A UK court has handed additional prison time to the leader of a Gambian-led organised crime network that prosecutors say earned more than £1 million by using forged passports and fraudulent travel documents to smuggle hundreds of people into the United Kingdom.
Lamin Manneh, 51, was sentenced at Leeds Crown Court after admitting his role in a large-scale immigration fraud and money laundering operation. Manneh had previously been jailed for more than six years in 2024 for facilitating the illegal entry of two migrants. On June 26, the court added six years and eight months to his sentence after he pleaded guilty to conspiracy to facilitate unlawful immigration and money laundering.
Manneh ran a “sophisticated criminal enterprise” which allowed “hundreds of people, mostly from The Gambia” to enter the UK illegally between January 2022 and July 2025, the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) said.
Prosecutors said the gang obtained real Gambian passports with valid British visas and then altered them by replacing the original photographs with those of paying customers. The organisation also booked flights, collected migrants from airports on their arrival and arranged accommodation and employment to allow them to remain in the UK.
Investigators revealed that in one case, the gang repeatedly used the passport of a deceased Gambian citizen to bring three different individuals into Britain by changing the passport photograph after each journey.
The full scale of the operation may never be known. However, prosecutors told the court that 559 unique passports were recovered from images stored on Manneh’s mobile phone, indicating the network may have facilitated the illegal entry of several hundred migrants.
The probe started in early 2024 when border officials at Manchester Airport stopped a traveller carrying the passport of a Gambian man, whose documents had been stolen in a burglary two years earlier. The traveller later admitted paying approximately £5,200 for the forged passport and travel arrangements.
Seven other members of the criminal network also received prison sentences after pleading guilty to immigration-related offences.
Alieu Barry, 31, was sentenced to six years’ imprisonment, while Mariama Jallow, 46, received four years and 11 months. Ida Chow, 40, was jailed for three years and eight months, Sulayman Samateh, 46, received three years, Musu Sanyang, 49, was sentenced to two years and seven months, and Pa Sanneh, 44, received two years and one month. Dodou Cham, 31, was given a 12-month community order requiring him to complete 60 hours of unpaid work.
Several of the defendants, including Manneh, Barry, Jallow and Chow, also admitted laundering the proceeds of the criminal enterprise.
Robert Warner, a specialist prosecutor with the Crown Prosecution Service’s Organised Crime Division, described the operation as a highly organised criminal enterprise that profited by exploiting vulnerable migrants seeking to enter the UK illegally.
“This was a sophisticated plot that brought hundreds of people to the UK who had no legal right to be here,” Warner said. “They provided fake travel documents, booked flights, and found migrants accommodation and jobs.”
UK Minister for Border Security and Asylum Alex Norris said the government remained committed to dismantling organised immigration crime networks, noting that arrests, convictions and seizures linked to people-smuggling operations had increased significantly.
The Crown Prosecution Service has also launched confiscation proceedings against Manneh, Barry, Jallow and Chow in an effort to recover the proceeds of their criminal activities and prevent them from benefiting financially from the offences.
