Life inside 'soul-crushing’ office where staff worked long hours below minimum wage

After being caught in a sting, Zaafir Jamal’s career in direct sales looked over. Then he turned up in a new office where young people were manipulated using many of the same tactics that first landed him in disgrace. Investigations editor Conor Gogarty

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ZAAFIR JAMAL’S eyes widened at the realisation he had been caught in a sting.

“No comment,’ mumbled the self-styled “sales specialist” as he stepped away from our questions and into the haven of his Cardiff office.

The then-25-year-old had just learned a Western Mail reporter had been working undercover in his team of door-to-door reps.

With a hidden camera we exposed how he and his associates ran a cult-like office where reps were taught to trick and pressure people into donating to charity clients.

The reps themselves were misled with promises of a salary and often worked 12 to 15 hours a day for no money.

Almost immediately after we doorstepped Mr Jamal, he shut down the office.

The story prompted widespread condemnation and regulatory investigations which more than two years later are still ongoing. One might have assumed that would be the end of Mr Jamal’s career in the direct marketing industry.

When we called him recently, he initially suggested exactly that.

“To be honest, mate, after the article that was me done, to be fair,’ he said with a laugh.

But we can reveal that after the office closed, Mr Jamal and some of his team moved to Liverpool and became involved in a similar door-to-door operation that lied to sales reps about their earnings and used misleading tactics to sell energy deals from Scottish Power - one of the clients we previously exposed as selling through a team in the Cardiff office.

Former reps from the Liverpool office told us they earned well under the minimum wage. Their alarming experiences raise questions ~ again - over regulators’ ability to crack down on rogue operators and over the due diligence of well-known organisations that hire them.