Episode 1 Fake Britain

Welcome to a world where nothing is quite as it seems.

Welcome to Fake Britain.

Get up! Put your hands behind your back now!

In this series,

I'm going to be investigating the world of the criminals,

who make their money at your expense.

And I'll be showing you how not to get ripped off.

..Police officer, wait there.

Coming up...

The hunt for a passport faker

turns up more than the Border Agency bargained for.

Unlucky for them and lucky for us.

The animals cruelly killed by the fashion fakers.

Some of these animals are clearly still alive and conscious

as they're being skinned.

The fake perfumes for sale at full price.

I think that what's in here is absolutely shocking.

And the astounding amounts of money

fakers are trying to sneak into the UK.

Hundreds of thousands, if not getting close to millions now.

A major operation by the police and UK Border Agency

is about to get underway in south-east London.

It's designed to tackle serious criminality

and international identity fraud.

-I've got two walking out the back.

-What?

And for officers on the ground,

it presented an unexpected chain of events that leads to a major arrest.

Send the dog into the garden, flush them out.

And it all started one morning

with a search at a Heathrow Airport cargo plant.

Detecting possible frauds in cargo shipped through Heathrow Airport

is a major part of the work of the UK Border Agency.

Detection officers here see everything from drugs to firearms

hidden in the consignments coming through the airport.

But the scale of one find surprised even them.

We had a shipment to examine

that was selected by a freight targeting officer.

It was a large cardboard box from Africa.

And when we opened it, we found packets of hair attachments

and hair accessories.

But Amajit was suspicious

about the feel of the packaging on the hair extensions.

I could feel something hard and flat inside.

So I used my knife to open it

and I pulled out a package that appeared to be a passport.

We found a total of 147 passports

concealed in various packages within the shipment.

It's one of the largest seizures we've found.

These passports would have been used to set up false identities in the UK.

Finding them will trigger a major operation.

The passports were seized

and they were referred to the UK Border Agency crime team

for further investigation.

The evidence is sent across London to a specialist crime team

led by Andy Russell.

And these are what was found in the box.

To this extent, with these amount of passports,

you'd have to suggest that there's some sort of organised crime link

to these passports.

So the value, roughly £5,000 a time, that is a lot of money being made.

Some passports are more valuable than others.

All of these have entry visas

that will allow the holder to work in the UK or claim benefits.

Andy's team work undercover, so we can't show their faces.

But they are about to raid the address the package was heading for.

The person expecting the package

doesn't realise the border agency have seized it.

They're expecting delivery any minute.

They think the package is on the way.

It has been arranged by the delivery company

that the package will be delivered between the hours of 10 and 11 today.

As you're aware, the traffic is quite busy,

we are running slightly late.

However, we will deliver that package for her.

At the target address, a van full of police and order agency officers

is not what the owner was expecting.

Sit down. Listen, just relax, just sit down and relax.

What the officers are doing now,

they're explaining to the lady who was the recipient of the parcel, why we are here.

And explaining that the package that she was importing from Lagos

has been intercepted.

Whilst that's being explained to her,

a search will be carried out of the premises

and then we'll probably move on to her home address.

There's no sign of fake identity documents here.

So officers move on to her nearby home address.

They've got the front door key so it's an easy entry.

But before they do a full search on this house,

officers spot something happening in the back garden next door.

Down there. Two of them, they were on the phone.

-We've got two walking out the back.

-What?

Two men have fled the house and are hiding in the back garden.

Guys, what are you doing?

-They came from the second garden.

-What are you doing?

Wait there, I'm a police officer. Wait there!

Two men have been spotted hidden in the bushes,

but they're not stopping to chat.

And in a moment, we'll find out why they ran from the police.

Southampton docks is the country's second-largest container terminal

and one of the UK's main trade hubs with the rest of the world.

Thousands of giant containers pass through it each week.

And the UK Border Agency's fake detection teams

have the task of searching them.

They've got some very special hardware to help.

This is a mobile scanner.

It can be driven over even the largest containers

that come through the port.

The scanner acts like an X-ray,

allowing officers to see inside the box.

The container they've stopped here

is one of a shipment of six from China.

When they scanned it,

officers thought the stocking boxes inside

looked too densely packed to be legitimate goods.

The officer just passed out these boots.

They look like Ugg boots, or they could possibly be Ugg boots.

