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 fathers 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 posts 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 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 researcherjust 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 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

the 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 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. 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. after the woman had her baby's birth certificate, she was able to apply for her child's british passport.

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? yeah. 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.

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 arrange 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, organising the operation, twan. twan — he's translating vietnamese to english for andrew — a british man from london who will pose as the dad. ty and twan are confident they can help our undercover journalist dupe the authorities.

what are they doing? it looks like that they're taking selfies together. he looks like he's smiling. he looks like he's...completely

on board with this. the undercovers told those selfies would help create some bogus evidence of a believable relationship in case the immigration officials get suspicious. the fake dad now wants to talk about money. so it looks like the translator has just told the fake dad that he'll be getting £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 0k? yeah, i'm 0k. 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, ty, called us more than 20 times in the days following the meeting. the fake dad found us, andrew, 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 ty has done this before. we understand he's helped a number of women find a fake dad with the help of a translator. with the help of a translator, it's time for me to speak to him. hello? is that ty do? my name is divya talwar. i'm a journalist for bbc news. we've got evidence of you running an illegal

immigration scam. we've had conversations with you where you've actually offered this scam to our undercoverjournalist. we have evidence of you running this illegal immigration scam. 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 fathers racket have been brazen and confident about being able to dupe the authorities. but there are big risks — especially when there is serious money and fraudsters involved. we've spoken to a woman who knows this first hand. her story is being portrayed by an actress.

she ended up paying the man £10,000. 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 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... 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 fathers 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 but regret.

hello. temperatures on tuesday reached 21 degrees celsius in yorkshire, and i think wednesday's going to be every bit as warm — maybe even a tad warmer. and the next few days, very little change on the weather front. a large area of high pressure is dominating the weather across our part of the world. but the air is riding around the area of high pressure, and the air actually originates from the central north atlantic, so we're not seeing the push of warm air that we sometimes get from the southern climes. and that means that, so far this may — depending how you look at it — has been a little disappointing in terms of the temperatures. so we've only managed to reach 23 degrees so far. in most years, those values reached the mid or the high 20s at least at some point in may. so, yes, it has been a little on the cool side, which is not necessarily a bad thing — not all of us like hot weather! so the forecast, then, early on wednesday shows a bit of cloud across western scotland and

northern ireland — maybe a few spits and spots of rain — but elsewhere we're waking up to mostly sunny skies. a bit of a nip in the air, though, particularly in the north. now this weather front will continue to bring spits and spots of rain and thicker cloud for a time through the morning, into the afternoon towards these northwestern areas. but to the south of that, it is going to be a gloriously sunny day. so this is where the temperatures will be at their highest — typically in the high teens to perhaps the low 20s in one or two areas. 22, for example, in cardiff. also worth mentioning that the sun is, of course, very strong this time of the year. and look at that — high uv levels pretty much across the board. the high pressure is still with us on thursday, but it means also that the wind directions will be changing around the uk as this high pressure changes its sort of shape. and that does mean that cloud will be pushed across the country into different areas. so it does look as though parts of england will be a little on the cloudy side at times on thursday. so just because we've got high pressure doesn't necessarily mean it will stay sunny all through the week.

and here's friday — you can see the temperatures again, fairly similar — high teens, possibly up to about 22 degrees celsius. the high pressure system over us is going to last through the weekend and quite possibly into next week, as week. and look at the values in cardiff — it's pretty much the same every single day. certainly not looking bad at all. bye— bye.

live from washington, this is bbc news — welcome to viewers on pbs in america. pressure mounts in washington to reach a deal on raising the debt ceiling, with just over a week until a possible default. russia says it has defeated "saboteurs" who attacked the belgorod region on the border with ukraine. and spanish football club valencia is fined $48,000 after fans chanted racial abuse at real madrid's viniciusjunior. hello, i'm sumi somaskanda. we start tonight in washington, where another day of talks to tackle the us debt crisis has failed to produce results.

on tuesday, representatives of us presidentjoe biden