Panorama.S2014E42.The.Fake.Sheikh.Exposed
Category
🦄
CreativityTranscript
00:00This is a man who doesn't want you to see his face.
00:07Mazamamood went to court to stop Panorama showing you pictures like this.
00:11I'll give you a shout.
00:12I'm about to go on a job now.
00:13I'll give you a shout.
00:15Posing as a fake Sheikh, the News of the World reporter delighted in exposing the secrets
00:20of the rich and famous.
00:24Dozens of people were sent to jail following his undercover stings.
00:29I've never killed anyone, but it feels like I've served a life sentence.
00:34Now Mazamamood turns accused of being a liar.
00:40Mazamamood was Pinocchio on speed.
00:43It was so easy for him to fit anybody up.
00:48The King of the Sting destroyed lives, leaving a trail of victims in his wake.
00:53This would never have happened unless they created the situation.
00:57They made it happen.
01:00But we can reveal police and prosecutors have evidenced for years Mazamamood's word should
01:06not have been relied upon.
01:23Posing as an Arab Sheikh, Mazamamood helped change the face of British tabloid journalism.
01:34Royals, celebs, drug dealers, all targeted by the News of the World reporter.
01:46Many have been arrested and jailed on his evidence.
01:51Mazamamood won the newspaper industry's major awards for his journalism and was celebrated
01:55by his paper as a force for good who exposed serious international crime.
02:01Posh Kidnap, We Stop £5m Ransom Gang, London's Burning Star is Cocaine Dealer, Dirty Bomb
02:11foiled by News of the World.
02:12I'm proud of what I do, I wouldn't do it otherwise.
02:16This is Mazamamood's only TV interview.
02:19I use subterfuge, so if my identity were revealed I couldn't work.
02:23His identity is also hidden because he claims there is a price on his head.
02:28It's our job as investigative journalists to make sure the public get to know the truth.
02:33That's what we do.
02:36But does he always feel in the truth?
02:38And what kind of journalist is hiding behind the disguise of the fake Sheikh?
02:43All questions arising out of a trial which collapsed this summer after a judge effectively
02:50accused Mazamamood of being a liar.
02:56Pop singer Tulisa Contestavlos was cleared by a court in July.
03:00After it emerged Mazamamood had not told the whole truth while giving evidence about his
03:05sting.
03:06He'd accused her of setting up a cocaine deal.
03:11This whole case was a horrific and disgusting entrapment by Mazamamood.
03:18Mazamamood went to court on Monday to try to stop Panorama broadcasting recent pictures.
03:24Here he is on a sting.
03:29He claimed his life would be in danger if we did.
03:32The courts rejected that argument.
03:35One investigation has revealed serious wrongdoing at the heart of some of his undercover stings.
03:42We're identifying him tonight to make it more difficult for him to entrap people in the
03:46future.
03:47Been to a casino before?
03:51Yeah, it's a good place to do a sting really.
03:57Now a key figure who helped Mazamamood stitch up his targets in the past is letting us in
04:03on the secrets of the fake shape.
04:07Mazamamood was Pinocchio on speed.
04:11He didn't know the truth if it hit him.
04:13He just didn't.
04:16Steve Grayson worked with him in the 90s.
04:18What was the most lavish sting you ever worked on?
04:23The one in Las Vegas with Johnny Bryan.
04:29John Bryan, an American financial advisor, snapped by paparazzi, sucking the toes of
04:35the Duchess of York, Sarah Ferguson.
04:41When three years later, Mazamamood discovered John Bryan was marketing a Las Vegas casino,
04:47he sensed a story.
04:48What are you trying to get from him?
04:52We're trying to get him to talk about Ferguson, Sarah Ferguson, you know, their life and what
05:00she's like in bed, the whole nine yards.
05:07But at a meeting in LA, John Bryan didn't give much away, so Steve Grayson says they
05:13tried to record evidence of John Bryan offering to supply them with cocaine.
