A HUSBAND and wife team of sham marriage ‘fixers’ recruited bogus brides at the school gates.

Mother of four Andzelina Surmaj, 30, a Polish national who has lived in this country 12 years, and Milan Cina, 38, who is Czech, pleaded guilty to arranging four weddings, at churches in Accrington and Clayton-le-Moors.

They also took part in a fake wedding themselves.

Nigerian men were introduced to Cina as a ‘wedding organiser’ and paid the couple up to £4,500 a time in a bid to trick the Home Office into granting them leave to remain in the UK on a marriage visa.

Surmaj would then approach cash-strapped Czech and Slovak women from the local community outside her childrens’ schools telling them they could earn £1,500 to act as a bride.

‘Naive’ clergy at St Peter’s Church, St Andrew’s Church, Accrington, and All Saints Church, Clayton-le-Moors, were hoodwinked with false documents showing the bogus bride and groom lived together and in the parish. The ‘facilitators’ would provide the wedding dress, transport and often act as witnesses to make sure the scam worked.

But UKBA and Lancashire Police officers from the North West Immigration Crime Team said the EU nationals were often ‘shortchanged’.

Following a lengthy investigation into around 50 ‘suspicious’ marriages in East Lancashire, a number of successful prosecutions have taken place.

Burnley Crown Court heard that Surmaj, of Girlington Road, and her now estranged husband Cina, of Lister Gardens, both Bradford, admitted assisting unlawful immigration to member state by participating in the organisation of the sham marriages of Oladotun Ogundari to Alena Kuejova, Omorodian Idehen to Kristina Makunova, Josef Badzo to Mercy Idehen and Adegboyega Adekunle to Ingrid Gulasova.

Surmaj also admitted assisting unlawful immigration to member state by taking part in a sham marriage to Samuel Kolawole in September 2009, making a false statement with reference to marriage by signing the church register at St Peter's-in-Newbold and possessing a false Czech Republic identity card.

Cina also pleaded guilty to assisting unlawful immigration to member state by acting as a witness at the sham marriage of Lukman Durojaye to Maria Pretczynska in December 2008. The other offences took place between 2008 and 2011.

The defendants will be sentenced on March 19 and were told by Judge Beverley Lunt they would be going to prison.

Surmaj, said to not realise now serious it was to arrange the marriages, was bailed on condition she lives at her home address, does not travel outside the UK and reports to the police station twice a week. Cina was remanded in custody.

A sham marriage typically occurs when a non-European national marries someone from the European Economic Area, including the UK, as means of attempting to gain long-term residency and the right to work and claim benefits.

DI Paul Roach said: “Rather than blend into the background of a metropolitan city, they played on the naivety of the rural parishes where they feel they won’t be challenged and can brazen it out.

“Once they realise they can get away with it, they hammer away at one church until they get found out and then move on.”

Since the scale of the scam first came to light, Lancashire clergy have been educated on what warning signs to look out for if they suspect a bogus wedding.

No vicars in East Lancashire have been implicated in the sham marriages.