Mazher Mahmood is renown in England for sting-operation journalism – he is known as the "fake sheikh" as he often posed as an Arab businessman to get his stories. His front-page story alleging singer and The X Factor judge Tulisa Contostavlos had tried to arrange a cocaine deal resulted in her being charged with supplying drugs.

The newspaper ran a five-page spread on “Tulisa’s Cocaine Deal Shame” on June 2, last year.

The 26-year-old Contostavlos maintained throughout her trial she had been entrapped by Mahmood, who she said gained her confidence by posing as a wealthy Bollywood film producer who wished to cast a singer in a lead role opposite Leonardo DiCaprio.

The trial judge, Alistair McCreath, said it was likely that Mahmood had falsely denied, during a pre-trial hearing, that he had pressured his driver, Alan Smith, about evidence that showed that Contostavlos was opposed to drug use. Mahmood changed his account during cross-examination.

There were "strong grounds for believing Mahmood told me lies" about his dealings with the driver, Judge McCreath said. ‘‘There are also strong grounds for believing that the underlying purpose of these lies was to conceal the fact that he had been manipulating the evidence in this case by getting Mr Smith to change his account."

Media rivals gleefully greeted Mahmood's fall with the ready-to-use pun "Sheikh down".

But the collapse of the trial is another mark against Rupert Murdoch’s British empire. His News of the World Sunday newspaper died of shame in 2011 in the wake of revelations about phone hacking. The newspaper’s former editor Andy Coulson was jailed this month as a consequence. Coulson's boss (and former lover) News International chief executive Rebekah Brooks was found not guilty.

The July 11 cover of the satirical magazine Private Eye caught the zeitgeist: Brooks and Coulson are pictured together, a speech bubble from her mouth declaring ‘‘I got away with Murdoch’’.

Mahmood’s vocation as an ‘‘undercover journalist’’ is a curious phenomenon. It exists outside mainstream media standards and carries none of the ethical guidelines adopted by journalists around the world to use fair, responsible and honest means to obtain material and identify themselves and their employers before obtaining interviews for publication or broadcast.

Mahmood has nearly always been a Murdoch man, working on The Sunday Times and the News of the World where he regularly dressed up as a rich Arab to persuade the great and the good, the gullible and the criminal, to act like fools for his secreted tapes and cameras. Murdoch’s Sunday tabloid replacement, the Sun on Sunday, picked him up as its star reporter in October 2012.

In a four-decade career he has scored impressive scoops. Fleet Street cared little about his techniques: he won the British Press Awards "Reporter of the Year" in 1999 for an exposé on Newcastle United football club directors. He posed as a sheikh and accompanied the men to a brothel in Spain where he taped them rubbishing supporters for spending huge amounts on merchandise, calling women supporters "dogs", and mocking a star player.

In 2011 he caught Pakistani cricketers spot-fixing during matches, a story for which he was covered in garlands. Three players and a bookmaker were jailed as a consequence.

British royals seem especially susceptible to Mahmood’s blandishments.

Donning his customary robes in 2001, he sprang Sophie, Countess of Wessex, wife of Prince Edward, making indelicate remarks about public figures, including Tony Blair and William Hague. Back in costume in 2010, he taped the Duchess of York – ‘‘Fergie’’ – in a Mayfair apartment promising to arrange access to her former husband Prince Andrew for £500,000.

Mahmood would not allow a picture byline but insisted his stories carried a silhouette. He was, however, far less coy about his reporting style, writing a book in 2008 called Confessions of a Fake Sheik – The King Of The Sting Reveals All.

He claimed 250 scalps but others are not sure. Court cases against some of his targets fell through, sometimes with the bench making biting comments on Mahmood’s tabloid techniques.

The Murdoch papers always stood by their man. Not this time. Mahmood was suspended on Tuesday.