Episode 14 Fake Britain

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

Welcome to Fake Britain.

In this series,

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

who make their money at your expense.

And I'm going to show YOU how not to get ripped off.

Coming up...

we test the fake electrical equipment that could kill.

We have exclusive footage of an underground fake-cigarette factory

in China and we discover just how ruthless the gangs

smuggling these cigarettes to the UK really are.

In order to escape the authorities, the Triads simply opened the container

and threw the women into the sea.

We hear about the fake HIV tests putting lives at risk.

We've seized several thousand of these products

and we believe thousands more have already come through.

And a first on Fake Britain, some good news.

We meet the British technology company that has invented a new way

to fight the fakers.

The device tells us that this is actually the fake carton.

It's an astonishing fact that we Brits buy 1.8 million phone chargers

every year online alone.

Fakes like these can be manufactured for as little as three pence each in China.

But they don't meet UK safety regulations and can be lethal.

Good morning, everyone.

Mohammed Tariq and his team from Birmingham Trading Standards

have been tipped off fake chargers are available at a local store

and are about to head off to find out if that's true.

Their previous visit last year was met with hostility.

I do expect some resistance or obstruction from them

because they weren't having it last time

when I explained the items are unsafe.

This time, Trading Standards are taking back-up.

We are there to assist Trading Standards

going about their lawful business.

The first thing we're doing

is responding to a potential breach of the peace.

It's time to go in.

But first, Mohammed, known to everyone as Tariq,

gets a member of the team to make a test purchase.

That's going in there now.

His key objective is to locate and impound dangerous fake chargers

but any fake item will justify the raid.

This is vital,

especially if the shopkeeper is going to be aggressive.

We've done a test purchase of a mobile phone cover,

which is basically fake.

That gives us enough to go in there now

and have a look around and see what else they're supplying.

Anyone obstructing us will be arrested.

Trading Standards. My name is Mr Tariq.

The police presence means Tariq

and his team can feel safe searching for fake goods.

I'm 100% confident these are counterfeit.

-You're not 100% confident, though?

-Yeah, I am 100% confident.

We're taking them. End of, yeah?

Previously on Fake Britain, we told you the tragic story

of Game Boy enthusiast Connor O'Keeffe.

If he was out shopping,

he'd try and walk and do his Game Boy at the same time,

he was just Game Boy mad.

When Connor needed a replacement charger for the Game Boy,

his family unknowingly purchased a fake.

It was a simple misfortune that was to have tragic consequences.

He went in search of his Game Boy,

he thought he'd have a quick go of his Game Boy before his food came.

I went into get him, he was...

He was dead.

Just laying on the floor with the charger lead in his hand.

Connor's death led directly to a new focus by the authorities

on dangerous fake chargers

and that means Trading Standards teams like this one

give a high priority to removing them from sale.

In Birmingham, the search for fake chargers continues

as the team uncovers thousands of fake phone covers.

This is a huge business in the UK,

as millions of us want to stop our expensive phones

from being scratched.

If a cover appears to be made by a premium brand,

it can command a premium price.

Louis Vuitton, Chanel...

as you can see there is thousands and thousands of items.

I'm really annoyed because we've been in this premises before

and we went through all the stock

and we told them to remove all these infringing items

and they're blatantly still in possession of them.

Tariq still hasn't found the dangerous chargers he came for

and the shopkeeper says he has receipts for the phone covers

which prove they're not fakes.

No, show me a receipt, don't show me a booklet.

Show me a receipt and then we'll talk, yeah!

Not having receipts to prove he's selling genuine goods

could be about to cost the shopkeeper thousands of pounds.

Obviously, he's getting a bit agitated now.

If he's willing to show me a receipt,

and I'll say that to him again,

that he's bought this from a legitimate firm,

then I'll leave them but if he's got no receipt, then I'll take them away.

Don't keep telling me what my job is

because we've had the last samples examined... Listen to me,

listen to me, we had the last lot of samples, which you said were genuine,

we had them all examined, the Disney, the Hello Kitty,

everything you're saying is genuine, they've come back fake as well.

And you're still arguing...

Where is the invoice?

There's no point arguing with someone.

I've given him the opportunity to show me the invoices,

show me the receipts, how difficult is it to contact his accountant,

say, "Can you supply me with the receipts?

"I've got Trading Standards taking my stock," and nothing.

