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

Published: 00:42, 6 July 2026 | Updated: 00:59, 6 July 2026 At first glance, the scuffed emerald-green Gambian passport appeared genuine. It carried the name Abdoulie Jallow - a Gambian-born British citizen whose right to live in the UK had been secured years earlier. There was a valid visa inside and the biographical details matched official records. But when it was handed over at Manchester Airport, an eagle-eyed Border Force official noticed something was amiss. The photograph on both the passport and the visa had been changed. The passenger was not Mr Jallow at all. He was Ebrima Jammeh - and he was the fourth different person to use the same passport to try to enter Britain in little more than a year. The document had already carried one migrant through a circuitous four-country journey to Heathrow. It had then been altered for two more prospective travellers before finally being handed to Jammeh for his flight from Gambia to Manchester on November 23, 2023. Behind that endlessly recycled passport, it later emerged, was a sophisticated £2million migrant-smuggling network run from a collection of modest homes in West Yorkshire, London and Reading. Its mastermind was Lamin Manneh, a 51-year-old father-of-three known to his customers and criminal contacts as 'Marcus'. Lamin Manneh, the mastermind of the scam, was jailed for more than six years for people smuggling offences. He was already serving a six-year sentence for similar offending, imposed in 2024 Pictured is one of the fake Gambian passports that were recycled by the people smuggling gang Manneh's wife Mariama Jallow, 46, made 'multiple travel bookings for illegal immigrants' To the outside world, he claimed to earn a modest income while working shifts as a courier for the high street chemist Boots.  Manneh obtained genuine travel documents belonging to people with lawful status in Britain, replaced their photographs with those of paying customers and devised complex routes intended to evade immigration controls. Travellers were coached on which passport to produce at each airport, drivers were sent to collect them when they landed and many were placed in gang safe houses. Others were provided with false identities, bank accounts and jobs in Britain's black economy. Meanwhile, the same passports were altered and sold again for £5,000-a-go. In a three-year operation, hundreds of migrants were illegally shipped into the UK - a figure likely to be above 500. Home Office investigator Phil Parr, who helped bring the gang to justice - with prison sentences totalling 29 years handed out recently - said: 'This case is one of many examples of ruthless criminals facilitating illegal entry into the UK for their own gain. 'As with many organised immigration crime gangs, their sole motive was to line their own pockets.' Manneh oversaw the one-stop smuggling service, charging migrants thousands of pounds for forged travel documents before arranging their flights, finding them homes and black market work. Their racket involved genuine passports and visas being altered and handed to different imposters. Among the identities exploited by the gang were those of a man who had been dead for seven years and a serving British Army soldier whose documents were stolen while he was in The Gambia mourning the death of his mother. Others belonged to naturalised British citizens who had left their old passports with relatives overseas and had no idea that their names, visas and immigration histories had become valuable commodities in a criminal marketplace. The scheme unravelled in early 2024 when two men, Alieu Gaye and Ebrima Sonko, were stopped at Manchester Airport carrying altered documents. Evidence recovered from their phones linked Manneh to their journeys and when his device was seized, officers discovered 1,709 photographs of passports, 896 passport-style portraits and dozens of images of other identity documents. Alieu Barry had a turnover of more than £1million across two bank accounts whilst simultaneously receiving Universal Credit Ida Chow, 40, was the 'heart of the financial arrangements' of the people smuggling gang Many were shown several times, bearing the faces of different prospective travellers. Outlining the case at Leeds Crown Court last week, Paul Mitchell, KC, said: 'Each of them represents a person whose illegal entry was either facilitated or intended to be facilitated. 'Other messages and evidence from some of those who were facilitated give some idea of the amount of money charged for the service provided by Manneh and suggest that the total amount of money he received for this criminality was sure to be more than £1million and could have been twice that amount.' The messages recovered from Manneh's phone exposed a business that operated with the language and organisation of a clandestine travel agency. Routes were planned around immigration checks. Flights were booked when forged documents and travellers were ready. Customers were given step-by-step instructions for changing planes across Africa and Europe. In one voice note, Manneh said he could facilitate the journeys of two people within six weeks and discussed charging '220', understood to mean 220,000 Gambian dalasi (around £2,300). His lieutenant Alieu Barry - who received benefits handouts while more than £1m was turned over across two bank accounts - was even more explicit when explaining the system to a potential customer. 'They're passports of people who living in UK,' he wrote. 