Albanian man jailed for fraud posing as father to gain citizenship

(UNITED KINGDOM) A 28-year-old Albanian-born British citizen who posed as the father of eight infants to secure UK passports has been jailed for six years and stripped of his nationality, in a case prosecutors said exploited the passport system and undermined public trust. Gerald Cera was sentenced at St Albans Crown Court on October 29, 2025 after a jury found him guilty of conspiracy to assist unlawful immigration to the United Kingdom and of failing to comply with a notice by refusing to provide passcodes to his phone and laptop.

Cera’s scheme ran from September 2022 to August 2024, when he was named as the biological father on passport applications for eight Albanian children who had no legal claim to British citizenship. Prosecutors said he lodged the applications by submitting his own UK passport and naturalisation certificate and arranged staged photographs with the babies and their mothers to bolster the false claims. After his conviction, the Home Office revoked his UK citizenship, and all eight children supported by his sham applications have had their UK passports cancelled.

The Crown Prosecution Service said Cera’s plot amounted to immigration fraud based on misrepresented paternity. Investigators traced the applications to financial transactions using bank cards registered to “G Cera,” while contact email addresses on the paperwork were also in his name. According to the case presented in court, the methods became more elaborate over time, reflecting a deliberate plan to insert himself into the records as a British parent and thereby create a path to UK passports for children who did not qualify under British nationality rules.

Cera was arrested at Luton Airport on February 16, 2025, months before a jury in August 2025 found him guilty after a contested trial. Prosecutors told the court that, even without DNA samples for seven of the eight babies, they could prove Cera knew the applications falsely listed him as the father. They said he was not the biological father of any of the children and relied on inconsistencies in his own testimony to undermine his account. The jury agreed, convicting him of the principal conspiracy charge, and the court separately found him guilty of refusing to provide device passcodes, which constituted failing to comply with a notice.

The sentencing judge heard that the case was built on documentary trails and the mechanics of how nationality by parentage works in the UK, where a child’s right to citizenship through a British parent can be pivotal in obtaining a first passport. Prosecutors said Cera weaponised that route by misrepresented paternity, and that his pattern of repeated applications showed a conspiracy designed to create a false legal basis for citizenship. The Home Office’s decision to strip him of citizenship following his conviction underscores the seriousness with which officials view attempts to secure passports through fraudulent parentage claims.

Roma Karampatsi, Senior Crown Prosecutor for CPS Thames and Chiltern, said:

“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.”

Her statement reflects growing concern within enforcement agencies about attempts to manipulate parentage rules in order to trigger the powerful benefits that attach to a British passport. While the CPS did not present DNA evidence in the majority of the infant cases, it relied on the paper trail, photographs arranged to simulate family ties, and digital links back to Cera to demonstrate he was an orchestrator rather than a parent.

The court was told that Cera’s own documents, including his UK passport and naturalisation certificate, were repeatedly used to anchor the applications, casting him as a British father and unlocking the citizenship route for the infants. This repeated pattern across eight applications, prosecutors argued, was proof of intent and knowledge, not a clerical mix-up. Bank transactions tied to cards in the name “G Cera” and application communications through email accounts registered to him provided financial and digital fingerprints that aligned with the submission of the paperwork.

The fallout from the case is immediate and stark. All eight children linked to the applications have had their UK passports revoked, the court heard, leaving their families to navigate the consequences of invalidated travel documents and the loss of status that a British passport had temporarily conferred. The Home Office also moved to denaturalize Cera, stripping him of the British citizenship he had previously acquired, a rare step that signals how seriously the government treats passport fraud anchored in false paternity claims.

The arrest at Luton Airport brought an end to a two-year period in which applications were filed in a steady stream, prosecutors said. The August 2025 trial fixed the timeline and established the role of a single named British citizen in a pattern of falsified parentage. The jury’s verdict—delivered without DNA proof in seven of the eight infant cases—hinged on contradictions in Cera’s statements, the cumulative weight of the matching documents, and photographs taken with babies and mothers that investigators said were staged to manufacture a family link.

The case also intersected with a separate criminal matter involving another man. Investigators identified a relationship between Cera and Petrit Musa, who pleaded guilty earlier in October 2025 to fraudulently claiming to father 13 children born to Albanian mothers on UK passport applications. While the two cases were handled on their own facts, the connection noted by investigators highlights a broader enforcement concern about patterns where UK passports are sought through assertions of parentage that do not stand up to scrutiny.

The CPS emphasized that this was not a victimless crime. The misuse of nationality rules affects public confidence in the system and diverts resources away from legitimate applicants. It also risks ensnaring infants in complex legal limbo when fraudulent applications are uncovered. In this case, the swift revocation of the eight passports after Cera’s conviction underscores the government’s ability to unwind status secured through deception. For families, that means cancelled travel plans, loss of access tied to UK passports, and potential complications with residence and identity documents beyond Britain’s borders.

At the heart of the legal framework is the principle that a child’s claim to British citizenship through a parent must be genuine and provable, often through documentation that establishes the parent’s nationality and the parental relationship. When applicants or facilitators fabricate that link—by inserting a British name on forms, staging photographs, or supplying misleading biographical details—the application becomes an instrument of immigration fraud. The courts in this case found that Cera’s actions were not isolated or accidental; they formed a pattern that transformed personal documents into tools for unlawful immigration facilitation.

Cera’s refusal to provide passcodes to his phone and laptop added a second criminal count that the jury also upheld. That offence, failing to comply with a notice, often arises when investigators seek to access digital records to verify communications, financial transfers, and identity evidence that support or disprove claims made on official forms. In this case, prosecutors still prevailed on the core conspiracy charge without access to the contents of those devices, relying instead on the documented application trail and corroborating financial and photographic evidence.

The court’s judgment will feed into ongoing scrutiny of counter-fraud checks around parentage in passport applications. While the CPS did not detail changes to procedures in open court, the case lays bare the vulnerabilities exploited by misrepresented paternity and the response tools available to authorities, from digital forensics and document verification to post-issue revocation of UK passports. Official guidance on routes to British citizenship through a parent is publicly available via UK government guidance on British citizenship by parentage, which sets out when a child may qualify and the evidence required—rules that the prosecution said Cera tried to subvert.

The link drawn by investigators between Cera and Musa, and the numbers involved—eight infants in Cera’s case, 13 in Musa’s—have prompted questions about whether small groups are coordinating to submit multiple applications anchored in British parentage claims. The CPS has not announced further charges stemming from the connection disclosed in court, but the relationship identified between the two men is likely to remain a focus for investigators looking for common suppliers of documents, shared email accounts, or overlapping patterns in submissions.

For now, the outcome at St Albans Crown Court delivers a clear message that misrepresented paternity in passport paperwork will be treated as a serious criminal enterprise.

“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,” said Karampatsi.

With the sentence in place, the Home Office’s revocation actions complete the immediate response: the eight passports are void, and the man who fronted the applications has lost the British nationality status he once used to try to pull others into the system.

Cera’s six-year term marks the latest in a string of enforcement outcomes that have put UK passports and parentage under sharper legal scrutiny. It may now fall to policy officials and the passport authorities to decide whether this type of case—built on falsified claims of biological fatherhood—triggers additional checks or leads to procedural changes. For families of the eight infants, the ramifications are already concrete: the passports are revoked, the pathway to British citizenship has been closed off, and the consequences of immigration fraud built on false paternity will follow them beyond the courtroom.