EXCLUSIVE: An undercover investigation caught a man red-handed selling his Stuart delivery account to an illegal migrant.
This is the shocking moment a man selling courier accounts to illegal migrants is confronted by an Express reporter after his money-making scheme was rumbled by our undercover investigation.
Posing as the relative of a small boat migrant living in a Home Office hotel, we were able to secure a raft of job offers for a ‘cousin’ who didn’t have the legal right to work.
One of those happy to cash in was Edinburgh-based Asim Malik, who we found offering to rent his central London delivery driver accounts for £50 a week on Facebook.
Malik told our undercover reporter in a video call that he was happy to have an asylum seeker who’d come to the UK by small boat use his account and work illegally.
He advised the reporter that the ‘asylum seeker’ was best using his Stuart delivery account as “they’re not asking for IDs” unlike “Deliveroo and Just Eat.”
To demonstrate how easy it would be for the illegal migrant to use his courier account to earn money, Malik provided us with the login details.
The Express went undercover to expose illegal working on delivery platforms (Image: Express)
After gaining access, our reporter was inundated with offers to make deliveries for supermarkets and high-street retailers. We then also discovered the details attached to the profile were for a woman, not Malik.
We called back the Edinburgh man to confront him about the setup he’d just agreed to and were met with shock.
Initially speechless, Malik had no explanation for his actions other than to claim he’d only intended to rent the account to the undercover reporter whom he thought was “legal”.
When pressed on the woman’s name on the profile, Malik became nervous and ended the call.
You can watch the full interaction in the video above.
Responding to the findings of this investigation, Minister for Border Security and Asylum Alex Norris said: “No asylum seeker should be abusing our hospitality and working illegally.
“We have sent a stark message to those with no right to be here with nearly 50,000 illegal migrants removed or deported since the election. We are not stopping there – tough new laws will demand that gig economy companies strengthen right to work checks for delivery drivers.”
Stuart’s Head of Legal James Hall said: “We do not comment on specific cases. However, we can confirm that Stuart conducts compliance checks during the courier onboarding process, including verification of right-to-work documentation, to ensure that all active courier accounts on the platform have the right to work in the UK.
“Stuart does carry out frequent facial recognition checks on courier accounts and other courier account compliance audits to ensure that couriers operating on our platform do so in accordance with our terms and conditions.
“Any evidence of unauthorised account sharing is acted upon with courier accounts being offboarded from the platform.
“We remain committed to continuously improving our systems to prevent unauthorised account usage.”