'So they change their pic in the passport to your picture.' The price, he warned, did not include the flight. Sanyang was sentenced to two years  and seven months for conspiracy to assist unlawful immigration Sanneh was sentenced to 25 months for conspiracy to assist unlawful immigration and 10 months concurrent for possession of an identity document with improper intention The operation largely targeted Gambian nationals, but the criminal infrastructure stretched far beyond The Gambia. Co-conspirators overseas sourced documents, handed passports to travellers, provided boarding passes and helped move customers through airports in Togo and Ethiopia. Manneh and his British-based associates dealt with the other end of the journey. They booked flights, arranged airport collections, provided accommodation and helped some arrivals obtain work under false names. Customers paid thousands of pounds for what was, in effect, a complete migration package. Mr Sonko, whose arrest would become a crucial moment in the investigation, said he paid the equivalent of approximately £5,200 for his false documents and travel. He said he felt confident handing over the money because contacts in The Gambia told him that 'Marcus' had brought more than 300 people into Britain. Three of those illegal migrants arrived using the passport of Ousman Ndong, who moved legally to Britain after marrying a British woman in 2009. In 2017, he suffered a fatal heart attack while visiting The Gambia. His widow travelled there to deal with the formalities of his death and discovered that his Gambian passports were missing. A man travelling as Ousman Ndong arrived at Heathrow on December 9, 2022. Another set of documents belonged to Sambujan Gassama, a soldier in the British Army. In 2022, he returned to his home country following the death of his mother where his Gambian passport - including one containing his British visa - were stolen. Within months, Manneh's network was using them. One migrant who sneaked into the UK built an entire life using the soldier's identity, including opening a Monzo bank account. The Home Office investigation revealed how the passport conspiracy fed directly into black market employment. Migrants were directed towards cleaning, care work, recycling plants and other businesses where false documents, a borrowed identity and a bank account could allow them to vanish into the workforce. One migrant gave investigators a deeply troubling account of what happened after she paid the gang to bring her to Britain. She alleged that she was put to work without pay, caring for gang member's children and forced to cook and clean. In April last year, officers raided Manneh's nondescript three bed semi-detached home in Heckmondwike. Samateh was sentenced to three years for conspiracy to assist unlawful immigration Searches uncovered bundles of cash, identity cards, passport scans, bank cards and the username on his mobile phone: 'Marcusmarcus92'. Inside was the archive of his criminal enterprise - thousands of passport images, portrait photographs, travel bookings, financial discussions and detailed voice notes. Searches spread across Greater London, Berkshire and West Yorkshire, with altered identity documents believed to have been used by the network seized. Manneh was jailed for six years and eight months after admitting offences including conspiracy to assist unlawful immigration and money laundering. He was already serving a six year sentence after being convicted over the attempted illegal entries of Gaye and Sonko at Manchester Airport. Six others were jailed for a combined sentence of more than 22 years. Passing sentence, judge Neil Clark said: 'The exact number of people brought in is not clear. The prosecution think that the number is in hundreds. I will simply say that it is clear that it is a very significant number. 'It is thought that the money that passed through Mr Manneh's hands over time may have been over £1 million, perhaps even double that. 'To what extent that amounts to profit, rather than turnover, will never perhaps be clear.' He added: 'What is clear from this conspiracy is that people were having their travel carefully arranged. 'People were being collected from airports. People were being found 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 conspiracy to assist unlawful immigration. Manneh, Barry, Chow and Jallow also admitted money-laundering offences, while Sanneh also pleaded guilty to entering Britain illegally. Barry was jailed for 72 months, Sanneh for 25 months, Sanyang for 31 months, Chow for 44 months, Samatah for 36 months and Jallow for 59 months. The government said that since coming into power, it had removed nearly 70,000 people with no right to be here. Minister for Border Security and Asylum, Alex Norris, said: 'This government is going after the gangs exploiting our borders for their own profit. 'With disruptions to smuggling activity including arrests, convictions and seizures up by nearly 50%, we're putting these criminals behind bars where they belong. Confiscation proceedings will now take place to try and recoup the gang's ill-gotten fortunes. No comments have so far been submitted. Why not be the first to send us your thoughts, or debate this issue live on our message boards. By posting your comment you agree to our house rules. Do you want to automatically post your MailOnline comments to your Facebook Timeline? Your comment will be posted to MailOnline as usual. Do you want to automatically post your MailOnline comments to your Facebook Timeline? Your comment will be posted to MailOnline as usual We will automatically post your comment and a link to the news story to your Facebook timeline at the same time it is posted on MailOnline. To do this we will link your MailOnline account with your Facebook account. We’ll ask you to confirm this for your first post to Facebook. You can choose on each post whether you would like it to be posted to Facebook. Your details from Facebook will be used to provide you with tailored content, marketing and ads in line with our Privacy Policy.