“The Church of England hierarchy allowed him to continue the weddings, which bolstered its ailing finances.”

The brides’ outfits were borrowed, the bouquets garage-bought. Happy couples beamed for the camera, then minutes later went their separate ways.

It was the same scene, week after week. Little did passersby suspect they were witnessing not the joyful union of two people in love, but a cynical conveyor belt of sham marriages conducted on an industrial scale in the genteel Sussex seaside town of St Leonards-on-Sea.

Behind the scam, the largest of its kind to be prosecuted in the UK, was the local vicar, pillar of his community and a primary school governor.

The Rev Alex Brown, 61, was convicted of conducting hundreds of fake marriage ceremonies at his East Sussex church to enable illegal African immigrants gain residency in Britain.

In four years he presided over 383 marriages, at least 360 of them sham ceremonies where eastern European women, with rights to live and work in the UK, were paid up to £3,000 each to wed African men, mainly from Nigeria, at the small parish church of St Peter and St Paul.

The brides were recruited by Ukrainian national Vladymyr Buchak, 33, an illegal immigrant working in a sausage factory. The grooms were men about to be deported, many of them known to Nigerian-born solicitor and pastor Michael Adelasoye, 51, through his Ark of Hope evangelical church in nearby Hastings. He would advise them on residency once they were married.

Read More: http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/jul/29/vicar-convicted-fake-weddings