Lamin Manneh, the ringleader of a fake passport gang that smuggled hundreds of mainly Gambian migrants into Britain, has been jailed for an additional six years and eight months after admitting his role in a £1 million immigration racket. The sentence, handed down at Leeds Crown Court, will be served on top of the more than six years he received in 2024 for helping two migrants enter the UK illegally.
Sophisticated Criminal Network
Prosecutors said Manneh headed a sophisticated UK-based criminal network that offered migrants a "one-stop shop", supplying forged travel documents, arranging flights, collecting arrivals from airports, and finding them accommodation and work. The gang obtained genuine Gambian passports that already contained valid British visas before altering them by replacing the photographs on both the biometric page and the visa with images of paying clients. In one case, the passport of a dead Gambian man was allegedly used to bring three different people into Britain by changing the photograph each time.
Scale of the Operation
The Crown Prosecution Service said the gang helped several hundred people enter the UK illegally between January 2022 and July 2025, although the full scale of the operation may never be known. Images of 559 different passports were discovered on Manneh's mobile phone. The operation began to unravel in early 2024 after a traveller was stopped at Manchester Airport using the passport of a Gambian man whose documents had been stolen during a burglary two years earlier. He later admitted paying the equivalent of £5,200 for forged paperwork and travel.
Sentences for Accomplices
Manneh was jailed alongside six other gang members: Alieu Barry, 31, received six years; Mariama Jallow, 46, was sentenced to four years and 11 months; Ida Chow, 40, was jailed for three years and eight months; Musu Sanyang, 49, received two years and seven months; Pa Sanneh, 44, was jailed for two years and one month; and Sulayman Samateh, 46, was sentenced to three years. Dodou Cham, 31, was given a 12-month community order with 60 hours of unpaid work. All eight admitted offences linked to facilitating unlawful immigration, while Manneh, Barry, Jallow and Chow also pleaded guilty to laundering the proceeds of the conspiracy.
Confiscation Proceedings
Robert Warner, a specialist prosecutor with the CPS, said: "The gang had made thousands of pounds from migrants by providing fake documents, booking flights and arranging accommodation and employment." The CPS said confiscation proceedings will now be brought against Manneh, Barry, Jallow and Chow in an attempt to strip them of the profits from their crimes.
