Sham marriages: How a tip off about a 'dodgy' wedding led to gang being busted

Almost three years to the day later the Home Office probe has ended with 11 people facing prison and deportation.

Church pastor Donald Nwachuckwu and a 33-year-old man from Bilston who cannot be named for legal reasons, joined forces with law student Olatunji George to cash in on a valuable asset – a person's right to stay in the UK and claim benefits.

The 41-year-old pastor found West Africans prepared to pay up to £6,500 for the services laid on by the three.

He also recruited Eastern Europeans to act as bogus brides, grooms or long term partners.

The man from Bilston forged utility bills, rent books, pay slips, employment records and other false documents to create fake histories of relationships between couples who barely knew each other.

Law student George, aged 44, who had finished a module on immigration law, used this skill to organise the bogus paperwork into properly constructed applications for a European Economic Area (EEA) resident's card which allowed the holder to remain, work and claim benefits here.

The basis for the EEA card application was a long term romance with a person from the European Union, allegedly living and working in Britain.

Those taking advantage of the racket were either illegal immigrants or overstayers, people whose visa had run out.

The 'brides,' 'grooms' and partners were promised up to £1,800 each to take part in the plot which ran from January 2012 to March last year before being undermined with help from eagle eyed register office staff.

The bride and groom both bought their outifts for the big day in Primark but that was as close as they had got during the run-up to the marriage. They even struggled to remember each other's name and address.

One was aged 38 and from the Czech Republic and the other a 26-year-old Nigerian with a false passport and a guilty secret. His student visa to stay in this country had expired six months earlier. She had just arrived in the UK, had no job and was staying with her sister in Wolverhampton. He was also a new arrival in the city having been allowed to enter this country to attend a two-week merchant seaman's course in Portsmouth.

Undaunted, Lenka Jacova and Peter Frederick claimed to have fallen for each other at a meeting in Wolverhampton's West Park, following initial contact through Facebook. Experienced staff at Shrewsbury Register Office know the tell-tale signs of true love – and the couple displayed none of them when they tied the knot on June 8, 2013.

The pair were unconcerned about being late for the ceremony, did not speak the same language and spent little time together, recalled Susan Hall, the register office's certificate production assistant and receptionist.

Paul Ainscough, the deputy registrar, who took the Notice of Marriage from the couple, revealed: "One party knew little about the other. They were unable to converse in the same language and one was unable to give the full name and address of the other.

"Having spoken to them I formed the opinion that it was not a genuine marriage." The jury at Wolverhampton Crown Court agreed and found both Frederick and Jacova guilty of conspiring to facilitate a breach in the immigration law.

The big breakthrough came in September 2013 when, following a tip off, immigration officials halted the marriage of 26-year-old Nigerian Edward James from Drummond Street, Whitmore Reans and Czech Julie Ondova, 20, from Poplar Street, Goldthorn Park, who already had a boyfriend and two children but had accepted £800 to play the role of bride at Stoke Register Office with a further £1,000 due on completion of the nuptials.

The following March both pleaded guilty at Stoke-on-Trent Crown Court to facilitating a breach of immigration law.

He was sentenced to 20 months imprisonment and deported on July 29, 2014.

She was jailed for 16 months and kicked out of the country on September 11 of that year.

Interrogation of Nwachuckwu two mobiles linked him to George and the man from Bilston.

The threesome had made hundreds of calls to each other as the racket developed.

Nwachuckwu used his position as a senior pastor in the Kingdom of Godfire church in Ward Street, Bilston to identify those with no right to be in the UK who were prepared to pay a lot of money to get 'legal' cover to remain here.

An astonishing £153,000 worth of credits passed through the variety of bank accounts he ran under the false name of Emmanuel Kanu, supposedly a 46-year-old with indefinite leave to stay in this country.

In reality Nwachuckwu was 41 and had been within days of being kicked out of Britain on October 1 2008 before claiming political asylum at the last minute. He had two Nigerian passports, one in the name of his alter ego Emmanuel Kanu.

The father of two was later classed as an absconded after vanishing following release from a detention centre but reappeared five years later to make his claim for an EEA resident's card on the basis of his fake relationship.

The lie was revealed when the Glasgow address where he was supposed to live with his Eastern European girlfriend lived was found to be bogus. He was arrested in a Home Office raid on his home in Oldbury on February 10 2014.

Further inquiries cemented his link with George – detained five months later on July 23 – and firmed up the connection with the 43-year-old from Bilston who set up a graphics company and was a dab hand at forgery.

A search of the Bilston man's home revealed a computer hard drive with 9,000 deleted files.