I'm confident what we're taking away is all fake

and we'll take it from there.

Under the watchful eye of the police,

Tariq's team set about collecting up the fakes.

But what Tariq is about to discover,

makes the sale of several thousand pounds worth of fakes phone covers

seem insignificant by comparison.

These are the ones that have failed originally,

the iPhone chargers.

Can you show me that, mate?

-This one?

-Yeah. As you can see

the actual construction of the charger is very poor quality.

The pins are not actually long enough

and these have actually failed.

What happens is, when they hold the heat, they actually explode.

Basically, they're just fake, shoddy goods

which have been imported from the Far East

and being passed off as the genuine iPhone accessories.

That's given me an indication

there is going to be more stock of these chargers on the premise.

My main priority is to get these unsafe chargers

from sale and distribution urgently.

Coming up...the shopkeeper claims they're not for sale.

Tariq believes he is hiding a secret stash of the exploding devices

but can he find them?

There's nothing more terrifying than thinking

you might have a serious illness.

That's why when the authorities intercepted these fake HIV tests,

they knew they were looking at a situation

that had potentially tragic consequences

for the people who'd ordered them and their loved ones.

HIV effects everybody in society, be you gay, straight,

anybody can be infected by it.

And far more people are infected than realise it.

By the end of 2012,

we estimate that there will be approximately 100,000 people

living with HIV, within that, from the anonymous unrelated testing

that we do, approximately 25% do not know their status,

so they're out there, they're living with HIV,

they may be infecting other people.

HIV tests like this work by taking a pinprick of blood

and applying it to a device that looks similar to a pregnancy test.

The fake tests cost between £20 and £35.

But selling HIV tests direct to the public is illegal.

So why do people buy them?

Firstly, because it's more convenient, they can go online and order it.

But also secondly they may see it as more confidential,

nobody will know the results except that person.

Danny Lee Frost is in charge of enforcement

for the Medicines And Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency.

They keep us Brits safe from quack cures

and other dangerous medical products.

We were contacted by a patient

who had bought one of these HIV test kits from website.

He'd used it on himself and the test kit showed he was not HIV.

Subsequently, he went along to his local clinic

where he was informed that in fact he was HIV

and he had been for several months.

For people who are diagnosed late,

so they may have had HIV for a period of time and they become unwell

and they're admitted to hospital, we do know that the overall prognoses

is affected and that this may have an effect on the lifespan.

We've seized several thousand of these products

and we believe thousands more have already come through.

They arrive in huge crates,

already addressed, in this format.

All the parcels we've seized were not going to clinics,

they were not going to doctors or healthcare centres,

they were all going to individual customers.

They were all individually addressed to the person that ordered them

from the internet.

With so much at stake, it was vital to get an expert opinion

on the fake HIV tests and discover exactly how unreliable they are.

Danny sent some of the kits to the Health Protection Agency

where Professor John Parry oversaw the testing process.

We sent eight of these devices to colleague at a clinic in London

to examine them and asked him if he could test eight individuals

who were known to be HIV-infected

and check that we were going to get positive results.

Of the eight tests that he undertook,

two of them didn't give a result at all and one of them

gave a false negative result.

Now in that case, that individual, had he not already know

that he was HIV-infected, could have been told he was uninfected

when indeed he was infected with HIV.

If those results were replicated for every 1,000 of the fake tests

already sold, 250 people would have got no result

and 125 people who have HIV

would believe they were clear of the virus.

In contrast, the real tests are almost infallible.

The tests that are use by laboratories

and also the rapid tests that are used in the clinic setting

have been validated by a very rigorous procedure

that entails testing many thousands of specimens.

This ensures they're accurate.

Some of the kits tested by the lab didn't even come

with all the equipment needed to complete the test.

In some cases these bottles of liquid

that are important as part of the test were empty

and in some cases we found that the pipette was missing.

The instructions for use were vague,

the device did not match the pictures.

This makes one assume that the instructions that were provided

are not the ones developed for this device.

And by that token one might assume

that the device might not be used properly.

And as we've seen, even if you do use the fake device properly,

the result is unreliable.

The experts agree, if you think you might have HIV,

you should visit your GP or a sexual health clinic.

Here's why.

If somebody is diagnosed early it means we can get them into treatment

we can do regular health monitoring, regular blood tests,

so we'll know when is the appropriate time to start them

on the antiretrovirals, which are the drugs that fight HIV,

they're not a cure but they keep people fit and well

by keeping the immune system strong.

