Fall of the 'Fake Sheikh'

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Farewell to the 'Fake Sheikh' exposed in his own sting (By Roy Greenslade)

Mazher Mahmood, the award-winning investigative reporter who attracted a mixture of accolades and abuse for a remarkable range of newspaper exposés, is now exposed himself as a law-breaker.

His conviction for perverting the course of justice looks likely to spell the end of a personalised brand of investigative journalism that earned him the exotic nickname of the “Fake Sheikh”.

In the course of his 30-year career, most of it spent at the now-defunct News of the World, he was often criticised for his regular use of subterfuge. Yet he always managed to escape censure.


It must be especially galling that his downfall came about after one of his more humdrum sting operations, involving the singer and TV personality Tulisa Contostavlos.

She had nothing like the public profile of previous victims such as the Duchess of York, the Countess of Wessex or the former England manager Sven-Göran Eriksson.

His undercover investigations, in which he sometimes disguised himself by donning Arabian robes, resulted in hundreds of front-page stories.

In 1999 he was named reporter of the year for revealing that two Newcastle United directors, Freddy Shepherd and Douglas Hall, had made disparaging remarks about some of the team’s players and female fans. He picked up the same award in 2011, plus scoop of the year, for his investigation into spot-fixing by Pakistani cricketers.

The cricket exposé, for the Sun on Sunday, was his last major story and was regarded as his greatest piece of public interest journalism.


Many of his scoops, however, have been criticised as ethically questionable, engendering persistent claims of entrapment. One of the most contentious concerned his front-page allegation in 2002 that five men had conspired to kidnap Victoria Beckham.


Their trial collapsed after it emerged that Mahmood’s main informant, Florim Gashi, had been paid £10,000 by the News of the World and could not be regarded as a reliable witness. One of the men later won a libel action against the newspaper.

In 2004, Mahmood joined forces with the Metropolitan police anti-terrorist branch in order to expose three supposed terrorists seeking to build a “dirty bomb”. Mahmood agreed to supply them with a non-existent substance called “red mercury”. Two years later their trial also collapsed.

Along the way, many people were jailed because of Mahmood’s stories, though nothing like the 261 he claimed during the Leveson inquiry. He was later forced to testify that lawyers acting for his employer, News UK, could find proof of only 94 prosecutions, and not all had gone to prison.

Mahmood’s career began as a schoolboy in Birmingham, helping his parents, both journalists, produce Urdu-language papers for the local Asian community.

When he was 18 he exposed family friends for selling pirate videos. It proved to be a stepping stone to the Sunday People, where he impressed the head of investigations, Laurie Manifold, with his undercover reporting skills.
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He later spent a year on the Sunday Times but departed under a cloud in 1988 following an attempt to cover up an error. After a spell as a TV researcher and producer, he joined the News of the World in 1991, where he enjoyed considerable success.

Mahmood was noted for being a self-starter, coming up with his own story ideas and gradually building his own team of helpers separate from the regular staff.

He was obsessed with personal secrecy, refusing to allow his photograph to be published on the grounds that his life was in danger because of threats from criminals he had exposed. Instead, a silhouette was used alongside his byline. In so doing, he created a mystique and editors came to regard him with awe.

There can be no doubt that he was responsible for highlighting a great deal of low-level corruption, particularly involving Asian immigrants using fake passports or taking part in bogus marriages.

But by the late 1990s, questions were being raised about his methods, with some of his victims contending that they had been persuaded to buy drugs.

In 1997, Mahmood reported that a young actor, John Alford, then starring in the TV show London’s Burning, had supplied him with cocaine and cannabis. At his subsequent trial, Alford complained that he had been entrapped, having been fooled by elaborate subterfuge. Although the judge agreed, he sentenced Alford to nine months in jail.


Two years later, another Mahmood “victim”, the Earl of Hardwicke, made a similar complaint when he was on trial for obtaining drugs at Mahmood’s behest. The jury convicted Hardwicke but took the extraordinary step of sending a note to the judge saying: “Had we been allowed to take the extreme provocation into account, we would undoubtedly have reached a different verdict.”
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The judge appeared to agree by giving Hardwicke and his friend suspended prison sentences. The News of the World responded by criticising the judge for not sending them to jail.

Mahmood’s modus operandi came under closer attention in 2005 when Gashi turned against Mahmood and decided to speak out, claiming to have been “responsible for innocent for people going to jail”. He told the Guardian: “I tricked them, and I’m ashamed. It’s time to tell the truth.”

He then gave evidence for the three men prosecuted for the dirty bomb plot, one of the Beckham kidnap accused and another victim, Besnik Qema. In all three cases, Gashi admitted to having instigated the crimes.

Mahmood suffered an embarrassing reverse in 2006 when he targeted George Galloway, who saw through his disguise. The then MP denounced Mahmood as an “agent provocateur” for trying to coax him into making antisemitic comments.

At the time, Mahmood was under investigation by Scotland Yard following Gashi’s about-turn. But those inquiries fizzled out and he went on leading what seemed like a charmed life.

That came to an end at the Old Bailey. Now he is likely to see more courtrooms in future because lawyers representing 25 of his past victims are preparing to launch civil actions against him. The days of the “Fake Sheikh” are well and truly over.