A Nigerian Lawyer and an English Parish Priest Jailed for Immigration Fraud

A Church of England vicar who oversaw hundreds of sham marriages to help migrants settle illegally in Britain was jailed for four years today.

The Reverend Alex Brown, 61, presided over 360 bogus ceremonies over four years at his small parish church on the South Coast of England.

Over that period, the scam, thought to be the biggest of its kind in Britain, involved East European women being paid up to £3,000 a time to help the men, mostly Nigerians, by-pass UK immigration laws and settle in Britain.

At his Victorian parish church in the seaside town of St Leonards, East Sussex, Brown married up to eight couples a day between 2005 and 2009.

The Reverend Alex Brown leaves Lewes Crown Court

Jailed: Rev Brown, pictured leaving court today, is guilty of conspiring to facilitate the commission of breaches of immigration laws

Over a four-year period, the ‘massive and cynical scam’ involved women being paid up to £3,000 to wed to help migrants 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.

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

Brown was sentenced to four years in jail after being found guilty 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 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.

Reverend Alex Brown carrying out a marriage ceremony

Passport to UK: Alex Brown conducts one of 360 phoney marriages. He was today sentenced to four years in jail

Scam: Brown married up to eight couples a day between 2005 and 2009 at his Victorian parish church in the seaside town of St Leonards, East Sussex

Immigration Minister Damian Green today said the UK Border Agency was carrying out ‘an intense period of activity to go after these organised crime groups to put the ringleaders before the courts’.

Earnings for the church rocketed from £1,000 in the first six months of 2005 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.

THE GROOM CALLED ‘FELIX SPACEMAN’, A BORROWED DRESS AND THE RING THAT DIDN’T FIT: THE FAKERY THE VICAR FAILED TO SEE

Under the noses of parishioners, the Church of St Peter and St Paul in St Leonards was turned into an illegal wedding factory. The Rev Alex Brown (below) claimed not to notice, but later admitted in court that the tell-tale signs of fakery were there to see.

Reverend Alex Brown

THE BORROWED DRESS

On her ‘big day’, an Eastern European bride called Jana Jarabkova changed into a borrowed wedding dress only after arriving at the church.

Brown admitted: ‘I didn’t know quite what to make of it. The bride and bridesmaid said, “Where can we change?” and the only place where they could change was in my vestry. After the ceremony, they had to go back into the vestry and put the clothes they had borrowed back into a bag.’

DOES THAT RING FIT

A groom called Godwin produced a wedding ring that was far too small for his bride’s finger. Brown recalled: ‘I thought it was pretty strange – or he was pretty stupid.’

HESITANT BRIDE

One bride-to-be burst into tears as she had second thoughts about going through with her August 2006 wedding.

Brown said: ‘I tried to lift her spirits a bit and told her to take her time and not to do anything rash like jumping into a wedding.’

WIFE SWAP

The couples were remarkably fickle. One man due to marry on March 20 last year wed someone else instead on April 8, while another registered to marry on April 4 last year tied the knot with an entirely different girl on May 22. One groom switched his fiancee three times.

Brown said: ‘I can’t ever forget him. He was very agitated and said he wanted to marry someone else. To me that was unforgivable. But he was vociferous that this was his wedding date. Unfortunately, because of the heated argument, I gave in to him. That’s what I should not have done. This was the worst thing that I have ever done.’

‘FELIX SPACEMAN’

A groom with this unlikely name presented a falsified utility bill and a photocopied passport, telling the vicar the original was with his solicitor in London. The bogus marriage still went ahead.

THE ON-OFF WEDDINGS
The wedding of 19-year-old seamstress Ilona Gzibouska and her groom Slimane Bourti was cancelled on August 16, 2008. Just seven weeks later, she married Chukwuemeke Hamilton Eselojor instead.

By amazing luck, her cast-aside beau had also found ‘love’ elsewhere. Bourti married another Eastern European, Ilona Vambulda Alexandrovna, on September 29. All the weddings were at Brown’s church. The prosecutor challenged him: ‘Nothing there, do you think, to alert the vicar there’s something a bit weird going on?’

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 Brown guilty of conspiring to facilitate the commission of breaches of immigration laws, along with co-defendants Adelasoye and Buchak.

The gang were caught following an investigation by the UK Border Agency 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’ 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 Buchak was seen as the principal organiser, prosecutors said there was no doubt that 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 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.

It was 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.

In some instances there were even several brides and grooms claiming to live in the same house and most of those involved in the marriages had given false addresses.

Brown concealed the number of weddings he conducted in a number of ways.

The publication of banns involves a vicar reading out the names and addresses of the people to be married at three separate Sunday services within three months before the wedding.

