this is bbc news. the headlines... the ukrainian president, volodymyr zelensky, has arrived at the g7 summit injapan. his participation in the meeting comes just after the us approved a decision to allow ukrainian pilots to train on american—made f16 fighterjets. he says the summit will bring peace �*closer�*. g7 leaders have issued a statement on a shared approach to china, on the second day of the summit. the us national security advisor, jake sullivan, said it reflected the desire for stable relations with beijing but also provided tools to address concerns. nebraska has become the latest american state to limit abortion rights. a bill has been passed banning abortion after 12 weeks

of pregnancy, with some exceptions. the bill also bans "gender—altering surgery", and restricts hormone surgery" and restricts hormone therapy and puberty—blocking drugs for transgender people under the age of 19. next, a year—long bbc investigation has uncovered an immigration scam in which migrant women pay british men thousands of pounds to pose as fathers to children that aren't theirs. this is buying a british dad. i think that's her. she's just sat down with an undercover researcher. this woman is running an elaborate immigration scam. she finds british men to pose as fathers to children that aren't theirs, giving migrant women

a way to stay in the uk. we go undercover to expose those behind this criminal enterprise. this fake father's scam is incredibly elaborate, very sophisticated, incredibly difficult to police. we found some men are being paid thousands to be fake dads. and it's happening across communities under the radar of the authorities. shocking, isn't it? it's not a one off. it's been going on for years. there's a scandal waiting to be exposed. i'm divya talwar, an investigative journalist. a year ago, i stumbled across some

strange posts on social media. i had no idea then that these posts would lead me to uncover a brazen, sophisticated criminal operation. there are so many posts here. "if anyone wants me to be their baby's father to make fake documents, contact me." and hejust left his mobile number. the post seemed out of place. they were in open vietnamese facebook groups, supposedly for people trying to find jobs. and the same words kept cropping up in the dozens of posts we came across. almost all of these posts mentioned red book. the red book is basically a british passport. these groups appear to provide an illicit marketplace to get hold of a uk passport. it wasn't clear how,

but what we could tell was that it seemed to involve pregnant migrant women without a visa looking for british dads. most of the posts looked like they were from fake profiles and they all seem to want to move the conversation offline. were any of them even genuine? one name kept cropping up online. someone called thi kim. she left her number on some of the posts, so we decided to get in touch. we're posing as a young woman from vietnam who's living in the uk illegally. she's pregnant. the father is a man who's also here without a visa. hello.

kim told our undercover she could help her child get uk citizenship. technically, a baby born here doesn't get that automatically without at least one british parents. without at least one british parent. but kim says she knows a way to get around that for a price. she wants to meet up. we arrange for a researcher on our team to go undercover.

we're meeting at the cafe in london. we don't know what kim looks like or if she's coming alone. so the team is nearby in case anything goes wrong. so that's the place over there. i can see our undercover researcher just sitting outside the cafe at the moment. no sign of the woman yet. our undercover researcher has been waiting almost half an hour now. i don't know if this woman's going to turn up. we start to think she's messing us around or might have seen us and our cover maybe blown. and our cover may be blown. we're about to leave, but then she makes contact. i think that's her. i think that's the woman. yeah. she's just sat down with our

undercover researcher. she's come on her own. kim is confident she can get a british passport for both a woman and her baby. she's offering an illegal immigration route to stay in the uk. kim says she can find a british man to pose as the father. kim says she has a number of british men to choose from, and it's not long before the conversation turns to money.

as the fixer, kim only wants a small fee for the man posing as a father will need to be paid a lot more. kim gives a hard sell, saying she's highly experienced and even cheaper than the other agents out there offering this fake father service.

kim says the next step is for us to meet the potential fake dad she's got lined up. it would have to be somewhere private and we would need to bring a large deposit to secure the dad. we're obviously not going to hand over any cash to her, so we tell kim we'll think about it. to be clear, she's suggesting a strictly business arrangement. the man wouldn't have any actual role in the child's life. his name would just be put on the baby's birth certificate. the infant would get automatic british citizenship. and the mother could then apply for a family visa to stay in the uk. but could people actually get away with this? ana gonzalez has more than 20 years experience in immigration law. what legal options are available to pregnant migrant women in the uk

who don't have any kind of legal status to stay here? somebody in that position will have very limited options, possibly no options. if a baby is born in the uk and let's say the father has the legal status to stay in the uk, but the mother doesn't, what does that mean for the baby? if a woman has no leave to remain in the uk and gives birth to a child fathered by a british citizen or a man with indefinite leave to remain, that baby is automatically british by birth, and she could potentially obtain leave to remain as the parent in order to facilitate this child's being raised in the uk. so this is not a loophole. it should not be seen as such because the basis of this provision is to protect british children. what do you make of this, this fake father scam? this fake father scam is incredibly elaborate. it is very sophisticated,

incredibly difficult to place it is very sophisticated, incredibly difficult to police by the home office and the authorities. and in a way, it's just proof of how desperate these women are and the incredible lengths they're prepared to go through in order to secure their right to remain in the uk. last year, the government granted nearly 5000 family visas to other dependants, a category which includes those applying for leave to remain as parents of british children. we don't know how many of those visas have been granted to people who have cheated the system. but we tracked down some women who had managed to dupe the authorities. 0ne woman's story is being portrayed by an actress. i found out i was pregnant and i someone i knew, introduced me to a man who agreed to be my baby father. he was 30 years older than me.

