LONDON, April 25: A woman who made a fortune through an immigration racket in which vulnerable British women were conned into marrying Indian men who wanted to live in Britain was jailed for 10 years in London on Monday.

Jaswinder Gill, who police believe made up to a million pounds from the scam, was branded a “complete and total alien to the truth” by the trial judge.

Gill’s method of persuading the women to take part in the bogus marriages ranged from being charming to being “vile”, Judge Sam Kathkuda told Isleworth Crown Court.

The court had been told how Gill was paid up to 14,000 pounds a time to find brides for Indian men who wanted to use the marriage as a passport to Britain.

The “manipulative” Gill told a series of women that they would be taken to India to work as models or in the beauty trade, but once there they were persuaded to take part in weddings, prosecutors said.

Gill took one woman who was a heroin addict to India and paid her to act as a bride in what she claimed was a mock ceremony for a modelling shoot, before abandoning her, forcing the women’s parents to travel from Britain to collect her.—AFP