Three found guilty over sham marriage scam
29 July 2010
Three men, including a vicar, have today been found guilty of being behind a massive scam to organise hundreds of sham marriages in East Sussex.
Reverend Alex Brown, Ukrainian national Vladymyr Buchak and immigration lawyer Michael Adelasoye were all convicted of conspiring to facilitate braches of immigration law following an eight week trial at Lewes Crown Court.
Brown had earlier pleaded guilty to a charge of carrying out marriage ceremonies without banns of matrimony being published.
Their convictions follow one of the biggest ever investigations by the UK Border Agency's South East region immigration crime team, a specialist unit of agency investigators and officers seconded from Sussex Police.
Between them, the trio were found to be involved in around 360 weddings at the Church of St Peter and St Paul in St Leonards-on-Sea, East Sussex, between July 2005 and June 2009. Reverend Brown officiated at all the ceremonies. In the vast majority of these cases the reason for the marriage was to assist applications for residency in the UK.
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