A British vicar was found guilty today (July 29, 2010) of conducting hundreds of sham marriages between African nationals and cash-strapped eastern Europeans to allow illegal immigrants to gain residency in Britain.
Rev. Alex Brown, 61, presided over 360 fake ceremonies over four years, including one case in which a person was registered to marry two people on the same day, according to the Reuters website.
Brown's co-defendant, Vladymyr Burchak, 33, was also found guilty of conspiring to breach immigration laws by paying Eastern Europeans $4,700 to marry Africans -- mostly from Nigeria -- to allow them to obtain the documents they needed to live and work in Britain.
The court heard Burchak -- a Ukrainian national who had himself been living illegally in Britain since 2004 -- was responsible for "cajoling and persuading" the Eastern Europeans into the marriages of convenience, preying on migrant workers in the area who were desperate to earn money.
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