Career as bogus bride
13 April 2012
Sylvia Evans had an astonishing career as a bogus bride - gaining entry to Britain for 18 men in the space of seven years.
The 39-year-old from Peckham managed to marry four husbands in the space of six months.
When she was finally caught, immigration officers were shocked at the scale of her scam.
Every time she married, she was careful to go to a new register office and present the right documents. In return her "husbands", most of them from Sierra Leone or Ghana, paid ?1,500 a time, or gave her furniture.
Last year, sentencing her to three years in prison, Judge Quentin Campbell said: "The frequency of sham marriages is depressingly prevalent."
