Episode 3 Fake Britain

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

Welcome to Fake Britain.

In this series, I will be investigating the world

of the criminals who make their money at your expense.

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

'On today's programme, fake clothing is a multi-million pound industry

'in the UK, but the counterfeiters don't give up their stock easily,

'as the police and Trading Standards in Manchester find out.'

Get down! Get on the floor now!

'We test the fake energy-saving plugs targeting the elderly

'that could cost them a lot more than their cash.'

It's just going to burn. This product could kill somebody.

'And take a look inside the so-called clinic

'of a fake dental technician.

'You wouldn't want to put anything made here in your mouth.

'But the faker's victims didn't know the risks they were taking.'

You could take bacteria from one patient's mouth

and transfer it to another patient.

In Manchester, shopping is big business.

But fake clothing is also popular here.

The Strangeways district of the city is notorious for selling

counterfeit brands.

Big names like Adidas, Nike

and Ugg have all fallen victim to the fakers.

But the authorities are about to launch a crackdown in the area

and we've followed one team as they launch

an operation against counterfeit stores.

In Strangeways, a major raid is about to get under way.

It's a bit early for hitting the shops,

but not for Sgt Darren Thomason and his team.

They're on their way to a store known to be openly selling fake clothes.

Today we're doing an operation in conjunction with Trading Standards.

I'm pretty certain that we'll find a number of different copied

items, ie. Adidas jackets, Nike jackets, Nike tracksuits.

But it's not just about fake fashion -

it's about serious organised crime.

It's the dynamics behind the selling of the goods -

where is the money going on to? It's been proven it relates to all

different spheres of criminality, from, er, drugs to guns

to stolen vehicles, and money laundering of that cash as well.

Daytime crackdowns on fakers are all about the element of surprise.

Uniformed police officers would stick out like a sore thumb.

And if they blow their cover, they'll come away with nothing.

If a couple of undercover officers go in,

confirm what they believe counterfeit goods are being sold,

we get round there as quick as possible to assist our colleagues there.

All of a sudden, the undercover officers call in.

They are inside the shop

and it's time for their backup to spring into action.

Where are they, are they in here?

Inside the store, the shop assistants are resisting arrest.

-Get down! Get down!

-Get on the floor now!

Put your hands on your back! Now! Do as you're told!

Just secure them. Secure them.

Hands behind your back, now!

On your side, stay there, stay there!

Have you been assaulted at all?

These three suspects clearly need some lessons in customer service.

I got a big lad back here

cos he's the one seemed most aggressive towards me.

In what respect, mate? He's confrontational? OK.

Coming up to me towards the door,

that's when we had to take him to the floor.

A fourth suspect has made a run for it up the back stairs, but he wasn't quick enough.

Don't move a muscle, lad, all right?

You listening to me?

Right, move down there.

Hands behind your back, now. No, behind your back!

Time to tell these men why their shop is full of police officers rather than customers.

We suspect you're selling counterfeit goods, OK?

In the process of us getting into this address,

a couple of my police officers have been assaulted, OK?

Because of the struggle, Darren isn't taking any chances.

I don't want Trading Standards officers here yet,

it's still quite a hostile environment, I want to find out what these characters have been up to.

With the area secured and the suspects finally

behaving themselves, Trading Standards arrive on the scene.

Kay Roberts from Cheshire East Trading Standards is looking

for hard evidence of cash that links these men to selling fake goods,

and she thinks she's hit the jackpot after a search of the men's pockets.

There's approximately £3,000 here.

I would suggest the average person doesn't walk round with £3,000 in their pocket,

it's a lot of money to be carrying legitimately.

Counterfeiting makes criminals millions of pounds a year.

The fraudsters don't pay tax on their cash-rich business

and there is evidence to suggest that the money funds serious

organised crime, and even terrorism.

So Trading Standards are hitting the fakers right where it hurts -

in the wallet.

The purpose of seizing the cash is to act as a deterrent as well.

