The head of a UK based Gambian crime gang which received more than £1 million for doctoring passports so hundreds of people, mainly from Gambia, could come to the UK illegally will now serve longer in prison. 

Lamin Manneh, 51, was sentenced to more than six years in 2024 after admitting to facilitating the illegal entry of two migrants. On Friday 26 June, he had six years and eight months added on to that after pleading guilty to conspiracy to assist unlawful immigration and money laundering.

Jailed alongside Manneh were Alieu Barry, 31, for six years, Mariama Jallow, 46, for four years and 11 months, Ida Chow, 40, for three years and eight months, Musu Sanyang, 49, for two years and seven months, Pa Sanneh, 44, for two years and one month, and Sulayman Samateh, 46, for three years. Dodou Cham, 31, was given a 12-month community order with 60 hours of unpaid work.

The sophisticated plot included the gang making travel arrangements for those coming to the UK, collecting them from the airport, and providing them with places to stay and work.

The gang would obtain genuine passports, usually from Gambia, which already had British visas in them and doctor them by adding photos of their clients into the biometric page and the visa.

In one example of the operation of the scam, the gang used the passport of a dead Gambian man to bring three people into the country by changing the passport photo each time.

All eight pleaded guilty to facilitating unlawful immigration into the UK at earlier hearings. Manneh, Barry, Jallow and Chow have also pleaded guilty to offences relating to the laundering of the proceeds of their criminal activity.

They were charged and prosecuted by specialist lawyers in the organised crime division of the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS). At their sentencing at Leeds Crown Court, the CPS acknowledged that while several hundred people had been helped to enter illegally between January 2022 and July 2025, the exact figure will never be known. But Manneh’s mobile phone contained images of 559 unique passports.

The plot began to be uncovered from early 2024 after a man was stopped at Manchester Airport because he was travelling on the passport of a man who had been burgled in Gambia two years earlier and his passports taken. The man who was stopped at the airport eventually admitted paying the equivalent of £5,200 for his fake documents and travel.

Robert Warner, a Specialist Prosecutor from the CPS said:

“This was a sophisticated plot that brought hundreds of people to the UK who had no legal right to be here.

“Lamin Manneh and his gang charged their customers thousands of pounds and offered a one stop shop for migrants seeking to enter the UK illegally.

“They provided fake travel documents, booked flights, and found migrants accommodation and jobs.

“The Crown Prosecution Service will continue to work closely with the Home Office and the police to ensure successful prosecutions of criminal gangs facilitating illegal entry to the UK.”

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.”

The CPS will take Manneh, Barry, Jallow and Chow back to court to bring confiscation proceedings so they cannot keep the profits of their crimes.