05:17He said, I'm not a drug dealer, Steve, sorry.
05:21I don't care what the Arab wants, but I'm not a drug dealer.
05:24What are you guys talking about?
05:26You're visitors here, you're going to get arrested.
05:30This is how you get thrown in jail.
05:33We spoke to both men independently.
05:36They'd had no contact for nearly 20 years.
05:40I went back to the room and told Mamood that he's not a drug dealer and I got it on tape.
05:46We listened to it.
05:47He said, well, we'll try him on hookers.
05:51How did that work?
05:54I said, hey, I'm not your blank, blank pimp and you can go, you know, you can basically
06:04go to hell.
06:06So I got it on tape, went back, showed it to Mamood.
06:08We listened to it.
06:10He said, you know, we've got nothing here.
06:12I said, look, let's just go home.
06:14This is crap.
06:17But they didn't go home.
06:19Later, Steve Grayson welcomed two guests to Mazamamood's hotel suite.
06:24Two hookers, two girls, they come up, I open the door, the hooker says, Johnny sent me.
06:31Mazamamood had got his story.
06:35Fergie's ex in vice and drug shame.
06:40So how come two prostitutes turned up at Mazamamood's hotel room?
06:44For the last 12 days, Mazamamood has been telling us through his lawyers he has irrefutable
06:50evidence John Bryan was willing to supply prostitutes.
06:55Evidence Steve Grayson was unaware of.
06:59The lawyers say they understand there are a number of covert tape recordings.
07:05Just before Panorama was due to broadcast this investigation on Monday, they sent us
07:10clips of three short telephone conversations with one of Mazamamood's men, apparently made
07:16after the meeting in Los Angeles.
07:19We decided to postpone the programme.
07:22But are these tape recordings the irrefutable evidence Mazamamood says they are?
07:31They do appear to give weight to Mamood's claim.
07:34On tape, John Bryan is asked, where can we get good girls?
07:38He replies he knows of a great place and asks how many would you like?
07:43We play John Bryan the clips.
07:45He says he wasn't offering to supply prostitutes.
07:49I had a conversation with him that any concierge at any hotel would have, saying that, oh,
07:55you want to meet girls?
07:56I know a great place you can go.
07:58There's strip clubs, there's nightclubs, there's all sorts of places.
08:01The fact of the matter is, when this went illegitimate, I refused.
08:07When Steve Grayson asked me, will you supply us prostitutes, he asked me very clearly.
08:14I said no.
08:16And I told him to go F himself.
08:20That's the bottom line.
08:23Mr Mamood's lawyers initially appeared to say the recording supported the claim that
08:28John Bryan had offered to supply cocaine.
08:31From the three clips they've given us, that's not the case.
08:35I know that I didn't do it.
08:38They know that I didn't do it.
08:41Steve Grayson knows there are questions for him too.
08:45You know, people are going to watch this and they're going to say, well, why didn't you
08:48say something?
08:49Why didn't you be a whistleblower?
08:51Well, I like my job and I was good at it.
08:56He was later sacked by the News of the World for fabricating photographs of the Beast of
09:01Bodmin Mall.
09:03And the man who turned him in?
09:06Mazen Mamood.
09:08Steve Grayson says he feels remorse about what he and Mazen Mamood did.
09:13My hand to God, I felt for all of them.
09:18All the real people that he turned over, who didn't need it, who really didn't need it.
09:25But anyway.
09:32The story of a page-three girl is one sting Steve Grayson feels particularly bad about.
09:38Busted.
09:40Page-three girl's drugs and vice scandal.
09:44Emma Morgan, then just 24, was branded a mob-connected drugs pusher by Mazen Mamood.
09:51Something she denies.
09:55She should never, ever have been done like that.
09:59Never.
10:00She wasn't a drug dealer.
10:02As in so many of his stings, Mazen Mamood started by flying the target to an exotic
10:07location.
10:08In this case, Lanzarote.