i heard he had done it before with another woman. the woman came to the uk on a visitor visa that expired two years ago and shortly after she found out she was pregnant. fearing deportation, she decided to find a fake dad. when i use the service, it cost £9,000 at our first meeting. i checked paperwork to make sure he is a uk citizen and then pay him £3,000 deposit. he came with me to the hospital when i left with the baby. newborn baby one more time. when he took us to the office for to get baby birth certificate. after the woman had her baby's birth certificate, she was able to apply for her child's british passport. the passport would deliver

to our house after three weeks. i also hire a woman to do my paperwork. after about a week, i get visa to stay in uk for two and a half years. during the whole process, i didn't have much contact with the man. this woman seems to have gotten away with pushing the name of a fake dad on her child's birth certificate. immigration lawyer raja bungle says he's seen this happening for years across different communities. he hosts an immigration phone in surgery where people call in with all types of visa issues.

here she drops a bombshell and she goes well, what about on the birth certificate? i've got a british person's name as the dad. it's shocking, isn't it? she's tried to scam the system, so she's openly scamming the system. these are real life situations where people are calling in, brazenly telling us in front of millions of viewers, this is what they've done. how widespread do you think

this this scam could be? this scam has a potential to be widespread, potentially in the thousands. it's not a one off and it's been going on for years. what do you make of this? essentially using a child or having that child as a purpose to get a visa? ethically, it's not right. morally it's not right. mentally it's not right. and it'sjust legally, it's definitely not right. but the home office has just not picked up on this. and there's a scandal waiting to be exposed. we keep hearing about a prolific fake dad service operating across the uk. unlike other agents we've come across, they don't seem to advertise on social media. instead, it's all word of mouth. this network is known by some as the ring. we've been told they can get you a british dad for a price.

it's as easy as ordering a pizza. you just call up and place your order alone. you just call up and place your order. the man we spoke to called himself ty. it's not long before he gets back in touch. he says he's got a dad for us. he wants to talk in person about the next steps. we arranged to meet in london. 0ur undercoverjournalist is posing as a pregnant vietnamese woman without a visa to stay in the uk. we're not sure exactly

who's going to show up. i wasn't expecting three guys to turn up. this is ty, the ringleader, organizing the operation, twan. he's translating vietnamese to english for andrew, a british man from london who will pose as the dad.

ty and swan are confident they can help our undercover journalist dupe the authorities. so they'll be here. it looks like that they're taking selfies together. he looks like he's smiling.

he looks like he's he's completely on board with this. the undercovers told those selfies were helped create some bogus evidence of a believable relationship in case the immigration officials get suspicious. the fake dad now wants to talk about money. i just want to confirm i... so it looks like the translator has just told the fake dad that he'll be guessing £8,000.

but we just heard the agent saying the dad will get £9,000. he's either getting his numbers wrong or he's trying to get a bigger cut for himself now. hey. you okay? yeah, i'm okay. it was a bit scary at the beginning. they tried to be friendly to me. they're very sure about the process when we do what. and step by step. so it sounds like that they... they've done this before.

yeah, quite sure about that. he repeated a lot of time that a very high percentage these guys will be successful, you know. what do they say is the next step now that you've had the meeting? the next step, of course, i have to pay. yeah. they will prepare the story and send me. so i need to learn by heart. they want 3,000 first and then step by step. i pay the rest. the ringleader, tai, called us more than 20 times in the days following the meeting. the fake dad found us and showed us his british passport. he was born in london. we don't know if he's posed as a father before. we've been told thai has done this before. we understand he's helped a number

of women find a fake dad with the help of a translator. it's time for me to speak to him. hello? is that tai do? yeah, my one. my name is divya talwar. i'm a journalist for bbc news. we've got evidence of you running an illegal immigration scam. i know we've had conversations with you where you've actually offered this scam to our undercoverjournalist. he's just put the phone down. so he said he hasn't done anything wrong. and straight away he said, you can talk to my lawyers. but he clearly doesn't want to say anything else. all the people we've spoken to involved in the fake father's racket have been brazen and confident about being able to dupe the authorities. but there are big risks, especially when there is serious money in fraudsters involved. we've spoken to a woman who knows this hand.

