By Mark McGivern
A WEDDING fixer who earned thousands by setting up fake marriages in a scam with African gangsters has been arrested in a dramatic raid.
Janet Cathie was led away in handcuffs by the UK Border Agency and Strathclyde Police.
And when she saw a Record reporter as she was frogmarched out of the building, she screamed at him: "Not you again - I don't f****** believe it."
Cathie was later released and a report will be sent to prosecutors who will determine whether she should face charges.
The bust came after a series of articles by the Record exposed the huge fake bride racket in Scotland.
Cathie, 47, set up at least eight fake weddings, including her own, her live-in boyfriend's and her daughter's. She is suspected of having a hand in many more.
She operated at tough Tarfside Oval estate in Pollok, Glasgow, rounding up skint single mums and drug addicts she could bully into signing up for fake ceremonies.
Cathie coined in at least £1000 a time for arranging the weddings and took a double fee by appearing as a witness at several ceremonies in registry offices in Glasgow and Paisley.
Some of the vulnerable women who were roped into the scheme were promised £2000 - but ended up with nothing.
One woman who got cold feet over marrying a Ghanaian man was told she would be shot by African crooks if she pulled out.
Cathie even short-changed her own daughter Amanda McCourt, giving her only half of the promised £2000 wedding fee.
The weddings were set up by an African Mr Big, who typically took cash raised by the families of Ghanaian students to set them up with partners.
The scam generally involved both partners meeting up to exchange cursory details on each other's lives before the ceremonies, which were described as "laughably" fake by insiders.
Cathie was a close associate of Lamin Manneh, an African who was jailed for two years at Paisley Sheriff Court earlier this year for operating a parallel scam.
Brazen Cathie recruited most of her bogus brides after meeting them through their shared dependency on the heroin substitute methadone.
The penniless former heroin addicts were promised easy cash or threatened and bullied into marrying Ghanaian strangers.Continued...
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