The reason these traders do this is for the financial gain,

the financial element,

and we are interested in taking any profit out of crime.

Today, crime didn't pay. The men are led out and driven off.

The officers can now take a closer look at the clothes on offer in this store,

and at first glance it's more Fake Britannia than Cool Britannia.

As you can see here, Dolce and Gabbana, not my cup of tea.

It's got all the relevant markings on it - badged, boxed.

They even stick the label on, "Made in Italy".

That'll be "Made in Blackpool", it should be!

But these fake trainers are just the tip of the iceberg.

Gee whizz - look at that.

Later, we come face to face

with the sheer volume of counterfeit clothing you can cram into just one high street shop.

Like many pensioners,

Lucia East from Brecon worries about spiralling energy bills.

And she thought her prayers had been answered

when she received a phone call, apparently from

her local energy company, South Wales Electricity, known as SWALEC.

I had a phone call late one afternoon

from a very charming lady saying she was from SWALEC,

and they had a special offer for older people in the area.

She was offering me a gadget that would save 40% on my energy bills.

I thought £99 was a lot of money, but she said,

"It is for life, and think how much it will save you."

The charmer on the phone already had a lot of personal information about Lucia

and seemed legitimate.

So she gave them her bank account details to get the energy-saving plug.

But then Lucia started to get suspicious.

When I put the phone down, I began to think that was a bit strange,

so I phoned SWALEC and asked if they had phoned me

and they said no, nothing to do with them,

they didn't know anything about it.

Lucia had been speaking to a faker.

The call had come not from her energy supplier,

but from a company trading under the name Power Savers Limited.

They were the ones who'd taken the money from her account.

200 miles away in London,

Bethan Featherby at Westminster Trading Standards had heard from

other pensioners across the country

who had received similar phone calls.

Bethan phoned Lucia and told her not to plug in

the energy-saving plug when it arrived,

but to send it straight to her.

We've had over 200 complaints from consumers

and I'm sure that's just the tip of the iceberg.

You are supposed to plug it into the mains, switch it on,

and leave it running 24/7.

And that will reduce your energy bills by 40% -

a massive saving, clearly people would be interested

if such a product did exist.

But does it work?

When Bethan finally got her hands on one of the so-called

energy-saving plugs, she wasn't impressed.

When you receive the device, just a pile of old plastic,

and you open it up, you realise there's nothing in there that

gives you any confidence that it could deliver that kind of savings.

It's a pile of rubbish, really.

Bethan had the plugs tested for their energy-saving capabilities.

The results were conclusive -

the energy-saving plug that Lucia East had paid £99 for

didn't save energy. It was a fake.

I felt totally cheated,

I also felt incredibly stupid that I'd been taken in.

Later on, we put the fake energy-saving plugs to the test

and see how they could cost you

a lot more than £99 - they could cost you your life.

Hi-tech dentistry using the latest techniques.

That's how the man who worked amongst all this

described his work. But he wasn't qualified to treat patients.

He was faking it.

This is the man who took thousands of pounds

from elderly and vulnerable people who needed new teeth.

Keith Harrington suffers from a serious medical condition,

and when his top denture broke,

he needed a new upper set of teeth as soon as possible.

'Well, my husband's got MS.'

He has problems swallowing,

and choking difficulties.

What they needed was somebody qualified to visit them at home

to fit Keith a new set of dentures.

Sylvia thought she'd found the perfect solution.

I looked in the Yellow Pages and found someone

from The Denture Clinic in Dawlish who would come to the house.

And when he came, he was charming, comfortable to be with,

-a caring sort of person, we thought.

-Yeah, very.

The charmer was a man called Stephen Sickelmore,

owner of The Denture Clinic,

promising new dentures within four days and repairs within two hours.

Sickelmore promptly came to the Harringtons' home to fit

Keith for a new set of top dentures.

Well, then he told me the price, £1,060

and I thought that's a bit steep.

In the end, the bill came to a whopping £1,540

for Keith's new dentures and some other work.

Sickelmore left with the cheque, promising to be in touch soon.