Erm...

But the back label, here you'd expect to see a label on there,

it looks like there's a space for a label.

This looks very familiar to what we'd see as a proper Ugg boot sole.

This potentially looks like it may be copied

because the quality of it doesn't look like the quality we'd expect

from what is quite an expensive product.

Despite costing up to £250 a pair, genuine Ugg boots

are one of the fashion footwear success stories of the decade.

Demand for them is massive,

and that makes them very attractive to the counterfeiters.

Officers suspect these are all fakes.

I'm looking at the markings on there as well.

It doesn't look particularly good quality packaging.

For a premium product, you'd expect it to be packaged in a good way.

Again, this isn't how we'd expect it to be.

They look quite a cheap finish,

for what you'd expect to retail of about £200.

Real Uggs have a copyrighted sole design,

and officers think these boots are an attempt to directly fake it.

If not as skilfully as on the real thing.

You can see some of the glue is still around the sole here.

Not what you'd expect for a £200 product.

Officers knew that if their initial suspicions were correct,

they had made a major find of counterfeit goods.

They examined the crate and the remaining five in the shipment,

finding more than 40,000 pairs of boots

that were about to flood the UK market.

This wasn't the work of petty criminals.

There's serious organised crime behind this.

They use the money from this to fund more sinister things.

This could be things like terrorism, drug smuggling, cigarette smuggling.

So many things that will cause problems within the UK.

It was a huge haul of boots

and the manufacturers quickly confirmed none of them were real.

As far as I'm aware,

this seizure we've made today

is the biggest seizure of Ugg counterfeit boots

and certainly the biggest we've ever had here in Southampton.

We believe the retail value, if they were sold,

would be towards the £9 million mark.

The quality of these,

we have had some guidance they would possibly be sold in markets

for between £60-£80.

The public will not be going out there

buying cheap quality, poor products,

which may also have some health concerns

because we are aware that some of the dyes

that are used in colouring these boots

have had some chemicals that aren't controlled in any way.

There is a health issue to this as well.

It was a major success for the UK Border Agency.

But there's another aspect to the trade in fake Ugg boots

that goes beyond economics and organised crime,

and will shock and disturb you.

Animal rights campaigners have identified intense cruelty

linked to a small number of counterfeit boots.

And later on, we'll find out why.

Earlier on, we saw the UK Border Agency

and police teams in south-east London

on the trail of some fake passports.

But as they carried out their searches,

two men mysteriously ran from the house next door.

What are you doing? Wait there,

I'm a police officer. Wait there!

Now officers are hot on their heels.

They race to cut off possible escape routes for the runaways.

Another officer drives off in the direction the men ran.

The property has multiple escape routes to cover

and there are many hiding places in the overgrown back gardens.

But the officers have got a plan.

A dog unit, yeah, we could...

Be helpful.

A search dog has been called in to try and pick up a scent

if the escapees are still in the area.

But there's still confusion on the ground.

The men ran from the house next door

to the one the officers were searching.

They weren't the targets of this operation, so why have they run?

They might be about to find out.

It sounds like the dog's found something.

BARKING

-Oh, he might have found something.

-He's in the other garden.

There's someone hiding under a bush.

It looks like one of the men who ran.

All the officers know at this stage

is that he ran from a neighbouring property.

One man is still on the loose,

but they will question the one they've caught and search his house

to find out what he's been hiding.

Hands behind your back.

And as he's led away,

the dog handler's found more evidence at the scene.

Where the person that was detained was found,

I always go back and search where they were,

just to see if they've discarded anything.

The dog's indicated there's a couple of items down there.

When I've had a closer look,

I haven't them touched them in any way,

it seems to be a couple of mobile phones.

The phones could hold important evidence about why he ran.

A serious passport fraud was what prompted this operation.

At the original target, a search hasn't yielded any new evidence,

but the woman is taken for questioning to the station.

Now they have to find out why the mystery man ran.

What I need to try and figure out though,

are you running because you're an illegal immigrant

and that's why you legged it?

Or are you running because you're in serious BLEEP with criminal matters?

As you are aware, the gentleman ran from the main house earlier.

What we're trying to establish now,

is the name he has given is not his real name.

The immigration officer is with us,

she's had a photograph sent through via her phone.

Obviously they don't correspond

with the chap we've got in the back of the van.

