in Blomfield Road, St Leonards-on-Sea, and the church were searched.

Investigators found documents he had doctored including the church’s electoral roll plus a second, altered copy, which he had filled out to hide the dramatic increase in weddings he was presiding over.

During the trial jurors were shown photocopies of the marriage register at the church which showed that 360 out of the 383 weddings during the period involved Eastern Europeans marrying Africans.

It was also apparent that, of the hundreds of people who had married, they all seemed to live in the surrounding streets of the parish, with 90 couples registered as living in one road alone and 52 in another.