8 Babies, 6 Years, DNA-Defying UK Citizenship Scam

A man at the centre of an audacious and sophisticated immigration conspiracy has been jailed for six years, prompting a strong warning from the Government against those who seek to exploit the UK's border controls. Gerald Cera, 28, an Albanian national who was subsequently deprived of his British citizenship, received the sentence at St Albans Crown Court on October 28, 2025, following his conviction in August for conspiracy to assist unlawful immigration to the United Kingdom.

Cera's meticulously planned scheme involved falsely naming himself as the father on UK passport applications for eight Albanian infants between September 2022 and August 2024. The court heard that the deception was intended to fraudulently secure UK citizenship for the babies. Cera bolstered his bogus claims by providing personal documentation, including his own UK passport and naturalisation certificate, with investigators later uncovering that payments and contact email addresses linked to the applications were associated with him. The deceit grew increasingly intricate, with Cera producing staged photographs of himself with the mothers and children to support his claims of paternity.

The successful prosecution by the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) required demonstrating to the jury that Cera was fully aware he was falsely named as the father, even without DNA evidence for seven of the eight babies. Prosecutors effectively dismantled Cera's account by highlighting numerous inconsistencies in his testimony.

The investigation revealed that Cera was part of a wider conspiracy to obtain UK passports for children who had no legitimate right to them. Crucially, a connection was established between Cera and Petrit Musa, who earlier this month pleaded guilty to fraudulently claiming paternity for a startling thirteen children born to Albanian mothers on UK passport applications.

Minister of State for Border Security and Asylum, Alex Norris MP, welcomed the sentence, asserting it sends a clear deterrent message. Minister Norris said the government "will not stand by while criminal gangs abuse our immigration system by exploiting children to make quick cash." He praised the work of Immigration Enforcement teams and the CPS, adding, "These sentences show that those who attempt to exploit our borders will be brought to justice." The Minister highlighted the Government's "Plan for Change" and the Borders Bill, which grants "counter-terror style powers" to law enforcement to enforce earlier arrests of immigration offenders.

Following his conviction and sentencing, Cera was also convicted of a further charge: failing to comply with a notice after refusing to provide police with his phone and laptop passcodes upon his arrest at Luton Airport on February 16, 2025. In a significant move, the Home Office has since stripped Cera of his UK citizenship, and the passports fraudulently obtained for all eight children have been revoked.

Roma Karampatsi, Senior Crown Prosecutor for CPS Thames and Chiltern, condemned Cera's actions, stating that his account was "riddled with inconsistencies" throughout the process. "By fraudulently seeking UK citizenship for those with no right to it, Cera undermined our immigration system and those who seek to come by legal and legitimate means," she concluded.

Crucial UK Crime Data and Context 

Contrary to the suggestion that Albanians are not a leading nationality in crime statistics, official UK data indicates a more complex picture. Analysis of official data from around the end of 2024 or start of 2025 shows that nationals from Albania are significantly over-represented in the prison population relative to their size in the UK migrant community without British citizenship.

•  Albanian nationals account for one of the highest proportions of foreign-born individuals in UK prisons, often representing between ten and fourteen per cent of the total foreign prison population at the end of 2024.
• The imprisonment rate for Albanians has been calculated at an estimated 232.33 per 10,000 non-citizen residents, or approximately one in every fifty non-citizen Albanians in the UK being in jail.
• This rate is more than seven times the imprisonment rate for British citizens, and places Albanians at the top of a league table ranking foreign nationalities by their imprisonment rate per population size.
• After Albanians, other nationalities with high imprisonment rates include Kosovans, Vietnamese, Algerians, and Jamaicans, in that order, though they all lag behind the Albanian rate.
• While official data shows that British nationals account for the overwhelming majority of individuals involved in organised crime groups—about 61.6 per cent—the National Crime Agency has specifically noted that Albanian criminal groups exert a significant and growing influence, particularly controlling large portions of the UK's lucrative cocaine and cannabis markets.