We're trying to establish now, A, his real name,

and B, whether he's involved in this criminality,

or he's got a reason to hide through the immigration status.

And a thorough search of a wardrobe at the mystery man's house

has turned up a very good reason why he might have run.

This, we think, is possibly crack,

but I've not seen it in squares before.

And more.

And we've got two pots of bicarbonate of soda

which is another mixing agent.

The very presence of police nearby

seems to have made the men panic and flee.

There are more reasons to run from the authorities in another room.

A little hatch here and another bag which I'll put on the bed.

There's obviously more of exactly the same we saw in the other room,

the big squares of whatever it is, compacted coke or some kind of drug.

Underneath this top here, there was this bag

containing all of this stuff.

As you can see there, about 15 grams worth of smaller rocks

like we found in the other room,

another set of weighing scales

and some more bags containing...

which haven't been opened up, but feel like white powder,

and to look at, white powder again.

The officers would never have searched this house

if the men hadn't run.

Sometimes you need a bit of luck.

Unlucky for them and lucky for us.

As you can see, these type of jobs,

although we've come in here

primarily for the materials in the package,

on the extensive searches carried out by the officers,

they uncover a variety of things. On this occasion,

they seem to have uncovered quite a significant drug find.

It probably is some form of rock...

crack cocaine in rock form.

They found evidence of fake identities

for the man they arrested.

And the man who escaped has left behind

identity documents of his own.

We've got an African name of a guy

which we assume is probably the guy that's run away.

Then a travel card with a different name, a French name.

Then elsewhere in the wardrobe, we found a crib sheet

which basically lists that French name, the date of birth,

what his nationality is.

And this is his crib sheet so he can actually remember

who he's purporting to be with his fake identity.

With the search complete, the suspect is about to get bad news.

He thought police only had him for immigration offences,

but now he's been arrested for the drugs.

Anything you do say may be given in evidence. Do you understand that? OK.

For the UK Border Agency and the police,

stopping the passports was crucial

and uncovering the drugs as well

has turned this operation into a major success.

The shop owner was not charged,

but the passports are still being investigated.

The man arrested running from the police was not charged

with drug offences but will be removed from the UK.

If he'd have stayed in his house, then the chances are,

he would still be sat at home.

There may be a recession across Europe

but on the British high street,

one product has bucked the trend and sold well.

Perfume.

We like our scent so much in the UK that in recent years

the perfume market has been worth nearly £2 billion here.

Even in hard times, it seems people are keen to smell good.

But what most customers don't realise

is that as many as one in three of us have bought fake perfume.

Such a big market is irresistible to the criminals.

Hounslow Trading Standards and the police are getting ready

to raid a local market in West London.

We can't show most of the officers' faces

due to the nature of their work,

but covert teams have visited the market this morning to confirm

that certain counterfeit goods are on sale.

It's in the first... the second row, sorry, on the left-hand side.

That's it. Right.

If you go in from this one, these two here are mega today.

There's a lot of product there.

One of their main targets is a seller dealing in fake perfumes.

Previous operations by trading standards have uncovered fakes

that cause skin rashes and some even contain horse urine.

A trader in Newport got two years' jail

for having more than 600 bottles of fake perfume.

The team arrive at the market and hit the target's stall.

But there's a problem.

They think spotters working for the counterfeiters

have tipped off the stall holder

that Police and Trading Standards have arrived.

The stall owners have run.

When the stall holders saw the police and me approaching the stall,

they basically did a runner.

Apart from the perfume, they've also got lots of clothing.

Some of this is Ralph Lauren clothing

which is obviously...

Most of it is a counterfeit.

They wouldn't have done a runner unless it was a counterfeit.

Everything you see here is believed to be a fake.

The counterfeit perfume market is worth as much as

£319 million a year

and costs the Exchequer tens of millions in lost taxes.

And absolutely none of this will have been through

any testing procedure to make sure it's safe.

Roger Dove is one of this country's

most exclusive perfumers.

He has a studio in Harrods and makes bespoke fragrances for clients.

He can see potential for harm with fakes.

People are making these products with not scant regard,

no regard to what's inside the bottle.

I don't believe that it can lead to anything other than

allergic reactions,

'disappointment and general damage to my industry.'

But buyers in West London may not be aware of what they're getting

because even with officers seizing the stock,

they're still bargain hunting.