who knows this first hand. her story is being portrayed by an actress. last year i found a man with a british passport on facebook. she ended up paying the man £10,000. we registered my baby's birth, but the residency paperwork fell only a day after getting my baby's birth certificate. i found out he didn't have citizenship. i went crazy because he already put down his details on the birth certificate.

i couldn't change it. it turned out the man she found on facebook to be the fake father was also in the uk illegally. the woman now has a complete stranger as a father on her baby's birth certificate, and there's not much she can do about it. she's still here illegally. we came across other women posting online about how they were scammed, too. facebook says it doesn't allow birth certificate fraud on its site and says it will continue to remove content that violates its policies. it is very, very important that this is to protect children, not to give visas to women. ...who have no papers in the uk. it's just to protect children who were born here, who are completely innocent and have got the right to grow up here, to live here like like any other child. if you look at convictions in this, you won't find thousands of convictions. you won't find thousands of cases where people have been caught. but essentially, it should be caught

and it is a criminal act. he thinks there's an obvious way for the home office to stop this type of immigration fraud. if a child claims to be british or have a british parent and the other parent doesn't have a visa, that should ring alarm bells anyway. that should be a perfect place for them to say, right, can we have a dna test, please? no one's probably been deported over this. so there's that's why people are doing it, because there's no fear of any repercussions. the home office says it has measures in place to prevent and detect immigration fraud. it told us caseworkers receive fraud, awareness, training fraud awareness training and checks are conducted during the processing of immigration and passport applications. the law states a birth certificate alone may not be sufficient evidence of proof of paternity. where we need to establish the naturalfather, additional evidence may be requested. we contacted kim, twan and andrew about the issues raised in this film.

none of them have responded to our request for comment. the fake father's racket appears to be an open secret in different migrant communities, and it looks like it's been happening for years under the radar of the authorities. while fraudsters are cashing in, some women have been left with nothing to regret because of this.

hello. quite a defined split in weather conditions across the uk this weekend that shows up quite nicely in a satellite imagery from space, which also shows this mass of cloud spreading across italy. it's that which will produce some more flash flooding for some through today and tomorrow. but as we push towards our shores, scotland, the strip of cloud which will bring some rather gray skies compared to clearer and sunny conditions for england and wales. the mist and fog from this morning cleared a bit of patchy fair weather the mist and fog from this morning cleared, a bit of patchy fair weather cloud in the south, but that's about it. scotland, northern ireland even though we've got the cloud in place, it will thin at times allowing some hazy sunshine, but then rethinking western isles and towards the west and northern ireland later bringing some outbreaks of rain. and of course that will limit uv levels here. but some strong sunshine overhead for england, wales this afternoon and the highest of the temperatures, especially in the west,

21, maybe 22 celsius, sheltered from the easterly breeze which makes north sea coast rather cool. and scotland, northern ireland cooler than yesterday given the cloud and also some patchy rain. now the rain here turns heavier and more extensive in scotland. northern ireland tonight fizzling a little bit later on, but it's set in place into the morning and that will keep temperatures up in double figures compared to england. wales with clear skies throughout the fresh start to tomorrow with temperatures around 3 to 5 degrees in some rural areas. the odd mist and fog patch, not as much as we saw this morning, but a bit more cloud towards the far southeast corner, which will drift its way across some southern counties through the day. isolated chances, some sea fog towards north sea coast, scotland, northern ireland, still another fairly cloudy day. only a few showers into the afternoon, but a lot more sunshine to the north and the west. temperatures still here in the low to mid teens, but get into the low twenties a bit more widely across some western areas of england and wales, away from that breeze in the east. and then as we go into the start of next week, azores high ridge of high pressure, trying

to build its way in and make things largely dry, but almost just on the edge of it. and that does mean we'll still see fairly weak weather fronts topple in across some northern areas, bring in a few showers for scotland or maybe even northern england on monday. but many places will be dry. a little bit more cloud for england and wales, but still plenty of sunshine here and the warmest down towards wales in the southwest where the breeze will be at its lightest. the area of high pressure is there or thereabouts really through much of this week still could see some weather fronts hit northern scotland, especially on wednesday. but for many of us, the week ahead after what has been a rather dull and damp spring so far, goes out on a fairly dry note with some sunny spells and temperatures in high teens and low twenties.

live from london. this is bbc news... ukrainian president volodymyr zelensky meets uk prime minister rishi sunak on the sidelines of the g7 summit in hiroshima. meanwhile, g7 leaders have issued a statement on a shared approach to china, on the second day of the summit. protests held across iran in response to the execution of three men on friday, convicted in connection with the recent wave of mass anti— government demonstrations. hello, i'm samantha simmonds. ukrainian president volodymyr zelensky is in hiroshima tojoin g7 talks, after winning long—sought us support for access to advanced fighterjets

and training for ukraine. shortly after landing in hiroshima, president zelensky tweeted