Jobfished: How to avoid lying at all costs

The BBC has run an investigation about a company called Madbird which, the BBC claims, recruited people under false pretences.

Divya Talwar @DivyaTalwar1

This is the extraordinary story that our team has been investigating over the last year. Read 👇, watch the doc - #Jobfished - on @bbcthree @ 9pm today, and radio version on @Radio4 11am today. Team - @CatrinNye @mrbenlister @leo_sands @_Sampat bbc.co.uk/news/uk-603873…

bbc.co.ukThe elaborate con that tricked dozens into working for a fake design agencyDozens of young people were tricked into thinking they were working for a glamorous UK design agency - which didn’t really exist.

As part of the investigation, a reporter caught up with the man running the company, Ali Ayad, you can see the full meeting on the link above.

What’s interesting about this exchange is that, despite facing serious allegations and robust questioning, Ali doesn’t lie once in his answers.

The vast majority of people want to avoid lying. However, that doesn’t mean everything we hear from people is truthful. People will use a variety of tactics to mislead or deceive without ever telling a factual untruth.

Ali uses a lot of these techniques here.

Let’s have a look

Reporter: You must want to apologise to all the people that you tricked, that you lied to. They lost money, Ali.

Ali: This is your version of the story, OK.

Reporter: We have you waiting to hear your version of the story, Ali, for months.

Ali: You don't know all the things behind the story. You have heard one version of the story. You need to see two sides of the story. There’s always a different side of the story. I'm going to tell you, I'm going to sit down with you and I will tell you but not right now.

Ali is on safe ground here. He’s certain that she doesn’t know all the things behind the story. It doesn’t matter if she knows 99.99% of the story. He’s confident in saying she doesn’t know all the things.

“There’s always a different side of the story” is a clique. It sounds good, it sounds convincing. All it means is that anyone can tell a different side to a story, he doesn’t say the other side is the truth, he just says a general statement that he hopes is convincing.

By throwing out the “you don’t know all the things” and “there’s a different side of the story” he has avoided dealing with the reporter's first statement “you must want to apologise to all the people that you tricked”

Reporter: Unfortunately, Ali, actually I don't believe you. Do you know how badly you affected people with what you did?

Ali: All I know is that we create opportunities for people…

Ali doesn’t answer the question here—it’s a yes or no question “yes I do”, or “no I don’t”, “know how people were affected” is the only answer that directly addresses the question.

Replying to a different question than you’ve been asked, is a classic misleading tactic.

Reporter: You didn’t create any opportunities for anyone.

Ali: … opportunities for people to work in the middle of Covid. And we, in a very short period of time, we created a lot of opportunities for people to work. That's what I know.

Ali continues to avoid the question about how badly people were affected. Instead, he focusses on “opportunities”. He is not happy to talk about how people were affected, but he’s happy to discuss the “opportunities” he created.

“Opportunities for people to work” might sound impressive, but an opportunity is not something solid, it’s a notion or a chance. Not a cast-iron thing that he has created.

Reporter: Are you serious? It was a fake company Ali.

Ali: It’s not a fake company. What is a company? What is a company? You say a fake company, what is a fake company?

Ali is employing two distraction techniques in one here. The first is answering a question with a question. This allows him to not answer the question and to buy thinking time about which words he can use next.

Next, often people who are being asked sensitive questions will start to very precisely define words, so they can use THEIR definition of the words in question in their defence. This frequently comes out as “what do you mean by …?”.

We’ll come to see here that Ali is trying to use a formal definition of a company. He wants “company” to be defined as an entity that is registered with the authorities as a company.

The reporter means “company” in a bigger sense, a workplace, an entity that buys and sells things and pays the people who work for it.

Ali will stick with his definition throughout.

Reporter: Ali, your co-founder Dave Stanfield doesn’t exist.

Ali: What is a company? What is a company?

Reporter: Who’s Dave Stanfield?