But all he delivered within the four days promised by his advert

was the Harringtons' money into his own bank account.

He kept saying yes, he was coming the following week.

"Oh, I'll definitely be down. I've got problems with the car.

"I hit a pothole."

Every couple of days, I was ringing him.

It was excuse after excuse, wasn't it?

It was, just excuse after excuse.

A full three months later,

after many phone calls from the Harringtons,

Sickelmore finally turned up with a new upper denture.

But that was when Keith's problems really began.

You talk to people and your teeth fall out,

or you're talking to people and it affects your speech.

So you can't really, you know,

converse with people.

It is frustrating.

Keith's new teeth just wouldn't stay in.

But he wasn't just losing his self-esteem to these dodgy dentures,

they were cutting into his gums.

The last infection he had,

he couldn't walk from here to that chair. It was that bad.

But it's not just the Harringtons.

Sickelmore has in fact taken money

from hundreds of other trusting people,

many of them vulnerable pensioners. Laura Hempstead was one of them.

She lives in remote Boscastle on the north Cornish coast.

When her front denture broke,

she too needed a home visit for a new set.

She also phoned Mr Sickelmore, who measured her for new teeth,

took her money and then disappeared.

After four months of excuses,

Laura finally got the dentures she'd paid over £700 for.

But the new teeth didn't look quite right.

I don't know what I expected for £720,

but I didn't expect something like this.

The finishing is poor.

Almost looks as if they've been cobbled together by a novice.

And the dentures didn't feel good, either.

They're not fitting around the side here.

You just want to keep

pushing it up all the time.

It feels like when you're at the dentist's and you've got a gag

in your mouth, or something to stop your mouth closing.

That's what it feels like.

By now, the fake denture maker was gaining quite a reputation.

A bad reputation, that is.

Peter Greene from Devon Trading Standards had been inundated

with similar complaints from other pensioners about the poor

standard of Mr Sickelmore's work.

This was a large-scale crime.

It took place over two-and-a-half years,

it targeted, we estimate, at least 160 people,

and it made in the region of over £200,000.

Peter's Trading Standards team carried out a full investigation

and decided it was time to raid the so-called Denture Clinic,

where Sickelmore was working.

The team were horrified by what they saw.

The facilities, to be quite frank, looked fairly appalling.

There was a small cooker with what looked like an old saucepan

with some kind of industrial product in it,

which was being used for the manufacture of the dentures.

It was effectively a laundry room in someone's house.

It should never have been described as a dental clinic.

This laundry room lab was less than sterile.

We found and photographed a bin which was full of casts.

Those casts were supposed to be one use only

and yet the suspicion we have is they were being reused.

We showed Laura Hempstead and Sylvia Harrington photographs

of the makeshift laboratory where their dentures had been made.

This is... It's disgusting.

I feel sick.

It is absolutely filthy.

Well, there's certainly nothing sterile in that environment.

When I think of my husband's immune system

and to look at that, thinking he's put something in his mouth

that's been in there. Urgh!

It's disgusting.

Later, we see the true dangers of the shoddy dentures.

Certainly an opportunity for cross-infection.

Hepatitis...

And amazingly, we catch up with the faker himself.

You're going to get some discomfort.

You can buy a pair of shoes from Clarks, precision-fitting shoes -

you'll walk down the road, you might get a blister.

Greater Manchester Police have joined forces with Trading Standards

to crack down on counterfeit clothes in the city's Strangeways area,

known as the counterfeit capital of the North.

They've raided a shop suspected of openly selling counterfeit clothes

to anyone who walks in off the high street.

It's obviously blatant, this is on the main road into Manchester,

blatantly selling counterfeit items as you can see in the window

and people passing by.

The officers meticulously bag and tag every counterfeit item.

All of a sudden, Darren finds something remarkable upstairs.

Gee whiz, look at that!

Wherever you look, Adidas.

Adidas...

It's going to take about three or four hours to clear this.

And there are boxes here full of tracksuit wear.

