Tuesday 14 December 2010

Jamaican DJ Jailed For Dodgy Passport Scam


A popular local DJ on an Afro-Caribbean radio station has been jailed for twelve months after obtaining and using a U.K. passport in the name of a mental health in-patient.

Jamaican-born Wayne Gayle, 47, of St. Alban’s Road, West Bromwich was employed by Birmingham’s ‘New Style Radio’ and was also a well-known DJ at pubs and clubs in the area.

The father-of-four, who entered the U.K. on a six-month visitor’s visa in September, 2000 pleaded guilty at Croydon Crown Court (pictured) to dishonestly obtaining a passport, by deception.

He is currently also in Home Office detention and subject to deportation proceedings.

Prosecutor Mr. Hamish Reid told the court a passport application in the name of Mark Wynn, who was born in Hackney, East London in 1974, and claimed to be living in Birmingham was received in July, 2003.

Three years later the application was repeated after Mr. Wynn claiming the original passport had been lost.

Suspicious immigration and passport officials traced Mr. Wynn to the mental health wing at Homerton Hospital, East London and discovered he had never personally applied for a passport.

Gayle was circulated as wanted on the police national computer and was arrested by officers from West Midlands Police on October 12.

Officers from the Metropolitan Police and the U.K. Borders Agency collected him.

It emerged Gayle employed a variety of tactics to remain in the U.K. for so long.

He applied for student status in January, 2001 and when this was refused in September that year he appealed the decision.

His appeal was eventually dismissed in June, 2004 and he was ordered to leave the country.

When quizzed by immigration officials Gayle claimed he fled Jamaica, leaving his family behind, because he owed money to gangsters and was stabbed in the back when he failed to repay the debt.

He insisted he only used the passport, which others helped him obtain, so he could return home and take care of his family after their house was set on fire.

His wife and children are all now in the U.K., the youngest two born in this country.

“He fears if he goes back to Jamaica he will be killed,” said Mr. David Smith, defending.

The lawyer insisted Gayle’s wife and children did not receive the right to live in the U.K. on the strength of the bogus passport, but could not explain how their status was obtained.

“U.K. passports are valuable documents that give the right to travel and that was a right to which you were not entitled,” Judge Daniel Flahive told Gayle.

“You used that passport to come and go as you wished and this was a deliberately acquired passport.

“I am told your wife and four children are here legitimately, but I do not understand how this is.

“It is likely you will be automatically deported,” Judge Flahive told Gayle. “People have to be deterred.”

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