It's shut. Finished.

Not good stuff, yeah?

Probably burn your skin if you put that on there.

But for others,

the revelation that this is all fake is a worrying development.

Yeah, it is.

Put it on your skin and half your skin will probably come off.

She has sensitive skin,

so you've got to be really careful now

cos obviously fake stuff can really damage you, can't it?

All the stock is seized and will be used as evidence.

The stallholder may have run today,

but the team here will still attempt to find and prosecute him.

Many of the bottles of perfumes

and some of the boxes

will have fingerprints on them.

We've also seized some of the documents listing

cash payments they've given and received

and bought and the stock. So obviously,

if we catch up with them at some stage in another market,

whatever evidence we gather here can be used

to identify the people involved behind this.

The search for the runaway trader will continue.

And in a moment, we'll find out about the audacious online

perfume fraud that's fooling thousands across the country.

Earlier, we saw how the detection teams at Heathrow

had a major find of fake passports.

Today, they're back out searching again for other fakes

and sometimes that can mean investigating

even the most unusual-looking shipments.

But it's not carved elephants or fake identity documents

that's caught their attention today.

It's a letter containing a cheque for 10 million.

What we've just found is some correspondence...

..in a document package.

It's some kind of... like an investment opportunity

with a cheque which is quite large

and it could be something that's a scam

or some kind of fraud being committed.

The letter is addressed to a man who appears

to have already handed over £30,000 to the fakers,

probably in the mistaken belief that he now owns a share

in the Nigerian Cocoa Oil Company.

This is a receipt from the company in Nigeria...

..of a payment that has been given to them of 30,000.

So whoever it is has already paid 30,000.

But the amount of interest he will be getting is 10 million.

I don't know any investment which is that good.

And the big value cheque itself is quite crude.

The cheque itself is a Nigerian originating cheque.

It would be like if I wrote out a cheque

from a normal UK bank account

with a dollar sign. You can't do that.

So it appears that this cheque for 10 million US dollars

will probably bounce.

The team suspect that this is evidence of a fraudulent transaction

and want to see if they can contact the company that supposedly issued the cheque.

When we've done checks, this company doesn't even exist.

we can't even find any track of it. So it's almost 100% a scam.

Scams requesting investment for companies in West Africa

are common and the team will inform the recipient

that they were suspicious of what was being sent to him...

and of the free gift he's been given.

That was found within the packaging and the certificate,

investment certificate, and the cheque.

It doesn't seem consistent, sending a T-shirt.

That's not the sort of gift

that a large corporation

who's issuing a cheque for 10 million US dollars would give to an investor.

On here, it says, Cocoa Oil Investment Nigeria.

It's got Crude Oil Investment Nigeria.

It's not even the same company.

And as the team continue to search through packages,

they find evidence of an even bigger financial crime

that has grown in recent years, just as the economy has worsened.

There's a quantity of what appears to be

individual 500 euro travellers' cheques.

These are most likely to be forgeries.

There's a large number of cheques in the package.

This sum of money would normally be under armed guard

rather than stuffed into an air freight envelope.

The silver foil... When you get very close,

it's very roughly put on.

It's not like a normal American Express traveller's cheques

that are quite good quality.

You can also see the quality of the ink.

There's a faintness in the quality. and the numbers...

..are slightly smudged.

The team will have to count out every single note

to figure out the scale of this attempted fraud.

But in a time of economic hardship,

few people can afford to be passed a fake 500 euro cheque.

And the search seems to have yielded more fakes.

Layers of newspaper and layers of cashier cheques.

All different amounts of US dollars.

Different banks.

All around about the 3,000 mark.

So someone would try and take that into a bank,

try and cash it for that amount.

Because it's not too large,

there's a distinct possibility it'd get through.

Someone will try and cash that. Have you got quite a few?

-Layers and layers of newspaper.

-There's more?

-Cheques in between.

There's loads of them.

And the counterfeiters have tried to beat the detection teams

with something inside the package.

There you go. You see, they wrap it in carbon as well.

They put a layer of carbon because

they believe it's going to defeat the X-rays.

It doesn't work though.

And we have...

US dollar cheques that are pre-printed

so they'll try and cash them in to get the money.

And the finds continue.

These are postal money orders this time.

In this batch of cheques alone, there's about 150,000 euros.