10:11And the deal too good to be true?
10:14A lucrative contract for a Middle East bikini calendar.
10:18I desperately wanted to be a part of it.
10:22It was fabulous what he was offering to me.
10:25But all Mazen Mamood really wanted was a story exposing Emma Morgan as a drugs pusher.
10:31Have you done a bit of coke?
10:33I've had cocaine prior to this, but certainly never bought cocaine.
10:38Certainly never supplied anybody with cocaine.
10:42Stepping off the plane, she was surprised to meet a man called Billy, who she knew from
10:46the Lanzarote party scene.
10:48He came rushing over to me and I said, hi, what are you doing here?
10:53And he replied with, I'm your bodyguard, which I found a little bit crazy.
10:59Steve Grayson always suspected Billy had been hired by Mazen Mamood to help stitch
11:03her up.
11:04He is a drug dealer.
11:08We are drug dealers.
11:09We have paid this guy to supply the drugs to give to her.
11:16And so the trap was laid.
11:19This secret camera footage, never broadcast before, shows us the inner workings of a Mazen
11:24Mamood sting.
11:27Here's Steve Grayson.
11:28Billy, the man with the cocaine, is on the right.
11:33And here's Mazen Mamood rehearsing the sting.
11:40This is the first time Emma's seen this footage.
11:43It makes me feel sick to see them together getting ready to set me up.
11:52Enter the target.
11:56Emma's offered champagne and cannabis.
12:04Then Billy lays out the cocaine on the table.
12:08There you go.
12:12You're snorting the coke.
12:16Page Free Girl taking cocaine isn't much of a story.
12:20Page Free Girl, who is a drug pusher, might be.
12:25Over the coming hours, Emma says she felt pressured by Mazen Mamood to get him some
12:30cocaine.
12:31That's not something that I wanted to do, but I want to please this man.
12:37She says Mazen Mamood asked her later to get him some cocaine from Billy, which she did,
12:44two small bags.
12:45That night, she slid them under Mamood's hotel room door.
12:50She can't remember any money changing hands.
12:53I was a fool.
12:54I was naive.
12:56To be foolish isn't a crime.
12:58To be naive isn't a crime.
13:00To do what he did is criminal.
13:04So the point is this, is the story is this Page Free Girl, Emma, supplies drugs for the
13:11news of the world.
13:13What's the truth?
13:14She wouldn't have done if Billy wasn't there.
13:18Later Emma was told that Billy had ended up a headless corpse.
13:22In fact, he's alive and well and an estate agent.
13:27He told Panorama, I'd like to apologize to Emma for my part in stitching her up.
13:33The only real criminal was Mazen Mamood.
13:35He gave me the money to buy the cocaine.
13:40Emma's career went into freefall.
13:43Years later, she says, desperate to fend off loan sharks, she grew cannabis at home and
13:48got a suspended prison sentence.
13:51I haven't had the career I should have had.
13:53I haven't had the life I should have had.
13:56He's a horrible, horrible man.
13:59Mazen Mamood denies acting improperly and says our account of what happened is wrong
14:04and misleading.
14:06For some, the consequences of the Mazen Mamood sting have been even more serious.
14:13Smoke has started it.
14:18John Alford had been a child star in Grange Hill.
14:21By the late 90s, he was a household name.
14:24London's burning was watched by 17 million people.
14:29But then it was all over.
14:36He was sentenced to nine months in jail after supplying the fake shake with cocaine and
14:41cannabis.
14:43John Alford admits he'd been a heavy drug user, but he insists he was never a dealer.
14:49He says he was entrapped.
14:52I'm not completely innocent in that sense.
14:54I technically did what they wanted me to do.
14:57But the way they went around it leaves a really bitter taste in my mouth.
15:01Wednesday, 13th of August, 97 times an hour, 6.50.
15:07This is the fake shake and his entourage, preparing to meet John Alford at the Savoy.
15:12Mazen Mamood says he'd been tipped off that the actor was a drug dealer.