Back in Birmingham

and Tariq has discovered a dangerous fake charger in a mobile phone shop.

The manager is claiming it's for display only

and the items aren't for sale.

Tariq is not convinced and his Trading Standards team

are searching the warehouse for more of the deadly devices.

Meanwhile, his trained eyes have fallen on something

that isn't lethal but that he thinks is more evidence

that the shopkeeper isn't as innocent as he pretends.

They've blocked out the... On the cellophane...

Yeah, they've blocked out BlackBerry...

The BlackBerry trade marks

but obviously when you're going to open it and use it.

Right, it's got the BlackBerry on there.

OK, right.

Basically, they know what they're doing

and they're trying to hide the trademarks.

These are fake, OK?

And the fact you're deliberately hiding the name

on the cellophane doesn't help.

Meanwhile, the search for the dangerous chargers continues.

Suddenly, there's a breakthrough.

-Found some?

-Yeah.

-Bingo!

Found the chargers that we were looking for.

This is what we were after.

Obviously, he's saying now they weren't for sale

but, obviously, we found some on display in the counter

so I was right, what they've done,

they've got a few samples on display, so what they tend to do is,

if someone wants one, they come around the back.

As you can see, the box was already open.

Pick a few and just give them them.

These chargers can explode and kill

so our department's priority is to get these off distribution ASAP.

So I'm quite happy that what we came to achieve we have got it

and in addition, we've got extra stuff as well.

So quite happy with that.

Tariq and his team have scored a major haul.

Each of the phone chargers removed from the shop

can sell for as much as £25.

The shopkeeper won't see that money again.

But more importantly, the deadly chargers

have been removed from sale.

We've had a real fruitful day today.

As you can see, there has been a large quantity of items seized.

Obviously, they've got no regard for the law.

They were still carrying on supplying them.

Our duty is to protect the consumer and protect the economy as well,

at the end of the day,

and that's why we're carrying out a series of raids across Birmingham,

to stop people importing and supplying these items.

Coming up...as the potentially-lethal chargers flood Birmingham,

Tariq and his team extend their search across the city

and make a major discovery.

As you can see, we've got boxes and boxes here.

This is just one part of the storage area.

I believe there's another storage area at the back.

I think we're going to be here for some time now.

If you've seen Fake Britain before,

you probably know fake cigarettes are a favourite

of Britain's criminal gangs.

What you probably won't know, in fact,

what the criminals may not know,

is that the CIA are on their tail.

That's Cigarette Intelligence Agency.

The big tobacco companies have got all kinds of people

feeding law enforcement agencies with information

to help keep a lid on this big-money criminal activity.

People like this man.

He's an undercover agent and the only thing we can tell you about him

is that he works for a big UK tobacco business.

I really think that when you're working against the syndicates

that deal in counterfeit cigarettes, it can be quite dangerous.

Quite frankly, I just feel a lot safer not appearing on camera.

The exclusive footage he's about to tell us about

was captured somewhere deep inside China, we can't say where.

What you can see here is that this factory

is located in the countryside in the hills.

The guy we're seeing here, he's digging his way into the factory,

they do call them Chinese underground counterfeit factories

and they literally are underground.

That would be specifically excavated for the purpose

of setting up the factory, very difficult to find,

you could walk over it and you wouldn't notice it.

And here we see the factory. If you look at it, it is quite cramped.

You have your machinery over one side, you have your kitchen

that will feed the staff who man this factory.

These factories last for... In several months,

they can make several containers of cigarettes.

It's worth hundred of thousands, millions of dollars.

And you can see the cigarette-maker here.

This is their cigarette-maker. There's your paper that goes into it.

There will be a tobacco feed at another part of that.

As you can see, it's pretty dirty within this factory.

Remember, the fake cigarettes made in places like this

are for sale on the streets of Britain.

We know this because the big tobacco companies

have agents at work in places like this Brick Lane market

in east London.

It's lunch time and the fake-cigarette sellers are doing brisk business.

What they don't know

is one of the people they're selling fake cartons of cigarettes to

works for the very same company they're ripping off.

With the goods in hand, next stop for the cut-price cartons

is British American Tobacco's high-security Southampton facility

for some cigarette CSI.

They're using forensic techniques

that can reveal where the cigarettes were manufactured.