That's the fifth packet of fake cheques

and many are going to an anonymous pick-up address in the UK

to help the fraudster avoid detection.

By the end of the search, a huge sum of fake money has been seized,

all of which would have been used for fraud against UK businesses.

A busy morning. We've had in total five cheque job seizures...

..postal orders, money orders, travellers' cheques,

all from Nigeria.

They account to hundreds of thousands,

if not getting close to millions, now.

It's a very common thing. These can be found

on literally a daily basis,

this sort of the amount of money coming through.

So it's a very regular thing.

It's becoming quite a big part of our job.

It's very time-consuming.

We saw how a UK Border Agency team at Southampton

foiled an attempt to flood the UK with fake Ugg boots.

But the gangs behind some counterfeiting of boots

will sink far lower than simply making fakes.

Mark Jones is a qualified vet

and executive director of the Humane Society.

I'm watching footage of the...

..fur farming process in China.

I've seen it many, many times

but it's still incredibly difficult to watch.

The footage was captured by undercover charity investigators

at a Chinese fur farm.

The footage shows raccoon dogs and foxes

in tiny, tiny cages,

barely room to turn around.

And most disturbingly of all,

it shows these animals being taken from their cages

and just literally beaten on the ground,

in order to knock them senseless,

and then being skinned.

Some of these animals are clearly still alive and conscious

as they're being skinned.

The fur produced in these farms has been found in some shipments

of fake Ugg boots.

The raccoon dogs are a member of the canine family.

They look similar to foxes and are common in parts of Asia and Russia.

Now, it's not illegal to use their fur,

but few people would agree with how they're being treated.

We know that these counterfeit boots

have been available on the high street in Australia.

And we know that while we haven't seen them

on the high street in the UK,

they have been made available through websites.

So people may be able to get hold of them here.

The boots seized at Southampton all had man-made synthetic linings.

But boots bought from unofficial online sites

could have fur produced in the cruellest conditions.

This is a counterfeit Ugg boot.

It looks very similar in structure and in style to a real Ugg boot.

But what we have on it is all this fur trim,

and this fur we've analysed, and it comes from the raccoon dogs.

And this fur will have been derived from raccoon dog farms in China

and those animals will have been brutally slaughtered

in order to produce this product.

We all like a bargain, but the cost to the animals slaughtered

to make the boot seen here was anything but cheap.

I think that a lot of people make the assumption

that if an item is cheap,

it probably contains fake rather than real fur.

However, that's simply not the case.

People can be very easily fooled into buying real fur

and effectively providing funding for the cruelty and abuse

that goes on on fur farms.

It's 5am in Harrow, North London.

Members of the council's counter-fraud team

are up early today and are off to visit tenants

in some of the council's properties.

The homes are meant to be let out to people with a real need,

but investigators suspect that the people the council are letting

some of their houses to have sub-let them out to someone else.

Across the UK, there are thousands of fake landlords

sub-letting houses given to them by their council.

It's illegal to sub-let,

but it also prevents the 1.8 million families

on council house waiting lists

from getting the home they desperately need.

By paying an early morning visit, the team hope to establish

who is really living in the council properties.

So if they're not living there and that's not their main residence,

then we would be seeking to have the property returned to us.

Officers have intelligence that a tenant in one of their flats here

has moved out and sub-let the property to someone else.

And they can hear voices from inside.

This is Harrow Council. Can you open the door, please?

We can hear you're in there.

Is there a reason you won't open the door to us?

Yeah, we were expecting an older lady.

The voice that came back was obviously a young female

who's obviously aware, we've identified ourselves,

and is now not wanting to open the door.

Hello.

The tenant who's supposed to live here will be called in

for an interview and may lose the flat.

But as dawn breaks, the team move on

to another property they have suspicions about.

The intel is that they're paying rent.

We've got names...

what they look like and age group.

We believe the actual tenant is living in Dubai.

Time to see who's in.

KNOCKING ON DOOR

-Hello. Hi.

-We're from Harrow Council.

-Are you Mr

-BLEEP?

-Yes?

-No.

-No? Who are you, sorry, sir?

My name's Sonia Mukherjee. We're calling from...

-Sorry...

-Hello?

SHE BANGS ON DOOR

Sir, can you open the door, please?

No? He's not going to open.

But slamming the door in the team's faces isn't going to make them

drop the matter. They'll now launch a full investigation.

