Undercover journalist Mazher Mahmood focused public figures all through his profession (Picture: Getty/ Rex/ PA)Despite being one of the vital well-known tabloid journalists of his time, Mazher Mahmood had no need for a life within the public eye.
Over the course of his 20-year profession, Mahmood grew to become identified for spearheading numerous investigations that result in prison convictions and was celebrated by his business for his work uncovering injustices.
However, concurrently enterprise public-interest tasks, he was closely criticised for crossing the road and organising stings that noticed lives and careers ruined.
The most well-known was that of former X Factor choose Tulisa, who in 2013 was arrested by police on suspicion of supplying Class- A medication.
Her prices had come about after Mahmood and his associates had concocted an elaborate scheme which noticed the singer focused and advised that an influential movie producer, whom the journalist posed as, needed her to star in a Hollywood blockbuster.
After assembly Tulisa on the Metropolitan Hotel in London in 2013, she allegedly organized for Mahmood to be bought half an oz. of cocaine by considered one of her contacts for £800, proof that was then handed to police and noticed her going through trial.
Tulisa Contostavlos was caught up in considered one of his stings a decade in the past (Picture: Ian Gavan/Getty Images)This case – which was splashed throughout the pages of the now-defunct tabloid newspaper News of the World- and plenty of others are documented within the upcoming three-part collection The Fake Sheikh, which follows Mahmood’s unlikely rise as he generated international headlines through the use of false identities to dupe A-list celebrities, sports activities stars, and even royals.
Some of those that have been stung by him, together with former glamour mannequin Emma Morgan and mannequin Jodie Kidd converse concerning the impression of changing into wrapped up with the journalist and the way it impacted their life and careers within the aftermath.
As Jodie stated, assembly after which getting concerned with Mahmood was ‘the largest mistake of my life’ after she was referred to as a ‘coke fixer’ on a entrance web page story, along with her profession ‘disappearing’ quickly after.
Reflecting on the impression now, Jodie defined how what unfolded ‘destroyed’ her household, and that it prompted a rift along with her brother, to whom she nonetheless doesn’t converse to due to it.
Model Jodie Kidd additionally confronted her profession collapsing after an analogous sting (Picture: Jeff Spicer/Getty Images for Atlantis The Royal)‘I labored so exhausting to construct these relationships and my profession, only for a silly second that you just have been utterly groomed and manipulated to make,’ she stated within the documentary.
‘All of these years of tears and anger and ache due to this man.’
Going proper again to attempt to unravel the motivations behind the person, who was also called ‘the King of the celeb sting’, the collection speaks to a few of his ex-colleagues as nicely, a few of whom nonetheless defend most of the tales he produced.
Throughout his profession, Mahmood grew to become identified for posing as an Arab businessman as a part of his stings, which earned him the notorious moniker ‘The Fake Sheikh’.
Desperate to hide his id, Mahmood went to such lengths to take care of excessive ranges of secrecy about who he was, he not often ever visited the workplaces of the tabloid newspapers he labored for.
It was additionally rumoured that written into his contract was a clause stating that his {photograph} would by no means be revealed.
When featured in photographs to accompany his tales, Mahmood was as a substitute proven as a silhouette subsequent to his byline.
Mahmood was not often photographed and went to nice lengths to hide his id (Picture: PA)Born in Birmingham to oldsters who had migrated from Pakistan a couple of years earlier, Mahmood’s first sting as a journalist got here when he was simply a young person.
Aged 18, he uncovered household pals who bought pirated movies, which then secured him two weeks work at what was the biggest-selling UK tabloid in its heyday, News of the World.
In 1989, as an 18-year-old he he joined the Sunday Times, the place he labored for almost three years earlier than securing a full-time job on the tabloid the place he’d first dipped his toes within the media business.
During his years working each publications, which have been each owned by Rupert Murdoch, Mahmood’s investigations result in a reported 94 convictions.
In 2011 he received Reporter of The Year, Scoop of the Year and the Sports Journalists’ Association award, for an investigation of cricket match-fixing.
A 12 months earlier, his sting had revealed Pakistan bowlers Mohammad Amir and Mohammad Asif, along with their captain Salman Butt, have been concerned in a betting rip-off.
He is the topic of the brand new collection The Fake Sheikh (Picture: PA)The scandal had been uncovered after Mahmood posed as an Indian businessman and secretly filmed the participant’s agent arranging for no-balls to be intentionally bowled at particular moments within the fourth Test between England and Pakistan at Lord’s.
In return, he was paid £150,000.
All three gamers later acquired cricketing bans and have been later jailed.