We received a variety of cigarettes brands that were purchased

by our undercover investigator in Brick Lane Market.

And I'm going to determine

whether or not they're counterfeit or genuine.

They start with a visual check of the packs.

Counterfeiters always leave clues

and here in this lab, they know how to find them.

From the sides of the packs,

the logo is actually a different shape.

Under a microscope even identical looking barcodes tell a story.

I can tell that this particular pack has not been printed

in the way that we would print our genuine packs.

Carefully tearing the sides of the pack away

reveals even more information about the fakers.

Cigarettes packs are made on a machine

and the way that it applies the glue leaves a pattern.

If we look at both of the packs in more detail,

the first of the suspect samples is quite obviously hand-packed.

The glue has been applied by a brush.

The glue application on the second suspect sample

very closely imitates the genuine reference sample.

But all is not as it might seem.

It's a trick the fakers use to fool the authorities.

More than one in five cigarettes smoked in the UK

is either counterfeit or smuggled.

That figure rises to one in three in London, and the criminals

will go to enormous lengths to keep the money rolling in.

They have a piece of wood which is flattened out

in the shape of the cigarette packet, they then hammer nails

into this piece of wood, they then dip this apparatus

into a vat of glue, place it onto the cigarette packet

and then very quickly pack it by hand.

This is not for the benefit of the consumer.

The only reason the counterfeiters are doing this

is to try and trick analysts such as myself or customs authorities.

Most of the fakers' efforts go on making the pack look right,

even when you get it open.

But they don't put nearly so much time or money into the cigarette.

This filter has just completely come apart.

We can see that tobacco itself is dry and it's old

and it's not particularly great quality

and it definitely wouldn't smoke very well.

In the past we've opened counterfeit cigarettes and come across

pieces of metal and string and even a used and bloody plaster.

It's not news that cigarettes are bad for you,

but fakes can be even worse for your health.

We have the ability to chemically analyse the tobacco

in the counterfeit cigarettes and when we've done so in the past,

we find that the levels of tar and carbon monoxide

and other toxins are generally higher in the counterfeit cigarettes.

Cleverly-faked boxes containing cheap and nasty cigarettes.

What does that tell us

about where the packs bought on Brick Lane Market were made?

Both have been manufactured by hand, most likely in China,

which means that, presumably,

the workers were working in particularly poor conditions.

Coming up...we discover just how much cash

fake cigarettes like these are generating

on the streets of Britain.

You could easily clear £1 million profit.

Back in Birmingham

and Tariq knows dangerous fake chargers are available in the city.

Together with his team, he's about to hit a premises

where he's been tipped off the potentially-lethal goods

are for sale.

It only takes moments to discover the fake chargers.

We know straightaway because we've had these tested

that these two shelves certainly will fail,

so we'll be taking those away with us.

We're just going to search the rest of the premise to see

if there is anything similar.

Today, the Birmingham Trading Standards team

have brought along Steve Curtler from the Electrical Safety Council.

He's here to make sure they scoop up all the dangerous products

in the shop, as well as fakes like these.

There are some things

you can identify quite easily from looking at just the charger.

On the face of it, that would raise alarm bells.

But it's not just the items on display that cause concern.

The premises has a large cellar.

An Aladdin's cave of fakes and other dangerous kit.

Those are the ones that are unsafe.

-Yep.

-Yeah, those are the ones that are unsafe.

What we've got here, basically,

is boxes and boxes of fake unsafe chargers, iPhone chargers.

So what we're going to do is carry out an inspection of all the boxes,

open them up and find what's in them and basically,

whatever is infringing, we're going to take away for further examination.

It's massive as you can see we've got boxes and boxes here,

this is just one part of the storage area.

I believe there's another storage area at the back.

I think we're going to be here for some time now.

You can see from the volume here, there is a lot of money in it,

to be made, to the detriment of safety,

so it is very concerning.

Not all the dangerous items he's discovered are fakes.

These items are genuine, that is genuinely lethal.

They're illegal in the UK

because there is nothing to prevent adults or children

from being electrocuted by putting their fingers into these holes.

Steve has also gathered up a handful of fake chargers

and other fake electrical items

that he wants to take away for further testing.

We have some samples of some of the items that we've seized,

they would not meet UK safety regulations.

Here we have a soldering iron that is fitted with a fake plug,

which will not blow if there was a fault on the soldering iron,

it would just explode.