He saw who we were then promptly shut the door on us

and would not allow us into the property to speak to them.

This will just arouse our suspicions even more and now we have to do

even more legwork to try to establish who is in the property.

Hopefully, if they're not in the property,

the people who are supposed to will get the properties back.

There are people all over London...

..desperately needing somewhere to live,

families, single people, couples,

and when you see...

..like we've seen this morning,

obviously not the people who should be there,

it is annoying.

So you get a sense of, erm...

-Righting the justice.

-Yeah, yeah.

Sorting it out so that people who really do need somewhere to live,

people who deserve to have somewhere decent to live

can get that place.

With tenants now under scrutiny,

the team think they're now on the right track.

But they have another early-morning visit planned.

They believe the man who should be living at this address has moved out

and sub-let it to a family who aren't on their housing list.

KNOCKING ON DOOR

-Good morning. I'm from Harrow Council. My name's Peter Biggs.

-Yep.

-Are you... Can I take your name?

-Yeah.

-Your name, sir?

-BLEEP.

This isn't the man who the council let the property to.

How long have you lived here, sir?

You've been here about a month?

So, in all, there are five of you living here.

You and your wife, two children and the owner of the property

and nobody else?

That's news to the council.

They have no record of this man or his family.

And so do you pay any rent to him at all?

Do you pay any for living here?

OK. How much are you paying for rent?

£300. OK.

The man claims the person the council rent the property to

also lives here with them but Sonia's spotted something.

All the pictures here are of you and your family

and you've been here a month?

-Can we have a quick look around the property, please.

-Sure you can.

Thank you.

The investigators are looking for any sign

that the actual tenant is living here.

Where does he keep his clothes and belongings?

Both bedrooms are being used by the family.

There doesn't seem to be any spare space.

He uses what bed, sorry?

What bed? There's no mattress.

The team aren't convinced.

There is nothing to indicate that he is living here. There is no bedding.

You've shown me a place on the floor.

He goes to sleep there.

-Are you maintaining to me that he's living here?

-Yeah.

OK. So, what time did he leave this morning then?

Can you tell me what time he left this morning?

The man's not sure what time his supposed house sharer left

-and all his answers seem patchy.

-How old do you think he is?

Give or take.

-OK. There is nothing to indicate that Mr

-BLEEP

-is living here.

You've shown me some clothes which quite frankly could be yours or his.

There's no space for him to actually sleep.

I don't believe he's living here.

If the investigators can prove the proper tenant is sub-letting,

they can take back the house and give it to somebody in need.

Time to give him a ring.

-Hello. Is that Mr

-BLEEP?

Yeah, hello. This is Sonia Mukherjee. I'm calling from Harrow Council.

We've come to do a visit on your property

and we found, obviously, someone else here.

When did you last come to this house?

The day before what?

Which one is it, sir? Which one is it?

Which day... It's not a hard question.

When were you last at this property?

-Hello, Mr

-BLEEP?

He's hung up.

You've just told me he was here yesterday.

I've just spoken to him on the phone

and he seemed unable to tell me when he was last here.

I also asked him when he left. He was unable to answer that.

-Now, as I said, I don't believe that Mr

-BLEEP

-lives here,

I believe he's elsewhere

and that you are renting this property from him.

So, I'm going to ask you specifically.

-Do you rent this property from Mr

-BLEEP?

-No, I don't.

-You don't?

-No.

-But you pay him rent?

-Yeah, I'm paying the rent.

-You share the property with him,

there's no evidence of him living here,

he can't tell me when he was last here

except you tell me it was yesterday.

And you're telling me that he's living here.

There is no... All the pictures of you and your family.

No pictures of his family.

We are his family.

Everything here in this house indicates that you're living here.

After half-an-hour at the property,

the investigators think they've seen enough.

There was nothing in the property to indicate that he was there.

If you looked at the bedding, where the children were,

there was nothing in there.

When were you last at home?

The man Harrow Council found living in the flat

has now moved out with his family.

The actual tenant has since had his claim to the flat removed

by the council who have instead moved in a new family

from their waiting list.

We've already seen how fake perfume sellers

operate at Britain's markets,

but the biggest growth area for fraudulent sales has been online.

One trading standards-backed organisation says they're being

inundated with calls from victims of the fake perfume websites.

