Vicar Jailed For Wedding Immigration Scam

A vicar has been jailed for four-and-a-half years for immigration fraud after conducting at least 200 bogus wedding ceremonies for illegal immigrants.

The Reverend Brian Shipsides, 56, carried out the "meticulously planned and carefully orchestrated" fake ceremonies from the All Saints Church in East London.

The judge said: "Your important role in this conspiracy was a disgraceful abuse of your calling as an ordained minister of the Church.

"This was a conspiracy to breach the United Kingdom's immigration laws by arranging sham marriages.

"These marriages took place in your church. Your church, where you had been the priest in charge for many years.

"There really is no mitigation in respect of this type of offending which undermines UK immigration law, threatens the benefit system and exploits the lives of many vulnerable and desperate people."

The bogus ceremonies were between non-Europeans, mostly from Nigeria, who were married off to Europeans to obtain immigration rights.

Couples were charged £140 by the church for each illegal service.

The partners - often from Holland or Portugal - were sometimes flown in just for the ceremony.

The court heard that the legal procedure for publishing banns at the church was not always followed.

The prosecution said the vicar had 'pocketed' £30,000 in fees that should have gone to the diocese or local parish.

The defence outlined Reverend Shipsides' history of poor health, including suffering from a brain tumour in his early life and later going on to have depression.

At one point the scam was so popular couples queued outside the church in Forest Gate, East London.

The vicar was assisted by a 'fixer' - an illegal immigrant called Amudalat Ladipo, 32, who appears as a bride herself in some photographs of a bogus wedding ceremony at the church.

Ladipo was sentenced to three years for her part in the scam.

The Nigerian mother-of-two, from Plaistow in east London, was given a further 18-month prison term for possessing a false identity document.

Shipsides was arrested after investigators from the UK Border Agency examined church records.

They found a spike in the number of marriage licenses issued by the church - from just 15 over a three-year period to 250 between December 2007 and July 2010.

It is now 'reviewing' the immigration status of some 150 people who were granted leave to stay in theUK following their wedding at All Saints Church.

Andy Russell from the UK Border Agency's Investigation team said: "The scale of the abuse was staggering and he had also acted to conceal the true number of weddings taken place at All Saintsfrom the church authorities."

Shipsides has served in the parish for 13 years - he's currently been suspended by the Church of England and will face a disciplinary hearing and a likely expulsion from the church.

He is no stranger to publicity, and appears in the Guinness Book of Records for officiating the marriage of the world's tallest couple.

In the past he has spoken of his 'regret' and has said he has no idea what made him break the law, and for such a long period of time.

©Sky News