An immigration officer who worked for the UK Border Agency managed to get his wife out of his hair for three years by putting her name on the no-fly list while she was visiting the in-laws overseas. Officials confirmed on January 30 that the man had confessed to adding his wife's name to the list after she left for Pakistan, with the result that she was not allowed to get on a plane to come home. Airline and immigration authorities refused to explain to her why she was not being allowed to travel, although I imagine she put two and two together after her immigration-officer husband stopped answering his phone.

As you might expect, the husband was smart enough to tamper with immigration databases but not smart enough to avoid getting caught. Or, at least, it appears that at some point during the three years he forgot he had exiled his wife, and that he had done so by putting her on a list of people considered potentially dangerous. He later applied for a promotion, which required a new background check, which showed that, lo and behold, he was married to somebody on a terrorist watch list. That raised some eyebrows, and the officer then admitted he had tampered with the list.