I'd say about 10% of the reports we get from consumers telling us

about counterfeit sites and products they've bought online which are fake

are perfume based.

One buyer who contacted Brand-i is Kelly Compton from Uxbridge.

She spent £150 on four perfumes

from a website called theessencestore.com

but is worried they sold her fakes.

We're going to try and help her find out if that's true.

Roger Dove is what's known as a nose.

He is a former perfumer at Guerlain

where he was known as a professor of perfume.

He now runs his own perfume company

and is probably the United Kingdom's most experienced perfume maker.

He thinks there's no way the counterfeiters could make

convincing scents because the ingredients in many brands

are just too expensive.

For example, with jasmine, the finest costs £34,000 a kilo.

It's more than gold bullion.

You can buy jasmine for a few thousand pounds.

Or with sandalwood, the sandalwood I use generally is 50-years-old.

With fake fragrances or copy fragrances,

there is no way that they can replicate

the spirit of the original creation.

It's just impossible.

Roger has agreed to cast his nose over the perfumes

Kelly bought online and let her know if her suspicions are correct

and she has bought £150 worth of fakes.

Hello, Kelly. Let's have a look at what you've got here.

The first one of these is supposed to be Gucci Rush.

But I think that if you were sort of...

shown it very quickly and being made to make a decision quickly

then maybe you could be tricked by it.

I sprayed some of this scent earlier and it's too fruity.

Gucci Rush is what we would call a chypre,

which are perfumes based around mosses and woods.

Certainly, it has a touch of that about it.

But it dissipates very quickly.

For me, it doesn't have the complexity or the depth

that I would expect to smell when I smell Gucci Rush.

That fake has cost Kelly more than £30.

So, the next one you've got here is Paco Rabanne's Black XS.

I think it feels a little bit like a photocopy of the original.

Somewhere, you can smell there's an echo of it.

Where did you get these things?!

That's also a £30 fake.

The next one is very funny.

Just to look at it is funny. Kenzo Amour.

The bottle is a so cheaply made.

That's how I received it, with all the scratches.

It's utterly astonishing.

I think that they work on the first impression

and they're generally the most inexpensive ingredients

inside the formula, generally.

But then as the scent dries down, what you get is this thinness.

That's £40 wasted and Kelly's final perfume is Flowerbomb,

a £65 fragrance,

but available at theessencestore.com

for a tempting 50 quid a bottle.

There are just so many things that are wrong with this.

The moulding is shocking.

The glass looks almost like frosted glass you would see in a lavatory.

And I think that's what's in here is absolutely shocking.

To think that this is anything like Flowerbomb is just...

I think you'd have to have a very vivid imagination

to think that this is anything like the original scent.

So, expert confirmation that none of these scents are the real thing.

Roger feels online sites like theessencestore.com do untold harm.

I think that it's very important to understand that my industry

is a multi-billion dollar industry.

It employs so many different people

so I think that when you end up with a counterfeit product,

the problem with it is that

if it ends up giving my industry a bad name,

then in fact, it damages the livelihoods of millions of people.

But there is something you can do when shopping online.

The Brand-i team keep a directory of legitimate online sellers.

Jenny thinks that the fakers behind theessencestore.com put

a lot of effort into making something that would fool

thousands across the UK.

Their products look very genuine on the site.

The website looks very genuine.

It's set up to look like a proper business.

They have reviews on the right-hand side all of which are four-star.

One even says,

"I had to wait a long time for it but it was worth waiting for."

"Nice products", is one review.

So these won't be genuine reviews.

And there's a reason the prices for these online fakes are only

slightly lower than the high street.

The prices of the products are not too far off the genuine prices,

so someone will just be thinking they're getting a genuine bargain,

rather than thinking they're buying something that's fake.

Brand-i and trading standards

have tried to stop theessencestore.com operation,

but the fakers behind it are not based in the UK.

As soon as their website gets closed down at one address,

it crops up somewhere else.

Customers are advised to take care.

We list a number of brands which are highly counterfeited online.

It means that if people use our shopping directory,

they can find legitimate stockists of those brands.

Kelly has been conned out of £150,

but has at least learned from the experience.

I do feel really annoyed. I've been totally ripped off

and I just hate to think how many people they've done this to

and how much money they're making from this.

That's all from Fake Britain today. Bye for now.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd