How a £2million people smuggling gang recycled the identities of a dead man and a British soldier to sneak hundreds of illegal immigrants into Britain

At first glance, the worn emerald green Gambian passport looked real.

It bore the name of Abdoulie Jallow, a Gambian-born British citizen whose right to live in the UK was secured years ago. It contained a valid visa and biographical details matched official records.

But when it was handed over at Manchester Airport, an eagle-eyed Border Force officer noticed something was wrong.

The photo in both the passport and the visa had been changed. The passenger was definitely not Mr. Jallow.

He was Ebrima Jammeh, and he was the fourth different person to attempt to enter Britain using the same passport in just over a year.

The document had already carried a migrant to Heathrow on a circuitous journey spanning four countries. It was then exchanged for two more potential passengers and eventually delivered to Jammeh for his flight from Gambia to Manchester on 23 November 2023.

Behind this endlessly recycled passport, it later emerged, was a sophisticated £2 million migrant smuggling network operated from modest homes in West Yorkshire, London and Reading.

The mastermind was 51-year-old father of three Lamin Manneh, known as ‘Marcus’ to his clients and criminal contacts.

To the outside world, he claimed to earn a modest income by working shifts as a courier for high street chemist Boots.

Manneh obtained genuine travel documents belonging to people with legal status in Britain, replaced their photographs with those of paying customers, and devised complex routes aimed at evading immigration controls.

Travelers were trained on which passport to present at each airport, drivers were sent to collect their passports when they landed, and many were placed in gang safe houses.

Others were given fake IDs, bank accounts and jobs in Britain’s underground economy.

Meanwhile, the same passports were exchanged and resold for £5,000 each.

Hundreds of immigrants were illegally deported to the UK in a three-year operation; this number is likely to be over 500.

Home Office inspector Phil Parr, who helped bring the gang to justice, said of the recent total 29-year prison sentence: ‘This case is one of many examples of ruthless criminals facilitating illegal entry into the UK for their own benefit.

‘As with many organized immigration crime gangs, their sole aim was to line their own pockets.’

Manneh oversaw a one-stop smuggling service, charging migrants thousands of pounds in exchange for fake travel documents before arranging their flights, finding them homes and black market jobs.

Their racket involved swapping genuine passports and visas and giving them to different fraudsters.

Among the identities exploited by the gang were those of a man who had been dead for seven years and a British Army soldier whose documents were stolen while he was mourning the death of his mother in the Gambia.

Others belonged to naturalized British citizens who had left their old passports to relatives abroad and were unaware that their names, visas and immigration histories had become valuable commodities on the criminal market.

The scheme was unraveled in early 2024 when two men, Alieu Gaye and Ebrima Sonko, were stopped at Manchester Airport with altered documents.

Evidence from his phones was linked to Manneh’s travels, and when his device was seized, officers discovered 1,709 passport photos, 896 passport-style portraits and dozens of other ID images.

Many were shown several times bearing the faces of different potential passengers.

Summing up the case at Leeds Crown Court last week, Paul Mitchell of the KC said: ‘Each represents a person whose illegal entry was facilitated or intended to be facilitated.

‘Other messages and evidence from some of the recipients give an idea of ​​the amount of money requested for services provided by Manneh and suggest that the total amount of money he received for this crime was certainly more than £1 million and could have been twice that.’

Messages taken from Manneh’s phone revealed a business operating with the language and organization of a secret travel agency.

Routes were planned around immigration controls. With fake documents and passengers ready, the flight was booked. Customers were given step-by-step instructions on changing aircraft in Africa and Europe.

In a voice note, Manneh said he could facilitate travel for two people in six weeks and discussed the ‘220’ fee, understood to mean 220,000 Gambian dalasi (about £2,300).

His lieutenant, Alieu Barry, who received benefits while more than £1 million was transferred to two bank accounts, was even more blunt when explaining the system to a potential client.

‘These are passports of people living in the UK,’ he wrote. ‘So they replace their picture in the passport with your picture.’

He warned that the flight was not included in the price.

‘It’s expensive,’ he added.