15:17The news of the world man was captured by his own secret camera.
15:21Don't forget, if he's surprised, he's crying his eyes out as well.
15:24He's finished.
15:25There.
15:26He'll probably get banged up as well.
15:27He appears to relish the prospect of ruining a man's life.
15:30Almost like a jagger bit at the Savoy.
15:34The deal too good to be true this time, John was offered the chance to break into Hollywood.
15:41Once again, the trap is set and to the target.
15:45I don't think I've ever been so nervous in all of my life.
15:51They offered me millions, Hollywood Films, working with De Niro, Pacino, all my heroes,
15:56they did their homework.
15:58As usual, alcohol was pressed, but John was on the wagon.
16:01Oh, I'd love a water, please.
16:03Are you sure?
16:04That's what you want?
16:05Yeah.
16:06It disappoints us.
16:07You must be champagne.
16:08I've had to stop the drinking.
16:10The Charles star had also been a heavy cocaine user, but he was off that too.
16:17I don't know about myself, but I've been two years, nothing.
16:21When I was 13, everything.
16:24Everything.
16:25John Alford says later over dinner, Mazza Mahmood pushed him hard to get him drugs.
16:31I didn't want to get him drugs, then they applied the pressure.
16:34I said, look, I really can't do this.
16:36You know, and the pressure, just constant.
16:40But this was not captured on camera.
16:43Mazza Mahmood has said his tape recorder wasn't working.
16:47His equipment was working, though, when John Alford supplied Mazza's team
16:51with a small amount of cocaine and cannabis.
16:54He was sent to prison.
16:57I'd lost my house, I'd lost my career,
17:00everything I'd worked for since the age of nine
17:03went down the pan in a day.
17:06There have been moments when it all became too much for him to bear.
17:12I'm lucky to be here.
17:14You know, there was times when I really thought of ending it.
17:19The last 18 years, I've been through hell.
17:27John Alford launched appeals over a number of years,
17:30claiming that he'd been entrapped.
17:33All were rejected by the courts.
17:38Dozens of people have been jailed on the strength of Mazza Mahmood's stories.
17:44But Panorama has seen police documents which raise serious questions
17:48about why the Metropolitan Police relied upon the fake Sheikh's evidence.
17:54In 1999, a covert police investigation, part of a murder inquiry,
17:59had revealed links between corrupt police officers,
18:03a firm of private detectives called Southern Investigations,
18:07and tabloid journalists.
18:09One name that cropped up, Mazza Mahmood.
18:13One of the documents says,
18:15source met Maz. Maz was with a plainclothes officer.
18:19The officer was selling a story to Maz.
18:22We have no way of verifying that.
18:25Mazza Mahmood insists he has never bought stories from police officers.
18:29He wasn't the only journalist whose name cropped up in the paperwork.
18:34But shouldn't the police have tried to find out more?
18:37We've been told this information should have led to a full-scale inquiry,
18:42and it didn't.
18:45We've also seen documents revealing that private detectives
18:48with Southern Investigations worked with Mazza Mahmood,
18:52including on the John Alford sting.
18:56Not that the fake Sheikh has been keen to publicise his links
19:00with private investigators.
19:03He made his position clear at the Leveson Inquiry into press ethics.
19:07I swear by Allah that the evidence I shall give
19:10shall be the proof of my innocence.
19:12I swear by Allah that the evidence I shall give
19:14shall be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.
19:19The cameras were switched off to protect his identity.
19:24I'm a private investigator, can I stress very clearly
19:27that I never commissioned, ever commissioned,
19:29a private detective to do any work for me.
19:31I never paid a private detective.
19:34But was that the whole truth?
19:36Panorama has seen files on Southern Investigations.
19:39This is a letter dated July 1999 from the private eye firm
19:44which begins, Dear Maz, that's Mazza Mahmood.
19:50Further to our rather enjoyable operation to assist you,
19:54I now take the liberty of enclosing a note of our charges.
