I do, I do, I do, I do, I do . . .

The honeymoon is over for a woman who viewed marriage as a paying job, getting wed dozens of times in 18 years. Dezerrie Cortes, 40, is likely to be jailed for six months under a plea deal she struck this week in connection with 27 marriages she entered for money.

In State Supreme Court in Manhattan, Cortes admitted she falsely swore in a January 2000 affidavit for a marriage certificate that she had never tied the knot when she had in fact married more than 20 times before. At her January 28, 2000, wedding, Cortes married an Indian immigrant, Chietan Gordhandas Bhimjiani, 37.

But her list of grooms read like the United Nations. Between 1984 and last year, Cortes married men from the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Colombia, Mexico, Peru and Pakistan in the city clerks' offices in Manhattan, the Bronx, Brooklyn and Queens. Cortes "would marry in this manner whenever she needed money and, at times, was marrying once or even twice a month", the assistant district attorney, Louis O'Neill, said. "It was almost as if she looked on the clerk's office as her own personal bank, making marriages, instead of withdrawals, as needed."

The sham marriages enabled the men to obtain green cards and receive other benefits. Justice Micki Scherer told Cortes to expect six months when she is sentenced on January 7.

Blow-up bride proved deadly

A Brazilian man who considered an inflatable puppet his "bride" killed his parents because they demanded he divorce her, media reports said today.

The 44-year-old unemployed man apparently confessed to the crime, which occurred on Saturday, after a long interrogation by police in a suburb of Sao Paulo city, a police spokesman said. "The man thought the doll was a human being, called her his bride and talked to her," an acquaintance of the family was quoted as saying. But his parents, who were religious, demanded he separate from the doll.

When the mother took scissors and cut holes in the man's "bride", the man strangled and stabbed his father, age 70, and mother, age 71. "My parents didn't love me and didn't understand me," the man was quoted as saying.