Fraud: Poor unmarried women to get married for money in Hungary

An entrepreneur in a small village near the Hungarian-Serbian border deceived unmarried young women living in poor conditions in the nearby villages. He offered them roughly 480 Euros for marrying Serbian men so that they receive residence permit in Germany. The deceived women did not worry about it, however, by now, all of them have been charged. The frauds happened in 2013 and 2014, but the hearings started this February, Abcug.hu reports.

One of the women recalled the wedding:

The registrar told us that, from that moment on, we had been a married couple, then we kissed each other on the cheek, went to a restaurant in a Serbian village, and then we went back home to Hungary. That was all.

According to Abcug.hu, all women married to unknown men, with whom they were not able to communicate, because neither of them spoke the others’ mother tongue. Only one thing motivated these women, and that is the money which was offered to them by a Serbian man called Bebe, and his fellows.

The Serbian man had a garage in the village. At the beginning, he organized the weddings with his partner, later also the locals assisted. They sought for unmarried women living in poor conditions in the village and in the surroundings and promised them about 440-480 Euros in two tranches: First, the women had to travel to Serbia, marry an unknown Serbian man, and then they had to travel to Germany or Austria with them to help them receive the residence permission. According to one of the defendants, Bebe received roughly 10,000 Euros, from which he paid the brides off, and also paid his assistants, the fuel, and sometimes the dinner.

All the defendants claimed at the court that they believed that what they had been doing was all legal. One of the women had to discontinue university, because she has to nurse one of her family members; another woman raises her six children alone. In a small settlement like this, it is easy to find people in bad financial circumstances, so fraudsters could target them, what is more, later, women voluntarily came up to them with the intention to marry for money, Abcug.hu notes.