20:00Mazza Mahmood says it wasn't his decision to hire private detectives,
20:05and so his statement that he never commissioned a private detective
20:08is correct.
20:13In 2002, armed police arrested a gang
20:16plotting to kidnap Victoria Beckham and her children.
20:21Mazza Mahmood had stopped the crime of the century.
20:26Posh kidnap. World exclusive.
20:28We stop £5 million ransom gang.
20:33Or so he claimed.
20:35What he didn't tell his readers was that one of the kidnapped gang,
20:38an Albanian called Mr Gashi,
20:40was paid thousands of pounds to work with him.
20:44You can hear Mr Gashi on this covert tape,
20:47suggesting how much ransom the gang could get for Victoria Beckham.
20:56Mr Gashi, a convicted criminal, worked with Mazza Mahmood
21:00before and for years after the kidnap plot.
21:03He's speaking to us on condition we don't show his face.
21:07We pre-planned this kidnap plot, so-called.
21:11We arranged it. It was a total lie.
21:15I personally did it because of the money.
21:22When the prosecution discovered Mr Gashi had been paid by the news of the world
21:26and lied about it, the case collapsed.
21:29Five men had spent seven months in prison on remand.
21:34Lawyer Siobhan Egan acted for one of the accused.
21:39The evidence was pathetic.
21:41A three-year-old could have seen through it.
21:44And I have no doubt that experienced officers from the yard
21:49knew they were dealing with a pile of tosh.
21:52It didn't add up to a hill of beans.
21:56Mazza Mahmood denies inventing the kidnap plot,
21:59but the judge was so troubled by the payment
22:02to Mr Gashi that he referred it to the then Attorney General.
22:07If a trial collapses, and collapses in circumstances
22:10where the reason is because of alleged wrongdoing on the part of a witness,
22:14that's a real issue for me.
22:17But after taking legal advice about Mr Gashi's involvement,
22:20Lord Goldsmith discovered he could take no action.
22:24I'd explored every possible avenue for dealing with this,
22:29what I saw as a very unsatisfactory state of affairs,
22:33and each avenue had turned out to be a blank.
22:37After the Beckham kidnap trial collapsed,
22:40Mr Gashi made allegations against Mazza Mahmood,
22:43which led police to launch an investigation, Operation Canopus.
22:48He was interviewed under caution.
22:50Why, he was asked, did he rely upon people like Mr Gashi?
22:54Not a problem.
22:57Mazza Mahmood told detectives he gets information from hookers,
23:01from drug addicts, and he said,
23:03I've got bent police officers that are witnesses, that are informants.
23:07So who were these bent police officers?
23:10And what precisely was their relationship with Mazza Mahmood?
23:15We don't know, because the officers interviewing him
23:18appear not to have asked.
23:20What we do know is the police didn't find Mr Gashi a convincing witness,
23:24and dropped the investigation because of insufficient evidence.
23:30But it wouldn't be too long before the news of the world
23:33found itself at the centre of another police investigation.
23:38This is not where we wanted to be, and it's not where we deserve to be.
23:43The phone-hacking scandal saw Rupert Murdoch's News Of The World
23:47shut down in disgrace.
23:50Mazza Mahmood was praised in the final edition
23:53as representing the best of its journalism.
23:56He moved on to the Sunday Times, then the News Sun on Sunday.
24:01I think he's sick.
24:03Which is where he was when he targeted former X Factor judge
24:07Thulisa Kontostavlos.
24:12It was business as usual.
24:14It was business as usual.
24:16Drink flowing, fancy locations, Las Vegas, the Dorchester.
24:20The deal too good to be true?
24:22They wanted someone who could play a bad girl
24:25in a movie with Leonardo DiCaprio.
24:28As soon as I hear that, I obviously grabbed onto it
24:31and completely milked it, like, yeah, I am the bad girl.
24:34Almost like a bad girl.