As he was keen not to alert his congregation to unfamiliar-sounding names, for a large part of the period in question the banns procedure was not complied with, the trial heard.

On top of that, the sham marriages were carried out outside normal church hours, very rarely on a Saturday, and did not involve those who normally took part in genuine marriages, such as the regular organist.

Senior prosecution officials were unaware of anyone else in British legal history being convicted of failing to read out the banns.

While living in the UK illegally Buchak had taken on the identity of an Estonian named Kaido Maesalu.

He was arrested on the same day as Brown and identity documents belonging to some of the Eastern Europeans involved in the sham marriages were found in his home in St Leonards-on-Sea, while many of their numbers were found on his mobile phone.

Assisted in the trial by an interpreter, he declined to give evidence, while Brown and solicitor Adelasoye both denied knowing the marriages were false when they each took to the witness box.

The court heard that Nigerian-born Adelasoye, who specialised in immigration law, helped the African participants by advising them with their applications for residency once they were married.

Adelasoye, of St Leonards-on-Sea, already knew many of them through his role as pastor of the Ark of Hope evangelical church in nearby Hastings.

During his evidence he claimed he did not notice that so many of them married Eastern Europeans, and told jurors: ‘I have a lot of respect of the sanctity of marriage.’

Meanwhile, Brown, who is openly gay, insisted he only ever married couples he was sure were getting married for the right reasons and exceptions would only be made if the bride-to-be was imminently expected to give birth.

But he admitted he occasionally forgot to check the passports of foreign nationals wanting to get married to make sure they had indefinite leave to remain in the UK.

He said he became suspicious of one or two couples, but this was only because of vast differences in age between the bride and groom and put the vast increase in weddings down to ‘word of mouth’.

Brown’s motive for conducting the marriages remains unclear. He denied being manipulated or controlled by anybody or being in it for financial gain.

Cash found at his home was said to have been set aside for his pension. Other sums found correlated with the fees set by the church to conduct weddings.

Lucrative: Earnings for the church rocketed from £1,000 in the first six months of 2005 before the hundreds of marriages occurred, to around £22,000 for the first six months of 2009

Accomplices: Michael Adelasoye (left), who told the court ‘I have a lot of respect of the sanctity of marriage’, and ‘recruiter’ Vladymyr Buchak were each jailed for four years for their parts in the scam

Buchak and Adelasoye were also sentenced to four years’ imprisonment for the conspiracy charge, while Buchak received a nine-month prison sentence for using a false passport, to run concrrently.

The judge told them: ‘None of you have pleaded guilty. You have expressed no remorse. I must confess I was hoping to hear from counsel for Adelasoye and Buchak that you were helping for altruistic reasons.

‘I have heard no such mitigation.’

He added that Brown’s role was pivotal to the conspiracy. He told him: ‘Your role was vital. Without you this conspiracy would never have been able to come into effect.

‘The couples involved beat a path to St Peter’s because both they knew and you knew what was going on, and you were happy to play your part.’

The judge said Brown persisted with presiding over sham marriages despite questions being raised by both the Archdeacon and rural dean about the high number of weddings involving foreign nationals.

‘Although you were helped by two retired priests, you never asked them to officiate any of these weddings and when you were arrested they stopped,’ Judge Hayward said.

He went on: ‘The participants were perfectly willing but this conspiracy involved the exploitation of two vulnerable groups. The Eastern Europeans had come to the UK for a better life but found themselves in poor accommodation and in hard and low paid jobs.

‘They were vulnerable to being exploited and they agreed to marry for money, although evidence suggests none of them received the full amount promised.’

He added that the Africans were desperate to stay in the UK and avoid being sent back to their respective countries to an uncertain future.

Andy Cummins, in charge of immigration crime team investigations in the South East for the UK Border Agency, said the three men were ‘involved in the biggest criminal conspiracy of its type ever seen in Britain’.

‘These sentences show just how seriously the courts take these kinds of offences,’ he said.

‘Reverend Brown knowingly abused the trust put in him by the Church, his congregation and his community.

‘His role was crucial in this scam. His co-conspirators took advantage of and exploited the desperation of others for their own ends.

‘As this case shows, illegal immigration can be big business. We are committed to tackling the criminal groups behind it, putting the ringleaders before the courts, and, ultimately, behind bars.’

The Immigration Minister added that illegal immigration was ‘highly organised’.

‘At home and abroad, we are tackling highly organised crime groups who make their living by trying to exploit the immigration system and breach our border security,’ he said.

‘Some of these hide people in lorries in an attempt to cross our borders illegally; some provide them with fake identity documents; others set up bogus colleges or arrange sham marriages.

‘Worst of all – some force women and children to work against their will in the sex industry.’