The Elaborate Scam That Conned Over 50 Employees to Work for a Fake Design Agency

Madbird, allegedly a “glamorous” design agency in London, has tricked over 50 people into working for them for free. Its charismatic and inspiring owner, Ali Ayad, described the fake design agency as a “human-centred digital design agency born in London, running worldwide.” He did all these in the hopes of making money after landing big deals.

With its claim of operating worldwide, Madbird does have actual employees working for it across the globe. The BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) investigated the bizarre case and what it found out was that the company, its persona, and most of its staff were fake. It listed senior employees that weren’t even working for it. It hosted Zoom calls attended by a few real people and innumerable fake profiles.

Ayad Tricking Designers

Chris Doocey, who started at Madbird in October of 2020, noticed nothing strange in his work-from-home setup. Along with 50 other employees, he was made to believe that Madbird was composed of ambitious hustlers, as Ayad described them all to be. 

Another worker, Jordan Carter from Suffolk, had been outstanding as he was able to pitch the design agency to over 10,000 potential business clients. He hoped to win deals for website redesigns or app building. There were many other employees hired from outside of the UK. 

It promised not only a high-paying job but also a UK visa. They were offered a move to the UK after only six months of probationary work. Ali himself knew of the hardships before he settled in the UK and used this to lure workers worldwide. 

However, Ayad’s stories were varied depending on who he related them to. Even his name changed from Ayad to Ayyad or Alex Ayd. One story he was consistent with was that he worked as a creative designer for Nike. No one seemed to doubt Ayad as he was a slick and smooth operator, especially on video calls. 

Ayad’s Offers

Ayad had a persuasive and caring personality which enabled him to recruit people from all across the globe to work for him for free. For months, business was good for Madbird. It was when the employees were not paid that Madbird’s secret seemed to surface.

The contracts were somewhat different as the employees agreed to work on a commission basis for the first six months. After the said probation period, will they only get their salary of around $47,300 for most of them. But until then, they will only get a small percentage of each deal. 

Because of the pandemic, many were accepting of the situation and continued to work as-is for the fake design agency. By February of 2021, when no deals were ever finalized, and no client contract was signed, someone finally noticed something strange.

Predicament of Other Designers

A designer from West London, Gemma Brett, had been working at Madbird for only two weeks. She wondered what her commute would be like once the work-from-home setup ended. She searched for the company’s business address and found nothing. Well, at least according to what Madbird projected on its website.

Brett found out that the address was purely residential. When she asked for help from a real estate agent, they also found out that nobody in the area knew about Ayad. She then told about this to the other Madbird employees, and the suspicions came out openly.

When confronted with an anonymous email from Brett and another employee, Antonia Stuart, Ayad replied with an email saying, “If any of this information came to be true,” he wrote, it is as “shocking to me as it’s shocking to all of you.”

The former employees took their case to an employment tribunal and demanded Ayad pay them their wages. The BBC continued with their investigation and got face to face with Ayad, but then he stopped responding. 

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