24:36Yeah, yeah. A bit ghetto.
24:38A bit ghetto. Yeah.
24:40You've got, yeah, that kind of...
24:42Now I get it. Now I get it.
24:47Just like Emma Morgan and John Alford before her,
24:50Thulisa says that off camera she too felt pressured to get drugs.
24:56She contacted a friend and her defence in the case was
25:00she never intended him to supply Mazza Mahmood with cocaine.
25:06It was another drug shame from Page
25:09and Thulisa was charged with facilitating a drug deal.
25:14I got the news to say that I was going to be charged.
25:17I just, I couldn't, couldn't take it.
25:22But she fought back, recalling something she'd said in the car
25:25on the way home from the sting.
25:29I was having a conversation with my friend in the car
25:33and I was talking about this person that I knew
25:37that was on drugs and was in a bad way
25:40and I just began having this real anti-drugs conversation.
25:46Mazza Mahmood's chauffeur, Alan Smith, a convicted criminal,
25:49gave a statement to the police about that conversation.
25:53Alan Smith did confirm what Thulisa had always said,
25:57which is that he overheard her in the back of the car
26:00expressing anti-cocaine views.
26:03Then, Alan Smith said, he couldn't remember.
26:06But this change of mind happened after he'd spoken to Mazza Mahmood,
26:12a conversation Mahmood eventually admitted to in court.
26:17There was one problem for Mazza Mahmood.
26:19This conflicted with evidence he'd given on oath.
26:23The judge turned on Mahmood,
26:25accusing him of interfering with the evidence
26:27and then lying to cover it up.
26:30There are strong grounds for believing that Mr Mahmood told me lies.
26:34There are also strong grounds for believing
26:36that the underlying purpose of these lies was to conceal the fact
26:40that he had been manipulating evidence in this case.
26:45From that moment onwards, I just felt like I'd woken up from a bad dream.
26:49I am firmly of the view, and always was and always will be,
26:55that what Thulisa Kontostavlos did was crime created by Mazza Mahmood.
27:02The judge threw out the case against Thulisa and the cocaine supplier,
27:07even though he'd already pleaded guilty.
27:12Are you thinking about suing your son on Sunday?
27:15Yes, I am thinking about it.
27:19And she's not the only one.
27:21Solicitor Mark Lewis, a key figure in exposing phone hacking
27:24at the news of the world, now has the fake Sheikh in his sights.
27:30The damage it's caused, the damage for people's livelihoods,
27:35the amount of people it's sent to prison, is much, much bigger.
27:41It's a far more serious thing than phone hacking ever was.
27:45Mazza Mahmood says he has spent his career
27:47investigating crime and misconduct.
27:49But he's used legitimate investigative methods
27:52and has brought many individuals to justice.
27:55He says any criticism of him usually comes from those he's exposed
28:00or people he's worked with who have an axe to grind.
28:06The Metropolitan Police told us that once it is presented with evidence,
28:10regardless of source, it makes its own assessment
28:13about whether to investigate.
28:15The Crown Prosecution Service says that no-one is currently in jail
28:19on the strength of the reporter's evidence
28:22and it is looking at past cases.
28:25Can you get your life back, John?
28:27No-one can give me the 18 years I've lost of my life.
28:30No-one can give me that back.
28:32My family and friends have kept my spirits up.
28:35I just hope this is the first day of a new life for me.
28:41The fake Sheikh will soon learn if he's to face charges
28:44following the collapse of the Chilisa trial.
28:47He denies perjury and perverting the course of justice.
28:51Already, three cases based on his evidence have been dropped.
28:56Mazza Mahmood has cast a spell over British journalism
28:59for the last three years.
29:01He's been accused of being a terrorist.
29:03He's been accused of being a terrorist.
29:05He's been accused of being a terrorist.
29:07Mazza Mahmood has cast a spell over British journalism
29:10for the last three decades.
29:12Has that spell now been broken?
29:37For more UN videos visit www.un.org