And the likelihood is that that is a counterfeit fuse as well.

If it's actually connected inside the plug at all.

That's extremely dangerous because if you were to touch that

and there was a fault, you'd get an electric shock,

it wouldn't blow the fuse and it's also a fire risk.

Potentially lethal.

The fake fuses on these soldering irons mean they too are taken away.

Tariq now has a van-load of fake goods,

some of them with the potential to kill.

It's been a really good, successful day today.

The amount of stuff that was there was shocking,

I didn't expect that much stuff to be honest with you,

but as you can see, the majority of the stuff

was either in the showroom or in the storage area down below.

Good result.

We're watching footage shot in China of a fake-cigarette factory.

The man explaining what we're looking at

works as an undercover investigator for a big UK tobacco business.

Fake cigarettes may be cheaper for smokers than the genuine items

but the cost to the workers who make them is high,

as terrible conditions prevail

for those who work in these large-scale operations.

There are just bags and bags and bags of tobacco.

Again, just all crammed in, so if you were working there

it would be pretty miserable conditions, really.

You've got all this equipment inside it, there's not much room to move

and to be honest I suppose it's a bit dangerous, if this collapsed or fell.

People can be forced to live in these conditions

for weeks at a time without seeing sunlight.

Given that these are underground factories,

you probably wouldn't want people popping in and out of them constantly

because that would attract attention to the location that,

as you've seen, is quite carefully concealed.

I would imagine that when people are put into these factories,

they work shifts on and off maybe for a few weeks before they leave.

In some of these factories, when it rains they can flood

and you've got a lot of electrical equipment

with water running into the chamber, can be extremely dangerous.

Just generally a pretty appalling work environment.

The misery of working in a place like this

is only equalled by the cash generated for the criminals

who buy the cigarettes to sell here in Britain.

As for the profits that can be made from this,

if you invested a stake of, say, £130,000, £140,000,

you could buy yourself a 40-foot container of counterfeit cigarettes.

There would be about 8-9 million cigarettes within that container.

If you could sell that in a market like the UK

at half the price of legal retail cigarettes,

you could easily clear £1 million profit.

It would not be uncommon and it would not be impossible

to buy one 40-foot container per month

if you had a decent supply chain.

That's a profit of £12 million a year, but to make money like that

it's necessary to deal with people who will stop at nothing.

There is one particular Triad we did meet

and he was involved in smuggling cigarettes.

He'd been bloodied as part of his initiation

and progress into the Triads, and he had killed people.

There was one particular occasion that was quite shocking,

in that this Triad was part of a syndicate

that was smuggling a container load of cigarettes and women.

The authorities tried to intercept the container,

to seize it and to free the women,

and in order to escape the authorities,

they quite simply opened the container

and threw the women into the sea

and left them in open sea, in the ocean and, of course, they drowned.

All died and, at the end of the day,

this Triad really had no remorse for that,

it was simply just business.

Tens of thousands of microphones are sold in the UK every year

and used by everyone from bingo callers

to the world's biggest bands.

But where there's business, there's fakes.

Usually made in China and usually for sale over the internet.

US company Shure

are one of the world's most established manufacturers

and they've bought some copies of their own kit

to see how well it works.

What we have here, is about a dozen examples.

Six out of here immediately don't work, dead out of the box.

This one put a horrible buzz through the sound system,

the four on this side actually work

but they don't sound right to the professional ear.

Our company does take counterfeiting extremely seriously.

We have a legal team in place

and we work with local law enforcement agencies

to try our best to ensure that these counterfeit products

don't actually reach the hands of the consumer.

If you get a fake microphone through the post,

it will be virtually impossible to distinguish

the counterfeit from a real one.

Just to the naked eye, it's literally impossible to tell the difference

unless you're a seasoned professional.

WOMAN SINGS

A man like Roger Lindsay.

OK, if you could try that one more time.

A sound-engineering legend who's worked with

some of the biggest names in the business.

Prince, George Michael, Pink Floyd, James Taylor,

and that's encompassed everything from tiny clubs to giant stadiums.

I have a responsibility to the artist but also to the audience

who've paid their hard-earned cash to go and see a show.

The microphone provides that first vital link.

Everything that happens after that is irrelevant

unless the microphone itself delivers.

And Roger reckons there are three key ways fake microphones don't.

