Jail for fake marriage brokers

A pair of racketeers who organised fake marriages between British women and Pakistani illegal immigrants so they could remain in the European Union were sent to prison yesterday.

Mohammed Zafar and Sandra Browne arranged for the women, some of them prostitutes, to marry Pakistani men in register office weddings in England. The women were paid up to pounds 1,000 to marry the men, who were living illegally in Belgium, and fake bridegrooms would stand in during the weddings. The illegal immigrants were then allowed to stay in the EU while their "brides" returned to their British homes, Southampton Crown Court heard. Browne, 31, from Woolwich, London, was sentenced to four and a half years in jail, and Zafar, 33, from Hounslow, to five and a half years.