Steven Singer, 50, the supervising clerk for matrimonial cases in Manhattan, pleaded guilty Tuesday to accepting bribes from lawyers to speed up paperwork in uncontested divorces from 1992  to 1999.

Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau said. "There may be as many as 20 other lawyers and court employees involved". He said an investigation was being opened into the legitimacy of the divorces and any later marriages by the men and women involved.

As a result thousands of the 12,000 or so divorces granted each year may not be legitimate. "We may have created some unsuspecting bigamists," Morgenthau said.

--can you imagine the look of terror on the faces of  all those New Yorkers reading this story?