For a lead singer, when he sings into the microphone,

he may be surrounded by drums, guitars, keyboards,

any number of sound sources,

but the microphone is designed to just pick up

what is directly in front of it.

# Oh-ah-oh-ah-ohh... #

On the fake microphone, as she moves round, it still keeps picking up

she's signing into the side of the microphone.

And yet it's still being amplified.

# Oh-ah-oh-ah-ohhh... #

That means the fake mic is picking up sound from around the stage.

As an engineer, if I turn up the vocal mic in an arena,

I just want the vocal to get louder,

with the genuine article that's what happens.

So a fake microphone means a singer you can't hear

and according to Roger, dancing is also off the cards.

Very few artists stand still on a stage,

it's a performance, they move around.

With a real microphone, the only sound you hear

is the sound of a voice going into a microphone.

With a fake microphone, you get all kinds of interference

and handling noise, which can be really distracting.

DULL THUDDING

Now if you imagine that in a stadium,

you're not singing, you're just holding a microphone,

that's being amplified to 100,000 people in the middle of a song.

They hear every bit of that and you're not even singing.

So fakes mean you can't hear the singer

and they have to stand absolutely still. Anything else?

One of the other problems with picking up sound

from anywhere other than directly in front of the microphone,

it is very likely to induce unwanted feedback.

Now these two microphones are side by side,

about 10 metres away from the nearest loudspeaker.

If I turn on the genuine microphone, it's stable,

nothing happening, if I turn on the fake microphone...

THROBBING

..that's what happens.

Ouch! And the problems don't end there.

For you to enjoy your night out, the band has to have mics

that can stand up to life on the road.

Tuomo is so confident that his mic is durable,

he's going to take this cherry-picker

up to the height of a two-storey building

and drop one off, together with a fake, to see how they fare.

We go through extremely stringent testing

to make sure that our products actually meet the criteria

that is expected of them.

This includes cold tests, heat tests, perspiration tests,

solar radiation tests and each one of these

can take a severe beating and still carry on operating.

So this is the counterfeit going! Goodbye!

And here goes the real one! Goodbye!

If they're both broken or both working,

these fellas are going to look pretty daft.

First up, the fake.

Check one-two, check one-two. Dead.

But has the real mic survived the fall?

-Check one-two.

-VOICE AMPLIFIES THROUGH SPEAKER

Yeah!

There is no way that a counterfeit microphone

can replicate nearly nine decades of engineering,

research and development and quality-testing of the authentic article.

Electrical expert Steve Curtler is busy preparing the samples

taken from the raids in Birmingham

at this electrical safety-testing lab.

Here we have the items we found during the inspection

with Trading Standards.

We can see with some of the features immediately

that they're non-compliant with safety standards.

We want to see if they present a hazard, in terms of shock or fire.

A common problem with fake goods is a fake fuse.

It's supposed to prevent you from getting an electric shock

when a simple fault with the device causes a short circuit.

Steve and his colleagues are busy replicating those faults

so they can test the plugs and fuses they believe are fake.

A fault could be from a trapped or damaged cable

or an internal component has failed inside an appliance.

This specialist equipment is specifically designed

to test the safety of plugs.

The fake fuse, fitted, shows what can happen

when safety standards aren't met.

And don't forget, at home, this explosion wouldn't happen

when an expert around the corner presses a button on kit

that looks like it's come from Cape Canaveral.

This would happen when you plug in.

In other words, your hand would be on the socket switch

or even the plug itself.

You can imagine if you were plugging something in at the time,

that would do a lot of injury.

Not to mention the possibility of getting an electric shock

at the same time.

And dangers don't just occur when a fuse blows violently.

Steve's about to plug in the soldering iron

that was for sale at the second phone-charger store we saw earlier.

This shows fake plugs can be just as deadly when the fuse doesn't blow.

Going now.

BANG!

There's various different ways that fake plugs can be dangerous.

In this particular case, the fuse didn't blow at all,

so if something went wrong with the soldering iron,

the fuse in this plug wouldn't blow to cut off the electricity supply.

So if you were to touch that, you'd get an electric shock.

Fake plugs and chargers can be lethal

and we need to keep them out of our homes. Here's how.

Some of the tests we carried out, failed in a spectacular manner.