Yes, it was a company on Companies House

Ali: What is a company?

Ali is intent on not dealing with allegations that the company isn’t real and that people who he said worked for the company aren’t real either. He’s still deflecting in a way that he hopes will be useful to him, towards the definition of what a company is.

Quick note—Ali has not told one lie yet.

Reporter: All the work on your website was fake.

Ali: It’s not nice, this is on a road, you know

Reporter: This is not what I wanted to do.

Ali: Fine, I want to sit down with you and talk but not like this

Again, Ali is talking about things he’s comfortable talking about, not dealing with the allegations

Reporter: Will you say sorry?

Ali: For what?

Reporter: For the fact that you lied. You stole people’s identities.

Ali: I did? I did? I did?

Reporter: Yes

Ali: I did? How do you know this?

Reporter: Because we've been investigating Madbird for months.

Ali: And how do you know I did?

Ali is now simply batting back the questions with questions of his own. Note that he’s not denying the allegations, he’s asking questions about them.

Ali never repeats the detail of the allegations put to him. Maybe he finds them distasteful to say, maybe he wants to distance himself from them. Whatever the reason, he can’t bring himself to ask a question like “why do you say I stole people’s indentities?”

Also of note is that one question Ali asks is “how do you know I did?”. Not “why do you think I did?” or “what would make you believe I did?”.

It’s fair to say this is working well for him. The reporter has not had answers to most of what she has asked.

Reporter: Well, who else did it? Are you saying it was someone else's fault?

Ali: This is your story. That's what you do in the news. That's what you do. You just point at something and then you just, you know, point the finger at people.

Ali is back into storytelling mode. However, even here, he isn’t denying anything. He isn’t saying the reporter is pointing the finger at him, it’s just a form of generic words involving “something” and “people”. He really wants to avoid the specifics.

Reporter: Will you say sorry to the people you hurt? Whose lives and time you wasted. Will you say sorry to them?

Ali: If I hurt someone, of course I'm sorry. But I'm telling you, there's another version of the story.

You will have spotted the very qualified apology here. He’s sorry “IF” he hurt someone. As soon as he’s said that, he’s moved back to saying there is another version of the story. Again, he doesn’t say it’s a more truthful one or a more factual one, just “another version”.

Reporter: Will you tell me one reason that you did this to people? Tell me one reason.

People deserve to know why.

Ali: It was an authentic company. This company had people that worked in it. And we had everything that a company needs. It’s your version of a story - fake. What is fake? The company is registered, it has an office we have we have…

Ali doesn’t answer the question directly again. He doesn’t explain why he did this. Instead, he goes back to where he is comfortable, talking about what constitutes a company.

Reporter: You don’t have an office, where is your office?

Ali: It’s a digital company. It’s a digital company.

You hopefully have noticed, the question was “where” and the answer doesn’t match that.

Reporter: So you don’t have an office?

Ali: We have an office, but you don't really have to have computers and stuff right. It’s a digital company.

Reporter: So, where’s your office? Where’s your office?

Ali: It was registered in (BLEEP) street.

Here, Ali gives away his strategy. He could have said, “my office is on (name) street”. Instead, he shows all he cares about is the fact it was a legally documented company by saying “it was registered in (name) street”

Reporter: That was your house?

We genuinely want to hear your side of the story

Ali: Well, give me a chance.

Conclusion

Despite a lot of pressure from the reporter, who had numerous facts to throw at him, Ali didn’t lie once in the exchange. Instead, he tried to control the conversation so that it moved onto the ground he was comfortable with.

He didn’t answer some questions and wanted to narrow others down in very technical ways, but not once did he put himself in the difficult position of having to tell a lie which could be very costly to him.

Next time you’re in a difficult conversation with someone, check if they’re acting like Ali.

The signs that someone is trying to deceive or mislead you are

- Not directly answering the question they are asked

- Trying to narrow down definitions, “what do you mean by…?”

- Answering questions with other questions

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