The operation largely targeted Gambian citizens, but the criminal infrastructure extended far beyond Gambia.

His collaborators obtained documents from abroad, distributed passports to passengers, provided boarding passes, and helped transport clients through airports in Togo and Ethiopia.

Manneh and his English-born partners took care of the other end of the journey.

They booked flights, arranged airport collections, provided accommodation and helped some arrivals find jobs under assumed names.

Customers actually paid thousands of pounds for a full migration package.

Mr Sonko, whose arrest would be a pivotal moment in the investigation, said he had forged documents and paid the equivalent of around £5,200 for his travel.

He said he felt confident giving the money because his contacts in Gambia had told him that ‘Marcus’ had brought more than 300 people to Britain.

Three of these illegal immigrants arrived using the passport of Ousman Ndong, who moved to the UK legally after marrying a British woman in 2009.

He suffered a fatal heart attack while visiting Gambia in 2017.

His widow went there to sort out the formalities of his death and discovered his Gambian passports were missing.

A man traveling as Ousman Ndong arrived at Heathrow on 9 December 2022.

Another set of documents belonged to Sambujan Gassama, who served in the British Army.

After his mother’s death in 2022, he returned to his country, where his Gambian passport, which also contained his UK visa, was stolen.

Within a few months, Manneh’s network was using them. An immigrant who sneaked into the UK has made an entire life using a soldier’s identity, including opening a Monzo bank account.

A Home Office investigation has revealed how the passport conspiracy directly affected black market employment.

Immigrants were directed to cleaning, maintenance jobs, recycling facilities, and other workplaces where forged documents, borrowed IDs, and bank accounts could allow them to blend into the workforce.

A migrant has given investigators a deeply disturbing account of what happened after he paid a gang to bring him to England.

She claimed she was forced to work without pay, take care of gang members’ children, and cook and clean.

In April last year officers raided Manneh’s ordinary three-bedroom semi-detached house in Heckmondwike.

The searches revealed stacks of cash, ID cards, passport scans, bank cards and the username on his mobile phone: ‘Marcusmarcus92’.

Inside was the criminal organization’s archive: thousands of headshots, portrait photos, travel reservations, financial discussions and detailed voice memos.

Searches spread across Greater London, Berkshire and West Yorkshire and turned up altered identity documents believed to have been used by the compromised network.

Manneh was sentenced to six years and eight months in prison after admitting offenses including assisting illegal immigration and conspiracy to launder money.

He was already serving a six-year prison sentence after he was convicted over Gaye and Sonko’s attempted illegal entry into Manchester Airport.

The other six people were sentenced to a total of more than 22 years in prison.

Judge Neil Clark said in sentencing: ‘The exact number of people brought is not clear. The prosecution thinks this number is in the hundreds. I’ll just say that it’s clear that this is a very significant number.

‘It is thought that over time the money passing through Mr Manneh’s hands could be in excess of £1 million, perhaps even twice that much.

‘To what extent this amounts to profit rather than turnover will perhaps never be clear.’

He added: ‘What is clear from this plot is that people are carefully arranging their travels.

‘People were gathering from airports. People were at work. And people were being provided with accommodation.’

Manneh, Mariama Jallow, 46, Ida Chow, 40, Alieu Barry, 31, Sulayman Samatah, 46, Pa Sanneh, 43, and Musu Sanyang, 49, admitted conspiring to assist illegal immigration.

Manneh, Barry, Chow and Jallow also pleaded guilty to money laundering charges, while Sanneh also pleaded guilty to entering Britain illegally.

Barry was sentenced to 72 months, Sanneh to 25 months, Sanyang to 31 months, Chow to 44 months, Samatah to 36 months and Jallow to 59 months.

The government said it had removed nearly 70,000 people who had no right to be here since coming to power.

Border Security and Asylum Minister Alex Norris said: ‘This government is going after gangs who exploit our borders for their own gain.

‘With disruptions to trafficking activity including arrests, convictions and seizures rising by almost 50%, we are putting these criminals behind bars where they belong.

Confiscation proceedings will now be initiated to compensate for the gang’s ill-gotten wealth.