‘Stowaway selfies’ site is run by Albanian bank robber
And – what a surprise – he reached UK illegally in back of a lorry!
AN Albanian who runs a Facebook page hosting ‘stowaway selfies’ of alleged illegal migrants entering Britain is a convicted bank robber who is himself here illegally.
Fari Lleshi, originally from Kukes in Albania, was jailed in Italy in 2011 for his part in a £20,000 heist.
After his release he smuggled himself into England where he works on the black market as a plasterer and runs the Facebook page ‘Albanians in London’ with more than 70,000 followers.
As the Daily Mail reported in November, the site includes a series of brazen photos apparently showing young Albanians posing for the camera in the back of vans and lorries as they sneak into the UK. It also offers fake IDs and outlines charges to book a place with a people smuggler.
Now the Mail can reveal that the 29-year- old man who runs the website is a convicted criminal.
Lleshi was caught by police after robbing a bank near Trento in Northern Italy with two accomplices in October 2010. He was jailed three months later. He told ‘Mistakes’: Fari Lleshi the Mail he bitterly regrets his past mistakes and is trying to work hard to atone for them.
‘I stayed six years in prison at Trento,’ he said. ‘I robbed the bank. But now I have fulfilled these obligations. I want to forget these mistakes, which I am not comfortable with.’
Lleshi ran into trouble after he moved from Albania to Greece and then on to Italy to escape poverty in his homeland.
After leaving jail, he worked legally in Italy for a while but said things went wrong after he was ‘provoked’ by racially abusive Italian police and ‘reacted badly’.
‘I lost my papers, and I could not stay in Italy, so I went to England,’ he said. ‘Like all Albanians, I came in a truck. There is no other way to travel to England. I picked up a truck and arrived in England.’
He said the UK authorities do not know he is here. ‘I’m not legal. I am here as most illegal foreign immigrants for a better opportunity,’ he added.
The Mail told in November how many young Albanians coming to Britain illegally end up as virtual slave labour in car washes or as drug mules for Albanian gangs. But Lleshi insisted he had turned over a new leaf after arriving, saying: ‘I left everything behind and devoted myself to the right path. I have no reason to engage in networks or criminal acts.
‘I have been in a lot of trouble before but I have lots of projects that I hope with the help of God to realise in the future.’
He is trying to make it as a rap star and his songs have appeared on YouTube, sometimes under the name Baba Lleshi and 2Gunz. In one song he describes cocaine in his blood but said this is symbolic of bad things running through him, not a reference to the drug.
He claimed to have reached the final elimination stage of ‘Voice of Italy’ but was banned after he ran into trouble with the police.
In a Facebook Live video on Boxing Day he boasted that he had been chased by police in London but managed to escape.
A Home Office spokesman said: ‘We expect those with no basis of stay to leave voluntarily and where they do not we will enforce their removal. This includes foreign criminals of whom we returned more than 6,000 last year.’