Indian in New Zealand Accused of Running Sham Marriage Scam

An Indian national has been accused by a New Zealand news portal of being involved in a “marriage for sale” scam in which he reportedly offered New Zealand women hefty amounts to marry Indian men to help them get New Zealand visa.

Based on an investigation, stuff.co.nz had published a story in which it said that Whangarei restaurateur Gurpreet Singh, was charging Indian migrants up to NZ$35,000 with the pretext of providing jobs and visas, which turned out to be both fake and illegitimate.

The portal has now reported that Singh, who owns a restaurant called Killer Prawn had offered a deal to many female employees to marry Indian men. As part of this deal, he had allegedly offered them up to NZ$40,000.

According to the report, former manager at the Killer Prawn, Chauntell Reid told the portal that Singh had asked her to arrange for a fake marriage and had offered about NZ$40,000 for this. She said that she rejected the offer straight away.

The portal also quoted another source, who had friendly relations with Singh, as saying, “He [Gurpreet] was approaching [Killer Prawn] staff to find young Kiwi girls who were regulars at the weekends for the nightlife, to see if they would be willing to marry young Indian boys.”

He also added that Singh had offered people a finder fee of between 10-50 percent. He sighed with relief that he didn’t accept the offer.

​Karamjeet Singh, a former manager at Killer Prawn, said that he remembers a discussion where Gurpreet was explaining the scheme to three men as an easy route to residency.

He also said that Gurpreet told him that the he himself will take the responsibility to “buy the ring and bring in the girls and stuff,” the report said.

Immigration New Zealand assistant general manager Peter Elms called such “sham marriage scams” serious and appealed people to contact the department if they have any information about Gurpreet.

“If there is information linking [Gurpreet] to immigration fraud, we would welcome that information and I’d encourage those people to contact us,” Stuff quoted Elms as saying.