A Nigerian mother, Faust Abolore, who paid a man £1,000 to pose as her newborn baby’s father in order to avoid deportation, has been arraigned before a court in the United Kingdom.
According to UK newspaper, Standard Evening, UK police found out about her fraudulent act through online pictures of the real father cradling his son at a naming ceremony.
Faust Abolore, 29, was said to have hired one Anthony Ezekpo, 44, in a plot to gain British citizenship, using his name on the baby’s birth certificate and a subsequent passport application, Inner London Crown Court heard on Wednesday.
Abolore had claimed she lived with Ezekpo, providing the UK authorities with a fake address.
However, the UK police stated that the baby’s real father, Peter Gentry (a Nigerian), was photographed at the naming ceremony, on September 15, 2014, “in the role of the doting dad.”
The police told the court that Abolore wired £1, 000 to Ezekpo’s bank account the day her baby’s birth certificate was signed and that she entered the UK illegally.
“He was enlisted as part of a fraudulent scheme to get British citizenship for her to remain in the UK. A man turned up with her at council offices in Greenwich to register the birth and get a birth certificate. The man putting himself forward as the father was not Mr. Gentry but Mr. Ezekpo, and they both said they lived together,” police prosecutor, Adam Gardner, said.
Abolore gave birth to her son at Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Woolwich on August 6, 2014, and a photo on her phone showed Gentry cradling the newborn child.
The police further claimed that she submitted a passport application signed by Ezekpo and counter-signed by one Samson Awoyinka.
“Mr. Awoyinka said he knew Mr. Ezekpo for five years from his church congregation. This was not true, he barely knew the man. He then admitted he signed the passport application and went to Greenwich,” Gardner said.
The court also heard that Abolore, who was arrested in September last year, refused to consent to a paternity test.
“She had a great deal to hide. She knew if she gave consent to the DNA test it would reveal the truth that Mr. Ezekpo was not the father and her application for a passport and birth certificate were all lies,” the prosecutor said.
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