And as you can see, there's quite a significant amount

just stacked up here.

Now, with thousands of fake items to go through,

the officers think they've found everything this shop has to offer.

But they've missed something right under their noses.

Just have a look in there.

Basically, what's upstairs. is a similar quantity of goods.

Janet decides to take a closer look at the subterranean Aladdin's cave.

Another huge area of storage

that you might not have known was here,

because the trap door upstairs wasn't really visible

when we first came in.

Not only are there fake goods on the ground floor

and the room upstairs, in the cellar as well they're using it

as an area of storage for counterfeit goods.

As you can see, more Ugg boots down here.

-Bag after bag of fake goods goes

-into

-the back of a lorry,

nearly 4,000 items of counterfeit merchandise.

Almost a quarter of a million pounds' worth of gear.

Of the two men arrested, one pleaded guilty and is awaiting sentence.

And the other is due for trial.

It's a resounding success for the team.

We've already seen how fake energy-saving plugs were being sold

to unsuspecting members of the public across the country,

for a whopping £99.

Tests proved they don't save you hundreds off your electricity bill,

but that's not the most frightening thing about them.

Fake Britain decided to test the safety of the plugs

with Ray Jefferis, at Intertek testing labs.

First, he wants to see

if the plug actually fits into a UK plug socket safely.

What should happen is the pins

should be poking through these holes.

And it's not.

This is why we're concerned that if you plug it in,

it may not make proper contact and could overheat

the pins to a point where they could catch the product on fire,

or the socket could catch on fire.

The short pins are the first sign that this plug is a fire risk.

But to make sure, Ray needs to carry out two crucial safety tests.

The first test mimics an electrical short circuit to see how

the plug might react.

With the wires stripped and soldered and the plug firmly in,

it's time to flick the switch.

A regular plug should be able to cope with a short and shut down.

Whoa!

We heard the bang.

Let's see what's happened.

It doesn't look good.

It was such a bang, it's actually knocked out

the main breaker downstairs.

The air inside the product has become conductive,

to a point where it's expanded

and exploded and blown the product open.

And the plug is now dangerous to handle.

If somebody tried to get that out after this had happened,

they could touch the live parts inside here

and get an electric shock.

This product, it's possible it could kill somebody.

The plug has failed the electrical test dramatically.

There's still the flammability safety test to do.

The plastic on a normal and safety-compliant plug is made

in such a way that it would extinguish any flames on it

in 30 seconds.

But what will the fake plug do?

Things are hotting up to 850 degrees centigrade.

Minutes later, has the plastic stopped burning?

No. It's a mini fireball.

That's another test failed.

It's just going to burn, probably set the rest of your house on fire,

depending on where it's been plugged in.

You can see from the results of those flames

it's not going to extinguish itself.

It's another breathtaking safety failure for the plug

as it continues to burn past the nine-minute mark.

Would you pay £99 for a fire risk?!

You know, and that's what it is, a fire risk.

So we now have an explosion hazard and a fire risk.

You could come back and find your house on fire or burned down.

It could happen.

And it did happen.

Fire investigator Stuart Mortimore came face-to-face

with the potentially lethal shortcomings of these bogus plugs.

He thinks the instruction manual alone is a cause for concern.

"When using, please be careful

"when plugging into the sockets. Don't be too rude."

So, now we know.

But Stuart knows the plugs themselves are no laughing matter.

He investigated the case of a woman who bought

and used one of these fake energy-saving plugs.

Leaving the device plugged in day and night, she went away on holiday.

Returning home, she found the plug had caught fire

and ruined her house.

Because the smoke permeated through the entire floor,

it had rendered the property uninhabitable, and it resulted

in much of the contents of the property

being effectively laid waste.

The damage was so severe

that the victim had to move out for six weeks.

There was severe charring at the socket itself.

There was nothing else in the vicinity of that socket

other than the energy-saving box

and therefore, it was evident to me

that the only potential source of ignition

was either the box or the socket itself.

