When Mr. Muhammad Shafi found the police knocking at his door, he must have realized immediately that the agents were not paying visit to give him a wedding present but it was something quite more serious.

Part of an enquiry conducted in Ireland, Mr. Shafi case was only one out of the hundreds fake wedding organized in the country for guaranteeing Asian citizens the right of residency in the European Union – a right that he would have gained in the coming weekend signing his union with a Lithuanian teenager.

According to Irish authorities the organization of bogus marriages with Eastern European women might be starting to be a real business in the country since only last year, out of the 384 applications for residency submitted by Pakistani men, 110 were based on marriages to Latvian women, followed by 50 marriages to Polish women and 47 marriages to women from Estonia.

As for what emerged during the investigation, the scam should have been organized by some Asian men who recruited women in Eastern EU countries promising well-paying jobs to young girls and then provided fellow Asian citizens with a fast way to become Irish citizens.

The game involved a “fee” of up to 10.000 euros paid to the girl for her kind services plus some fake documents so that the whole process is guaranteed to be smooth and fast.

The court investigating on the issue commented the misadventure of the unlucky Mr. Shafi saying that he was was one of more than 20 cricket players from Pakistan who arrived to Ireland on a seven-day visa for a supposed cricket match in July, 2008.

A team that somehow “disappeared” right after entering the country.