Man Sentenced to 14-Months in Jail for Trying to Smuggle Wife into Britain in a Suitcase!

Bodgen Croitor a Latvian who tried to smuggle his wife into Britain inside a suitcase was stopped by immigration officials as he arrived at the car port in Dover, Kent, having caught a ferry from Calais in France. He insisted she was refused a visa twice. 30 year-old Croiter had permission to live in UK but his Moldovan-born wife had twice been refused the right to come to the country.

He later told officials how he had travelled to Calais in October last year to spend the weekend with his wife and claimed she suggested hiding in the suitcase.

He was given a 14 month jail sentence suspended for two years, told to do 100 hours of unpaid work for the community and pay £400 costs. But Judge Adele Williams suspended the jail sentence after he admitted the charge. In her words, ‘You could have absolutely no complaint if I had sent you to prison straight away because those who commit this offence normally always go to jail immediately. But I take the view that the way you committed this offence does have extraordinary mitigating circumstances attached to it.’