Stuart needed to check whether the fire had been caused

by the plug socket or the energy-saving plug.

So he took away the remains of the socket for analysis.

What happened in the house is that we had a failure in a component

within the unit, and then this set fire to the device

which could then drip and set fire to items on the floor beneath.

And that is almost certainly what happened

in the property that I visited.

The homeowner was lucky to have been away when the fire broke out.

What we have here is a device which, potentially,

could cost them their lives.

Earlier, we saw how pensioners in the south-west had spent hundreds

and even thousands of pounds on dentures made by a faker.

Keith Harrington's dentures didn't fit and cut his mouth.

Laura Hempstead's set looked like a child had made them.

We showed Keith and Laura's dodgy dentures to David Smith,

a reputable dental technician

and an expert witness in the court case against Stephen Sickelmore.

-Good dentures, eh?

-Beautiful.

David knows quality when he sees it and when he doesn't.

First up, Keith Harrington's dentures.

This denture has many things wrong with it.

It's housing foreign bodies that are actually inside the material.

They could be bits of dirt from his laboratory.

This is a very unsatisfactory set of dentures

and as far as I'm concerned this would not have left my laboratory.

I think anybody who paid over £1,000

for something as poor as this has been ripped off.

Keith Harrington has multiple sclerosis

and these dentures could cause him serious medical problems.

For a patient like Keith, this must have been really painful

and could have caused ulceration

and certainly infection inside his gums.

This is quite a serious condition for him to have.

Next up, Laura Hempstead's dentures - and a grim discovery.

This material has started to absorb moisture from the patient's mouth

and that moisture obviously contains bacteria

from the mouth, naturally. But because it stays in there

and can't get out, then that attracts a fungal infection that then

starts to grow on the fitting surface of the denture.

The dentures should never have been made like that.

It could have caused serious illness.

This type of fungal infection, if left on the denture long term,

can lead to blood disorders for the patient.

It's a very serious situation

and needs to be addressed as soon as possible.

David is shocked by the conditions

he's seen in the Sickelmore house of horrors dental studio.

There was used impression materials,

certainly an opportunity for cross-infection going on,

where different patients' materials were being mixed together.

There was a chance you could take bacteria that was growing

in one patient's mouth and transfer it to another patient.

That could be hepatitis, that could be anything.

Dentures are highly sophisticated medical devices.

Making them requires sterile working conditions

and specialised equipment.

This is a case of fake dentistry,

and any type of fake dentistry is serious for us

because it's very important that patients have the protection

of being treated and being supplied

by people who are properly regulated

to work within this profession.

As judgement day arrived for Mr Sickelmore at Exeter Crown Court,

Peter Greene from Devon Trading Standards

was also present to give evidence for the prosecution.

Sickelmore admitted illegally supplying dentures,

supplying dentures that were poorly fitted and poorly made,

and delays in dealing with complaints.

He was sentenced to nine months in prison, suspended for two years,

and 180 hours of community work.

We caught up with Mr Sickelmore as he left court.

'That's the end of me in the trade.'

I've had a commercial laboratory years ago, you know,

with apprentices under me, and now I'm in court

for what I've been doing for so many years.

I've worked in a top laboratory in St Helier, London...

I've done work for Bristol Dental Hospital in the past.

I've even done work

for the Indian Royal Family years ago.

So... I'm not a charlatan, I'm not an idiot.

But as the court said, I done wrong.

I should've been registered with the GDC.

Sickelmore was totally unqualified to be treating patients.

For Peter Greene and Devon Trading Standards, it's a good result.

Mr Sickelmore will never again be able to carry on work

in that particular industry.

While Sickelmore's career fitting and making dentures is over,

the financial and emotional nightmare continues for Keith and Sylvia Harrington.

Having run out of money, Keith has no choice but to continue

using his ill-fitting and potentially dangerous dentures.

It will take them months to save up enough money to replace them.

He's left us with financial, emotional,

physical, medical problems.

You name it, it's caused all that to us.

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

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd