A conman who tried to submit hundreds of fraudulent visa applications from his Wembley and Alperton offices has been jailed for nearly five years.

Bhavin Shah, 34, of Edgbaston Road, South Oxhey, charged his clients £3,000-£5,000 to process their applications for visa extensions, despite having not being a registered immigration advisor or solicitor.

In his offices in Trinity House, Wembley, and Viglan House, Alperton, Shah would then forge bank statements and qualification certificates to support the applications, often without the knowledge of the client.

After an undercover team from a national newspaper secretly filmed Shah boasting how he arranged for people to come to the UK, officers from the UK Border Agency raided his premises in November last year and found many of the forged documents on computers.

He had also transferred £300,000 to bank accounts in India.

On the first day of trial yesterday at Isleworth Crown Court, Shah pleaded guilty to charges of conspiring to defraud the Home Office and was sentenced to four years and nine months in prison.

He was also handed a two-year sentence for money laundering and an 18-month sentence for giving immigration advice, to be served concurrently, as well as a £190,000 confiscation order to be paid within six months.

Paul Tansiri, who led the investigation, said that Shah, an Indian national, would face deportation after serving his sentence and the body would seek to stop him benefiting financially from his crimes.

He added: “Shah was a conman who thought he could cheat the system.

“He also thought he could cheat his clients, many of whom went to him in good faith hoping he could help them.”