Despite being one of the most famous tabloid journalists of his time, Mazher Mahmood had no desire for a life in the public eye.
Over the course of his 20-year career, Mahmood became known for spearheading countless investigations that lead to criminal convictions and was celebrated by his industry for his work uncovering injustices.
However, at the same time as undertaking public-interest projects, he was heavily criticised for crossing the line and setting up stings that saw lives and careers ruined.
The most famous was that of former X Factor judge Tulisa, who in 2013 was arrested by police on suspicion of supplying Class- A drugs.
Her charges had come about after Mahmood and his associates had concocted an elaborate scheme which saw the singer targeted and told that an influential film producer, whom the journalist posed as, wanted her to star in a Hollywood blockbuster.
After meeting Tulisa at the Metropolitan Hotel in London in 2013, she allegedly arranged for Mahmood to be sold half an ounce of cocaine by one of her contacts for £800, evidence that was then handed to police and saw her facing trial.
This case – which was splashed across the pages of the now-defunct tabloid newspaper News of the World- and many others are documented in the upcoming three-part series The Fake Sheikh, which follows Mahmood’s unlikely rise as he generated global headlines by using false identities to dupe A-list celebrities, sports stars, and even royals.
Some of those who were stung by him, including former glamour model Emma Morgan and model Jodie Kidd speak about the impact of becoming wrapped up with the journalist and how it impacted their life and careers in the aftermath.
As Jodie said, meeting and then getting involved with Mahmood was ‘the biggest mistake of my life’ after she was called a ‘coke fixer’ on a front page story, with her career ‘disappearing’ soon after.
Reflecting on the impact now, Jodie explained how what unfolded ‘destroyed’ her family, and that it caused a rift with her brother, to whom she still doesn’t speak to because of it.
‘I worked so hard to build these relationships and my career, just for a stupid moment that you were completely groomed and manipulated to make,’ she said in the documentary.
‘All of those years of tears and anger and pain because of this man.’
Going right back to try and unravel the motivations behind the man, who was also known as ‘the King of the celebrity sting’, the series speaks to some of his ex-colleagues as well, some of whom still defend many of the stories he produced.
Throughout his career, Mahmood became known for posing as an Arab businessman as part of his stings, which earned him the infamous moniker ‘The Fake Sheikh’.
Desperate to conceal his identity, Mahmood went to such lengths to maintain high levels of secrecy about who he was, he rarely ever visited the offices of the tabloid newspapers he worked for.
It was also rumoured that written into his contract was a clause stating that his photograph would never be published.
When featured in images to accompany his stories, Mahmood was instead shown as a silhouette next to his byline.
Born in Birmingham to parents who had migrated from Pakistan a few years earlier, Mahmood’s first sting as a journalist came when he was just a teenager.
Aged 18, he exposed family friends who sold pirated videos, 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, where he worked for nearly three years before securing a full-time job at the tabloid where he’d first dipped his toes in the media industry.
During his years working both publications, which were both owned by Rupert Murdoch, Mahmood’s investigations lead to a reported 94 convictions.
In 2011 he won Reporter of The Year, Scoop of the Year and the Sports Journalists’ Association award, for an investigation of cricket match-fixing.
A year earlier, his sting had revealed Pakistan bowlers Mohammad Amir and Mohammad Asif, together with their captain Salman Butt, were involved in a betting scam.
The scandal had been uncovered after Mahmood posed as an Indian businessman and secretly filmed the player’s agent arranging for no-balls to be deliberately bowled at specific moments in the fourth Test between England and Pakistan at Lord’s.
In return, he was paid £150,000.
All three players later received cricketing bans and were later jailed.
Other famous cases the undercover journalist led included the 2010 sting in which The Duchess of York, Sarah Ferguson, appeared to offer access to her former husband Prince Andrew in exchange for £500,000.
Mahmood, who posed as a businessman, recorded the duchess saying: ‘Look after me and he’ll look after you… you’ll get it back tenfold. I can open any door you want.’
More than a decade earlier, he’d also won acclaim in 1999 for his exposé of Newcastle United bosses Freddy Shepherd and Douglas Hall, who mocked fans and branded Geordie women ‘dogs’ after taking Mahmood, posing as the sheikh, to a brothel in Marbella.
Another famous sting involving sporting figures unfolded in 2006 when then England football coach Sven-Goran Eriksson was recorded saying Aston Villa Football Club was for sale and that then England captain David Beckham would return from Real Madrid to play in England if Eriksson asked him to.
He also said former England striker Michael Owen was not happy at Newcastle United.
The expose was published six months before the World Cup in Germany.
Despite still having two years left on his contract, Eriksson left the job soon after the tournament, with Mahmood’s investigation largely suspected to have also played a part.
In 2009 a sting involving a young actress who starred in Slumdog Millionaire also came to light when Mahmood published a report that alleged the father of Rubina Ali had tried to sell her for £200,000.
While many of his stories received high praise from those in the industry and beyond, several of his other stings came under the spotlight and even sparked court cases when they were found to have operated under murky pretences.
One included a 2002 News of the World front page report that claimed Victoria Beckham had been the target of a £5 million ransom plot.
It was claimed that Mahmood and his reporters had infiltrated a gang and had managed to stop it happening.
While five men were charged with conspiring to kidnap the former Spice Girls star, a subsequent trial collapsed after it emerged the paper had paid £10,000 to a convicted criminal for his story and he could no longer be considered a reliable witness.
One of the men involved later sued the paper for libel and won, however News of the World defended its ‘thorough and legitimate investigation undertaken by one of the paper’s most senior and experienced reporters’.
Over the years Mahmood came under fire for his ‘entrapment’ approaches to stories, with people including Emma and Jodie also finding themselves in similar circumstances to Tulisa years earlier and facing drug convictions after police became involved.
However, Mahmood’s career came crashing down when Tulisa decided to fight back against a possible jail term and try to expose the methods he’d been using for years.
During the course of Tulisa’s drugs trial, Mahmood was found to have perverted the course of justice after his driver Alan Smith changed a police statement to remove comments that the singer made to him expressing her disapproval of hard drugs.
After the case collapsed, Mahmood was charged and eventually jailed for 15 months after being found guilty of evidence tampering.
Before his sentencing, his bosses at News UK released a statement saying it was ‘disappointed by the news’ he had been convicted.
Speaking after the verdicts, Tulisa’s defence lawyer Ben Rose said the ‘real scandal’ had been Mahmood being able to ‘operate as a wholly unregulated police force’ in which he would ‘investigate crimes without the safeguards which apply to the police’.
‘Investigative journalists do important work, but Mahmood clearly went too far,’ he said.
‘That he and his driver have now been convicted of conspiracy to pervert the course of justice will hopefully deter other journalists from using entrapment to drive celebrity gossip stories.’
He added: ‘Mahmood’s actions brought his profession into disrepute and ruined hundreds of lives in pursuit of better circulation figures.’
During the Leveson Inquiry, which looked into the culture, practices and ethics of the British press following the News International phone hacking scandal and ran between 2011 and 2012, Mahmood defended his actions, asserting that the ‘ends justify the means’.
Since being released from prison Mahmood is reported to have changed his name and identity and is no longer working in the industry in which he made his name.
The Fake Sheikh is streaming on Amazon Prime Video from Tuesday September 26.
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