Where is Mazher Mahmood now? The disgraced ‘Fake Sheikh’ who set up Tulisa’s drug sting

Tulisa explained now she’s in the I’m A Celeb jungle this year how bad things actually got in 2013, when she was wrongly accused of trying to set up a drug deal of £800 worth of cocaine by a journalist who was determined to get her sent down for something she did not do. The journalist who set up Tulisa for a drugs sting was Mazher Mahmood, who worked for The Sun on Sunday and had been dubbed the ‘Fake Sheikh’ for his frequency of posing as a sheikh to get into celebrity events and carry out undercover – and ethically questionable – journalism. But where is Mazher Mahmood now, years after his release from prison and with Tulisa discussing him in the I’m A Celeb jungle?

Who iz Mazher Mahmood?

Mazher Mahmood is a tabloid journalist who for over 20 years worked with the News of the World (and then The Sun on Sunday) as well as the Sunday Times, doing undercover investigation work to try and get convictions. He got dubbed the Fake Sheikh for his tendency to pose as one to get access to events. Prior to the Tulisa case disgracing his career, he won reporter of the year twice in both 1999 and 2011.

He often went to great lengths to be undercover, and would very rarely have pictures of himself known. But where is Mazher Mahmood now, years after the Tulisa case caused his fall from grace.

Tulisa case

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I’m A Celeb star Tulisa spoke about how she was arrested on suspicion of supplying £800 worth of cocaine in 2013 in camp last night, saying the sting was in “2013 was the year I was set up by a British newspaper, for concern in the selling of class A drugs.

“The guy’s name was Mahmood and basically, I was approached by a big movie company and they sent me a tweet or a DM from their official account to audition me for a movie role. I’d dabbled in acting, so this opportunity for me was huge. I was having meetings with these producers, they flew me out to Las Vegas, first class flights, limousines, 5 star hotels.”

She said she was offered £3.5 mil by a film producer for it. “So I was told, as I wasn’t an actress, I was less likely to get the role and the only reason I would get it is if I was the girl in the role, and the girl in the role was this bad girl from London who was constantly up to naughtiness, rolling with gangs, up to all kinds of naughty stuff.”

She says every time they’d meet up ‘they’d ask for drugs’, before saying: “After months and months, eventually they got a number and it was of someone that wasn’t even a drug dealer, it was an aspiring movie producer and I wanted to make a hook up as well for that person, but I didn’t know anyone that could do that.

“Long story short is they ended up ordering £800’s worth of cocaine from the number that I had given them. Then before I knew it, I was being arrested in the concern of the selling of Class A drugs and I was facing four years in prison.”

When the trail went ahead, Mazher Mahmood’s lies had caught up with him. He had gone to great lengths to try and entrap Tulisa. After Tulisa’s defence told the court that he believed Mahmood had been lying, he called in a former associate of Mahmood’s Florim Gashi, who told the court he used to help Mahmood “make up stories for his newspaper”.

Judge Alastair McCreath told the court he believed Mazher Mahmood had lied giving evidence, and halted the trail. Judge McCreath explained “Where there has been some aspect of the investigation or prosecution of a crime which is tainted in some way by serious misconduct to the point that the integrity of the court would be compromised by allowing the trial to go ahead, in that sense the court would be seen to be sanctioning or colluding in that sort of behaviour, then the court has no alternative but to say, ‘This case must go no further’.”

Mazher Mahmood was then arrested, and served 15 months in prison as well as being suspended from The Sun on Sunday – but where is he now, after what he put Tulisa through?

Where is Mazher Mahmood now, after prison and Tulisa discussing him?

Mahmood was convicted in 2016 – and since his release he has kept an invisible profile. Most presume he has ceased working in journalism. However, an old associate of his Paul Samrai implied to the Guardian in an interview last year after The Fake Sheikh documentary came out that Mazher Mahmood may still be working as a journalist under a pseudonym – or so the rumour goes.

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