UK men paid £10,000 to pose as fake fathers

BRITISH men are being offered up to £10,000 to pose as fake fathers for migrant women so their children can get UK citizenship, an investigation has found.

The ‘fake father’ scam sees men receive money in return for adding their names to a child’s birth certificate to give them UK citizenship and the mother residency.

A BBC Newsnight investigation claimed that scammers are predominantly using Facebook to drum up business, promoting their scam by saying they have helped thousands of women. Meta, the parent company of Facebook, said it does not allow the solicitation of adoptions or birth certificate fraud and it would remove content that violates its policies.

Meanwhile, the Home Office said immigration fraud using false birth certificates is a ‘serious offence’ which they had measures in place to detect and prevent.

During their investigation, a Newsnight researcher went undercover and posed as a pregnant woman who was living in the UK illegally, meeting up with an agent who called himself ‘Thai’, a translator and the prospective British ‘father’. Thai is alleged to have told her he knew of multiple British men who were willing to pretend to father her unborn child as part of a ‘full package’ costing £11,000.

He assured her the process was ‘very easy’ and he would ‘do everything’ to get her unborn child a British passport.

She was then introduced to the prospective British ‘father’, who went by the name of Andrew, and told her he would receive an £8,000 cut of the money for adding his name to the child’s birth certificate.

Newsnight uncovered posts in Vietnamese Facebook groups for those searching for work, including one that said: ‘I’m four months pregnant. I desperately need a citizenship daddy aged between 25-45.’ One agent said she would guarantee the undercover researcher a British passport.

A parent can apply for a family visa if their child is living in the UK and is already a British citizen under Home Office rules.

They must have sole or shared parental responsibility, and the child’s other parent must be a British citizen.

A Home Office spokesman said: ‘Immigration fraud using false birth certificates is a serious offence... Caseworkers receive fraud awareness training, and a range of checks are conducted during the processing... applications.’