Repeated allegations posted across social media platforms by Jose Joseph could yet be the subject of legal action, as Met officer requires the stall-holder to alter one recent, misleading message.
EXCLUSIVE by STEVEN DOWNES
Pantomime villain: Jose Joseph continues his social media campaign, despite warnings of libel
Jose Joseph, the eccentric Surrey Street fruit and veg stall-holder, is in trouble with the law again.
Joseph has been told by Croydon police to amend a social media post from last week, following a meeting attended by Superintendent Luke Dillon, which the market trader misleadingly claimed to be staged by the “Croydon business association”.
Joseph was a co-founder and chair of the Croydon Business Association community interest company in 2024, but was kicked out by his fellow directors last year when it emerged that he had been fined £40,000 by the Home Office for employing an illegal immigrant on his Surrey Street stall.
Joseph appears to have a dangerous addiction to self-regarding TikTok videos.
“It’s all a bit of a con job,” according to another local business person.
“Jose appears intent to act on petty revenge, with some kind of vendetta, first against the Labour Party, and now against his former colleagues at the Croydon Business Association.
“But the Met Police don’t appreciate being dragged in to his sordid squabbles.”
Earlier this year, Joseph used his social media platforms to announce his resignation from the Labour Party, accusing it of racism.
Jose Joseph then joined Reform Ltd.
It has been suggested that Joseph even paid £1,000 to Nigel Farage’s grifters’ company in order to be their mayoral candidate. But he lasted just a few weeks pimping his Indian friends to Reform before once again he quit, after belatedly discovering that Farage’s “values” did not align with his own. Either that, or he was rejected by Reform as their mayoral candidate.
In the event, Joseph ran as an independent in the mayoral election earlier this month, where he got just 1.3% of the vote.
Deliberately misleading: Croydon police told Joseph to change his social media messaging about his meeting, which had nothing to do with the CBA
Embittered over his own treatment by the Labour Party, for whom he was a council election candidate in 2022, Joseph told anyone at the election count who would listen, “When Labour lose, I win.”
Joseph finished seventh of the eight mayoral candidates, polling 1,568 votes.
Jason Perry’s winning margin on May 7 was 1,113, condemning all of Croydon to another four years of the Tory Mayor.
A week later, Joseph was posing in a Croydon café, standing alongside Superintendent Luke Dillon, the local police’s second in command.
Joseph’s caption read, “Croydon business association proud to organise the event with superintendent Luke Dhilon [sic] yesterday.”
This rang alarm bells for the real Croydon Business Association, who raised the matter with the police. Croydon’s top cop, DCS Nick Blackburn, the Met’s South Area Commander, undertook to “ensure that this position” would be understood by all the borough’s community policing teams.
Supt Dillon said that he had not been aware of Joseph’s social media posts until the police were contacted by CBA. He asked the stall-holder to amend his post. “It is absolutely routine for me to meet with local businesses… however I would not want to be incorrectly perceived to be either political or in some way demonstrating inappropriate alignment to any organisation,” Supt Dillon said.
This is not the first time that Joseph has been caught trying to pass himself off as something he is not.
Earlier this year, BBC London was forced to correct its online reporting in Croydon after Joseph told them he was still chair of CBA. Companies House records show that he resigned as a director in October last year.
Gullible: BBC-funded reporters on little-read local newspapers earlier this year repeated the falsehood that Jose Joseph is chair of CBA, although he was removed from the position in October 2025
It was around the same time that Joseph was sent a “cease and desist” legal notice “in connection with a series of false and defamatory statements you have published and disseminated across various social media platforms”.
The notice accused Joseph of “making false and malicious assertions associating the organisation [the CBA] with the term ‘scam’.”
And the notice added: “These statements are entirely untrue and misleading.
” …You were lawfully removed from your position as a director by the company. You then lodged a complaint with Companies House which was reviewed and rejected by Companies House.
“Accordingly, your continued public claims… and your efforts to associate the organisation with fraudulent activity are false, defamatory and damaging. These actions constitute libel under the Defamation Act 2013, and have caused, and continue to cause, serious harm to the reputation of the Croydon Business Association, its directors and members.”
Sent to Joseph’s Fellmongers Yard flat, the market trader refused to accept the legal warning.
‘Scam’: Jose Joseph has failed to produce any evidence to back up his allegations
For all his “man of the people” schtick during the election campaign, and his claim to be “Croydon’s Mamdani”, Joseph is reckoned to be a millionaire, with a large cryptocurrency fund and owning at least three properties in Croydon, another in Dover, as well as luxury apartments in India.
For the past decade, he has funded from his own pocket a weekly soup kitchen, providing free meals to the homeless and others on North End on Tuesday evenings.
He appears intent on ignoring the warnings over his claims, and this week, appearing like a pantomime villain with his Dick Dastardly-style moustache, he filmed himself in another TikTok video, outside the Smile Hub on Broad Green, where he repeated his allegations of a “scam”.
In typical Jose Joseph manner, he provided not a shred of evidence to support his claims.
The CBA’s previous legal warnings called for the immediate removal of all of Joseph’s social media allegations and a public apology, or risk court action seeking the payment of damages and all costs.
Tonight, a spokesperson for the CBA confirmed to Inside Croydon that they are considering their next course of action.
Read more: Mayor hopeful’s £40,000 Home Office fine for migrant worker
Read more: Surrey Street market trader Joseph quits Labour in race row
Read more: Tawdry affair of Fairfield candidate coup and the double agent
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