Indian-origin man gets 5-yr jail for trafficking people into UK

He was found guilty of a conspiracy to facilitate illegal entry to the Indians into the UK, at Leicester Crown Court in January and was sentenced on Monday to five-year imprisonment.

The court was told that his role in the scam included handling of the money taken from the clients, which was as high as 8,000 pounds, for their passage into Britain.

Patel sent money to contacts in India who recruited the clients, using a money exchange bureau, Bolton news reported.

It is not known how many people were brought into the country but gang members made millions of pounds from the lucrative enterprise, it said.

Many clients from India travelled to South Africa using forged documents. Once there, they paid 500 each for a genuine South African passport which was issued fraudulently.

The passports were then used to enter Britain because anyone visiting the UK with a South African passport does not need a visa.

Those who managed to get into the UK were kept in safe houses in towns with large Gujrati communities such as Bolton, Blackburn, Preston and Leicester.

Often, they then registered with a college or became involved in sham marriages to extend their stay, the report said.