Other well-known circumstances the undercover journalist led included the 2010 sting through which The Duchess of York, Sarah Ferguson, appeared to supply entry to her former husband Prince Andrew in change for £500,000.
Mahmood, who posed as a businessman, recorded the duchess saying: ‘Look after me and he’ll take care of you… you’ll get it again tenfold. I can open any door you need.’
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More than a decade earlier, he’d additionally received acclaim in 1999 for his exposé of Newcastle United bosses Freddy Shepherd and Douglas Hall, who mocked followers and branded Geordie girls ‘canine’ after taking Mahmood, posing because the sheikh, to a brothel in Marbella.
Many sports activities personalities and stars, together with Sven-Goran Eriksson, have been additionally investigated by Mahmood (Picture: Etsuo Hara/Getty Images)Another well-known sting involving sporting figures unfolded in 2006 when then England soccer coach Sven-Goran Eriksson was recorded saying Aston Villa Football Club was on the market and that then England captain David Beckham would return from Real Madrid to play in England if Eriksson requested him to.
He additionally stated former England striker Michael Owen was not glad at Newcastle United.
The expose was revealed six months earlier than the World Cup in Germany.
Despite nonetheless having two years left on his contract, Eriksson left the job quickly after the event, with Mahmood’s investigation largely suspected to have additionally performed an element.
In 2009 a sting involving a younger actress who starred in Slumdog Millionaire additionally got here to mild when Mahmood revealed a report that alleged the daddy of Rubina Ali had tried to promote her for £200,000.
While a lot of his tales acquired excessive reward from these within the business and past, a number of of his different stings got here below the highlight and even sparked courtroom circumstances after they have been discovered to have operated below murky pretences.
Victoria Beckham was as soon as reported to be on the centre of a kidnap plot (Picture: Laurent Bonnin/WireImage)One included a 2002 News of the World entrance web page report that claimed Victoria Beckham had been the goal of a £5 million ransom plot.
It was claimed that Mahmood and his reporters had infiltrated a gang and had managed to cease it taking place.
While 5 males have been charged with conspiring to kidnap the previous Spice Girls star, a subsequent trial collapsed after it emerged the paper had paid £10,000 to a convicted prison for his story and he may not be thought of a dependable witness.
One of the boys concerned later sued the paper for libel and received, nevertheless News of the World defended its ‘thorough and legit investigation undertaken by one of many paper’s most senior and skilled reporters’.
Mahmood was celebrated in his business for a few years and picked up a number of journalism awards (Picture: Supplied)Over the years Mahmood got here below hearth for his ‘entrapment’ approaches to tales, with individuals together with Emma and Jodie additionally discovering themselves in comparable circumstances to Tulisa years earlier and going through drug convictions after police grew to become concerned.
However, Mahmood’s profession got here crashing down when Tulisa determined to struggle again in opposition to a doable jail time period and attempt to expose the strategies he’d been utilizing for years.
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During the course of Tulisa’s medicine trial, Mahmood was discovered to have perverted the course of justice after his driver Alan Smith modified a police assertion to take away feedback that the singer made to him expressing her disapproval of exhausting medicine.
After the case collapsed, Mahmood was charged and ultimately jailed for 15 months after being discovered responsible of proof tampering.
Before his sentencing, his bosses at News UK launched an announcement saying it was ‘dissatisfied by the information’ he had been convicted.
However he was ultimately despatched to jail for conspiracy to pervert the course of justice (Picture: Getty)Speaking after the verdicts, Tulisa’s defence lawyer Ben Rose stated the ‘actual scandal’ had been Mahmood having the ability to ‘function as a completely unregulated police power’ through which he would ‘examine crimes with out the safeguards which apply to the police’.
‘Investigative journalists do vital work, however Mahmood clearly went too far,’ he stated.
‘That he and his driver have now been convicted of conspiracy to pervert the course of justice will hopefully deter different journalists from utilizing entrapment to drive celeb gossip tales.’
He added: ‘Mahmood’s actions introduced his occupation into disrepute and ruined tons of of lives in pursuit of higher circulation figures.’
During the Leveson Inquiry, which appeared into the tradition, practices and ethics of the British press following the News International cellphone hacking scandal and ran between 2011 and 2012, Mahmood defended his actions, asserting that the ‘ends justify the means’.
Since being launched from jail Mahmood is reported to have modified his title and id and is not working within the business through which he made his title.
The Fake Sheikh is now streaming on Amazon Prime.
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First seem at Mazher Mahmood was one of the vital feared Fleet Street journalists… but no person knew who he was
