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At least six of the most senior employees profiled by Madbird were fake. Their identities stitched together using photos stolen from random corners of the internet and made-up names. They included Madbird’s co-founder, Dave Stanfield - despite him having a LinkedIn profile and Ali referring to him constantly. Some of the duped staff had even received emails from him. Ali told one employee that if they wanted to get in touch with Mr Stanfield they should email him, because he was too busy with projects for Nike to jump on a call.
Using facial recognition technology we were able to match Dave Stanfield’s headshot to its actual owner - a Prague-based beehive maker named Michal Kalis. When we tracked Michal down, he confirmed he had never heard of Madbird, Ali Ayad or Dave Stanfield.
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