Trainee wedding planner ‘tricked into marrying stranger’

A Hong Kong woman says she was tricked into a marrying a complete stranger after being told it was part of her training to become a wedding planner.

The unnamed 21-year-old initially responded to a Facebook advert offering make-up artists apprenticeships but she was then invited to train as a wedding planner instead.

After a week-long introductory course in Hong Kong, she was informed by her supposed new employers that she would complete her training by playing the part of the bride in a mock wedding in Fujian, mainland China.

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“The instructors appeased the woman, who was 20 at the time, by saying she could not be legally married at the age of 20,” the Hong Kong Standard reports.

She travelled to Fujian, where she took part in a ceremony at a government office, including signing a certificate alongside an unknown man acting as groom.

It was only when she returned to Hong Kong that she learned from a classmate that she had fallen victim to a marriage scam and could in fact be legally wed.

Chinese nationals married to citizens of Hong Kong are entitled to apply for residency in the prosperous city-state, making sham marriages an attractive prospect for unscrupulous con artists.

Hong Kong police investigate around 1,000 reports of marriage scams every year, the BBC reports.

With the help of her former high school teacher, the woman revisited the government building in Fujian, where she found the signed marriage certificate and a document from a Hong Kong law firm “falsely signed in her name”, the South China Morning Post reports.

She is now taking legal action to clarify her status with the help of the Hong Kong Federation of Trade Unions (FTU).

Tong Kamgyiu, director of the FTU’s Rights and Benefits Committee, told the BBC that the young woman had suffered “psychological damage” as a result of falling prey to the scam.

“I feel disappointed and cannot believe it's even happening in modern Hong Kong,” he said.