Sheikh down: how Mazher Mahmood, the king of the sting, was caught out

The Sun on Sunday's 'fake sheikh' has won awards for his elaborate set ups. Yet the ruthlessness with which he entraps his prey means singer Tulisa Contostavlos can count herself lucky to have escaped his clutches

Mazher Mahmood is a clever, canny and creative reporter who generates his own stories. It's important to place that on record because, before we delve into his use of the darker journalistic arts, there should not be any illusion about his reporting skills.

He is a genuine one-off, a self-starter who, when properly directed and chasing a story of genuine public interest, has much to be proud of. Down the years he has been responsible for many people going to jail for breaking the law – perhaps not quite as many as he has boasted, but a lot all the same. His greatest triumph, the exposure of Pakistani cricketers in 2011 for so-called spot-fixing during matches, rightfully won him awards. Three players were jailed and banned from cricket. A bookmaker was also jailed.

All of these journalistic successes involved subterfuge. Mahmood revels in going undercover and has proved to be a master of disguise. Aside from the Arabic robes, he wears expensive suits and jewellery and changes his accent. The problem is that he has viewed that controversial method as a weapon of first, rather than last, resort.

In addition, not content with merely masquerading himself as a "fake sheikh", he has become adept at creating elaborate scenarios, with fake websites and fantastical back stories, and often involving several accomplices, in order to entice his victims into a trap.


Tulisa Contostavlos is just the latest in a long line of people who have been dazzled by Mahmood's ability to provide them with first-class flights, expensive hotel suites and the appearance of unlimited wealth. In his time at the News of the World from 1991, and latterly at the Sun on Sunday, Mahmood has been able to call on enormous resources to fund his sting operations. And, in almost every instance, he has offered his victims some kind of promise, usually money, in order to lure them into breaking the law, most often involving drugs.

I first noted this methodology in 1999, when the Earl of Hardwicke was charged with supplying cocaine to Mahmood. At his trial, the jury took the unprecedented step of pleading for mercy on his behalf, arguing that he had committed the offence due to "extreme provocation". The judge appeared to agree with them by giving the earl a suspended prison sentence.

I was not surprised. Mahmood was a reporter at the Sunday Times when I headed that paper's news division in the late 1980s. I therefore witnessed his abilities at first hand, but I was also able to note two characteristics that have marked him out ever since – a ruthlessness in his approach to the job and a refusal to admit he might be wrong. They led ultimately to his departure from the paper when he tried to correct a silly error by attempting to change the record on the computer's hard disk. He resigned on the day he was to be dismissed for his conduct.

Soon after the Hardwicke embarrassment came one of the most notorious episodes in Mahmood's history: the allegation that five men, all east European immigrants, had plotted to kidnap Victoria Beckham. I smelled a rat the instant I read the story so I set about investigating Mahmood's investigation. It soon became clear, as the transcripts of the covert recordings made by Mahmood's team later proved, that the five had been subtly manipulated into discussing the kidnap.

Weeks had been spent coaxing and coaching them, all recorded by hidden cameras. A gun was dangled before them. They were driven to a house they were told belonged to the Beckhams. They were introduced to a man said to be a getaway driver.

They had no idea that, once the videos and tapes were edited, it could be made to look as if they were genuine plotters rather than a quintet of dupes who were being conned by one of their number, a Mahmood collaborator.

In effect, that man – as he later admitted – had acted as an agent provocateur to entrap the men. They were arrested by armed police and spent months in jail before appearing in court only for the prosecution to collapse because that key collaborator, Florim Gashi, admitted to being paid £10,000 by the News of the World.

Years later, Gashi turned on Mahmood, gave me a lengthy interview about his nefarious activities, and went on to give evidence against his former mentor. He also proved to be a crucial witness in another trial that followed a Mahmood sting in 2004.

Posing as a Muslim extremist, he had provoked three men to buy red mercury, a fake radioactive material, in order to build a "dirty bomb". Two years later, a jury acquitted them and the judge criticised the News of the World for not checking the story's credibility.

None of these reverses affected Mahmood's standing with his newspaper, which defended him stoutly. His editors pointed out that his successes far outnumbered his failures. Drug dealers had been jailed because of his work, along with people arranging fake marriages, human traffickers and assorted pimps. His bosses also argued that the indiscretions of various celebrities caught in Mahmood's net, such as England football manager Sven-Göran Eriksson, the Countess of Wessex and the Duchess of York, had been exposed in the public interest.

When victims complained about Mahmood's methods, the paper issued strenuous denials. Two directors of Newcastle United football club, who were caught on tape insulting their fans, alleged that they had been plied with "spiked drinks". But they were unable to prove it.


Similarly, the snooker player John Higgins, who rarely drinks, was suspicious of drinks provided to him when he was enticed in 2010 into saying he would be prepared to fix matches in return for a large payment. No matches were fixed and Higgins protested his innocence. A subsequent tribunal set up by a World Professional Billiards and Snooker Association withdrew all charges of match-fixing, but found Higgins guilty of "giving the impression" he would breach betting rules. He was banned for six months and fined £75,000.

Much of Mahmood's work, for good or ill, has involved immigrants. In one notorious case in 2005, Mahmood used Gashi to pose as a woman, Aurora, on an Albanian-language internet chatroom. He contacted a man called Besnik Qema on the promise of helping him to obtain security work for a wealthy Arab family in London. Aurora told him he would stand a better chance of employment if he obtained cocaine for the man along with a forged passport.

Despite his reluctance, Qema eventually obliged and, on turning up to meet the "wealthy Arab", was arrested. By the time Mahmood's story appeared, calling Qema "Asylum's Mr Big", he had pleaded guilty to charges of supplying cocaine and possessing a fake passport and been sentenced to prison for four-and-a-half years.

Although the appeal court reduced the sentence by nine months, he served his time. But, in 2010, the Criminal Cases Review Commission decided his conviction was unsafe. It was referred back to court and the conviction was quashed. Again, Gashi was the star witness by admitting that he had instigated the crime on Mahmood's behalf.