A sham marriage gang who pocketed more than £500,000 by setting Asian immigrants with Eastern European brides so they could stay in the UK are facing jail.

The group arranged at least 13 fake weddings to get round Home Office restrictions on international students.

They used photographs of the 'happy couples' together who forged job offers to convince officials to grant residency to the grooms from Pakistan, India and Bangladesh.

Only two of the 13 couples married between 2011 and 2014 are still living together.

Ayaz Khan, 32, and wife Jurgita Pavlovskyte, 25, earned more than £500,000 after setting up sham marriages

The group was led by Sainsbury's workers Ayaz Khan, 32, and his Lithuanian wife Jurgita Pavlovskyte, 25.

He ran the groom side of the business, while she was responsible for finding the brides.

The pair, together with Muhammad Saqlain, 32, and Diana Stankevic, 26, were all convicted of conspiracy to assist unlawful immigration following a trial at the Old Bailey.

Imran Farooq, 35, was convicted of securing or seeking to secure the avoidance of enforcement action by acting as a fake groom.

It is claimed that the marriage of Imran Farooq and Diana Stankevic (pictured together) was one of the sham 13

The grooms - eleven from Pakistan, one from India and one from Bangladesh - were all ‘desperate’ to stay in the UK after their student visas expired.

To get permission to live and work in the UK, non-EU nationals need to prove they are married to an EU national, that the marriage is genuine, they live together and the EU national is working and has a National Insurance number.

The grooms were often paid thousands of pounds at a time to the sham marriage gang to find European brides and sort out the paperwork.

Some of the money paid for flights to the UK, wedding expenses and a small payment of a few hundred pounds to the bride, but most went into the organisers’ pockets.

Khan spent large sums of cash away at a casino in Westfield Shopping Centre in Stratford, east London.

One groom had been repeatedly refused leave to remain in the UK after his student visa ran out, only to be granted residency after marrying a 20 year-old Lithuanian cleaner.

Prosecutor Tom Forster told the court: ‘The Home Office was fooled. This was not a genuine marriage. This was a put up job.’

He said the gang deliberately breached immigration controls ‘for profit’.

Muhammad Saqlain (right) was involved in a sham marriage to Tatjana Rolic (left)

Mr Forster added: ‘Residency rights are very valuable indeed.

‘The system of legal controls was wholly undermined by a criminal agreement to help men make dishonest applications to live and work in the UK based on marriage to women from Lithuania.

‘These marriages were sham. Each was a union of pure convenience and designed to fool the immigration authorities.’

Twelve of the fake brides were from Lithuania and one was from the Czech Republic.

Two of the sham marriages took place in Stoke and Gretna Green, Scotland, with the others happening in London, jurors heard.

The first bogus wedding involved a 29 year-old Pakistani groom who came to the UK in 2003 on a four-year student visa.

His application for leave to remain to continue his studies was initially refused but later granted until 2009.

Valerija Bartosevic, 25, (left) was one of the sham brides, while Sheikh Ahmad, 36, (right) was one of the fake grooms

Further applications for leave to remain were refused in June 2009, September 2009 and July 2010.

He then applied for a certificate of approval of marriage to a 20 year-old Lithuanian woman but this was refused in March 2011.

Their marriage went ahead anyway and photos were taken of the pair posing alongside Khan, Pavlovskyte and another couple whose own sham marriage took place later the same year using a similar bouquet of flowers.

The application for residency was then granted by the Home Office on March 19 2012.

It was due to last five years but the groom was eventually deported in 2016.

Employment at Sainsbury’s was a ‘common theme’, with Khan and four other grooms having worked at the company’s stores.

A forged job offer from Sainsbury’s to sham bride Valerija Bartosevic, 25, was later found during the investigation.

Analysis of the ringleaders’ bank accounts found a total of £297,000 was paid into Khan’s accounts in addition to his small salary from Sainsbury’s.

Another £238,000 of unexplained income went into Pavlovskyte’s bank account, the court heard.

Mr Forster said: ‘There is an unexplained income which isn’t attributed to his salary. A great deal of that is dirty money to do with this enterprise.’

Many of the bank transfers from grooms were given the references ‘wife’ or ‘wedding’.

The gang were all convicted at the Old Bailey today

The 13 sham marriages included those between Farooq and Stankevic and between Saqlain and Tatjana Rolic, 30.

Stankevic flew home to Lithuania the day after her marriage to Farooq, having already signed his application for UK residence. She returned to the UK three months after he sent it in to the Home Office.

Saqlain, who came to the UK in 2009 to study for an MBA, married Rolic on February 9, 2013 - nine days before his visa was due to expire.

His flatmate, Bangladeshi Mohammed Faisal, married Rolic’s sister Aliona Ovcankova. Both women had flown from Lithuania to the UK on the same day.

The gang insisted the marriages were all genuine and denied knowledge of plot to get round immigration rules.

Khan, of Ilford, Pavlovskyte, of Barking, east London, Stankevic, both of Hounslow, west London, and Saqlain, of Slough, all denied but were convicted of conspiracy to assist unlawful immigration.

Farooq, also Hounslow, was cleared of that charge.

Khan and Pavloskyte also denied but were convicted of acquiring criminal property and converting criminal property relating to payments made for the organisation of marriages of convenience.

Farooq, Saqlain and Sheikh Ahmad, 36, of Brockley, southeast London, all denied, but were convicted of securing or seeking to secure the avoidance of enforcement action by acting as grooms in the weddings.

Fake brides Rolic, of Ilford, east London, and Bartosevic, of Brockley, southeast London, denied but were convicted of assisting unlawful immigration by entering into marriages of convenience.

Jurors heard that several of the fake grooms and brides mentioned in the case, including Zia Uddin, 33, of Ilford, and Eirka Vorbjova, 27, of Walworth, southeast London, are not before the court.

The convicted women sobbed as they were led away with their partners to the cells.

Judge Rebecca Poulet later adjourned sentencing until April 4.