Brown, Buchak and Adelasoye were jailed for four years A vicar has been jailed for four years for carrying out hundreds of fake marriages to bypass immigration law.
Rev Alex Brown conducted 360 sham marriages during a four-year period at the Church of St Peter and St Paul in St Leonard, Sussex.
Co-defendants Vladimir Buchan, 33, and solicitor and pastor Michael Adelasoye, 50, were also jailed for four years.
The Crown Prosecution Service said it was thought to be the largest sham marriage case yet brought to court.
The trio were found guilty at Lewes Crown Court in July of conspiring to facilitate the commission of breaches of immigration laws.
Judge Richard Hayward also handed Brown a five-month sentence for solemnizing a marriage without the banns being published.
The two sentences will run concurrently.
The court heard Brown presided over the marriages of hundreds of mainly African men to Eastern European women at his small parish church.
The men had usually arrived lawfully in the UK but had exhausted the appeals process in applying to stay permanently.
Investigators from the UK Border Agency said the three were “happy to exploit and take advantage of other people’s desperation for their own ends”.
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