We had explosions occurring because of the fake fuses

but other items, such as the iPhone charger,

actually have all the hidden dangers,

such as the plug pins being too close together,

so when you take the plug out, you can get access to live pins.

And again, you can cause yourself a serious electric shock

or even electrocution.

We would always recommend that you buy from a reputable retailer

and if you're not sure, there is loads of information

on the Electrical Safety Council's website,

which is esc.org.uk,

where we provide loads of safety information.

The message really is, think before you buy

because the risk to your family and friends isn't worth the risk.

Fakes are a business worth an estimated 500 billion a year.

Now a British business has developed a new weapon

in the war on counterfeit products

that's been raging for almost 40 years.

The modern, industrial-scale counterfeiting

started around the 1970s and 1980s, when a whole range of products

started to be copied by counterfeiters

who saw opportunity to make very quick profits with minimum risk.

And like a lot of things in the '70s,

the fakes lacked sophistication.

Well-known brands with bad spelling were a giveaway.

Now, look at the Taiwanese fake where the letter E is missing

out of "Stanley".

And plastic on premium products, a clear, telltale sign.

It doesn't have proper cork on top

and of course there isn't the indent at the bottom if the bottle.

Luxury good were the focus of counterfeiters in the early days.

And for many these were almost a novelty item.

They weren't really concerned that they were buying a fake Rolex watch,

they just wanted the image that having the Rolex brand on their wrist would confer.

But the fakers soon realised that

if they could trick the public there would be big money

in selling millions of counterfeit everyday items.

The development then moved primarily from luxury goods

to mass-produced items.

This is an example of a fake tin of Nescafe coffee.

Here is a spark plug.

Counterfeiters increasingly turned their skills to mass-produced items.

At the turn of the '80s,

big business could see big trouble ahead.

With sales falling as shoppers started to be fooled by fakes,

they needed a solution, and quick.

Typically, a brand owner doesn't consider it

worth protecting their product

until they've lost between 10-15% of their market share.

When it reaches 20% then they're desperate for a solution.

And that solution is often a hologram.

In the early '80s, the credit card companies were losing millions

through fake cards and this famous image was put on your plastic.

Something like 70% of the crimes that were committed

using counterfeit cards were just gone,

so it had huge impact.

But the counterfeiters hit back,

at first just sticking a small piece of silver foil

to their counterfeit cards.

Sort of the equivalent of me handing you a blank piece of paper

and saying, "That's a £5 note."

The counterfeit arms race rolled on.

Fakers found new ways

of trying to imitate the look of a hologram, until...

In the '90s, they found a company in the Far East

who was prepared to make a real hologram,

but it was made in self-adhesive labels,

which can be stuck onto the cards,

and the fakers have even tried sending fake letters to David

to get him to make their holograms

by posing as legitimate manufacturers.

We were continually approached with a letter saying,

"We are the rightful manufacturer of these batteries.

"Could you copy our hologram, which we want to change supplier."

All duly signed and rubber-stamped from China

and you just put it in the file with all the others.

This computer software and everyday banknotes show holograms

are still a great way to help you and me identify the real deal.

But now a British company has come up with a new way

to keep fakes off the shelves of our shops,

without you knowing anything about it.

It takes a digital fingerprint from every single item

rolling off the production line,

which means even a perfect fake can be picked up in the shops

using a simple scanner.

And just as we were promised as kids,

the future is all about lasers.

The way the technology works is that we shine a laser

at the surface of something

and we look at they way it bounces off and it's the way

this light bounces off the surface

that we use then to create a signature,

something like a finger print that then becomes unique

for that one single product.

All very well in theory, but let's see it in action.

We've challenged Andrew to distinguish between

three identical perfume boxes.

None of them is really a fake but only two of them

have been scanned and registered in the machine's database.

So this first carton is carton number one.

The second carton we have here is carton number two

and this box isn't in the database we've prepared

so we've marked it as fake.

A quick mix of the cartons

and the machine then scans the surface of the boxes

looking for microscopic differences in the fibres of the cardboard.

I have no idea which carton is which so if we take the first carton,

we place it onto the scanning head and push the button.

And it comes back and the device tells us

that this is actually the fake carton.

So now if we look to see if this is correct,

we can open the cartons and we see that, yes,

as the device predicted, this is actually the fake carton.

It works!

A simple to operate device that can pick up even a perfect fake

at the point of sale.

A British invention that could put us here at Fake Britain out of work.

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

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd