Sham marriage pair jailed

Avtar Singh aged 38 and 34-year-old Elohor Eruotor were among ten people sent to prison for a total of 20 years.

A suspicious registrar raised the alarm when Singh and his bride registered notice of intention to marry at Shrewsbury register office on February 21, 2013 - and couldn't communicate without the help of an iPhone translation app.

The probe uncovered a string of sham services that took place at register offices in Shrewsbury and Manchester and in Scotland between August 2012 and September 2013.

Eruotor, of Probert Road, Oxley, 'married' Angela Balogova, aged 32 from Manchester at Gretna Green, the village in Scotland famous for runaway weddings.

In reality his 32-year-old 'bride' was one of four Eastern Europeans sourcing women from the Czech Republic who were prepared to be paid to marry men they had never met from the Asian sub continent who were desperate to stay in the UK.

Singh, who was living at Dace Road, Heath Town, married a woman who was not part of the case in another sham marriage that took place at Shrewsbury Register Office in a ceremony described as a 'choreographed performance' by the registrar.

Singh was already married, but like Eruotor, needed an EU bride to secure his stay in the country.

The sham grooms were among a number of illegal over-stayers provided with Czech brides for a few thousand pounds by an international 'delivery service'.

They were arrested in a string of raids in March last year. Both pleaded guilty to conspiring to facilitate a breach of immigration law and were each jailed for 12 months.

Members of the gang who arranged the fake marriages - most of whom came from Manchester - were locked up for between five years and 16 months. Several had been convicted after a trial.

Singh, Eruotor and the other grooms involved in the racket aimed to get permission to stay, work and claim benefits in this country by abused rules that allow immigrants to remain in the UK when married to an EU national living here.

It was a carbon copy of another sham marriage scam involving bogus Czech brides centred on Wolverhampton and Stoke register offices that saw ten people jailed in May 2014. The 'groom' can pay over £5,000 to fixers to arrange a bogus wedding for him, said Home Office officials.

Home Office investigator Dave Magrath, from Immigration Enforcement Criminal Investigations, said: "We have stopped an organised criminal gang running what was essentially a bride delivery service.

Sham marriage abuse will not be tolerated, and we are rigorously pursuing those who try to cheat the system. These sentences show that whether you are an organiser or a participant, we will catch up with you and you will be sent to prison."

Last week the results of a survey or registrars suggested that three quarters of reports about alleged sham marriages resulted in no action being taken.