Episode 5 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.

Today on Fake Britain,

the fake tours of the battlefields cheating British veterans...

How he could be so evil, to me, is just disgusting.

..on the trail of the banknote forgers...

Police!

Taken together, this is all the kit, the paraphernalia

you would actually use to produce and make counterfeit currency.

..the terrifying new credit card fakery

that's almost completely undetectable...

The shops couldn't tell the difference,

some banks couldn't tell the difference.

You and me? We've got no chance.

SIREN WAILS

It's early morning and the City Of London Police are out in force.

Today, they're raiding a number of addresses

to try and find a master forger.

He's believed to be the head of a gang producing

huge amounts of fake money.

DC Steve Briars hopes to finally track him down.

The amount of currency that is being produced by these people

may well run into the millions and millions of pounds.

The man we're looking for today is, we think,

the mastermind behind this operation.

We're expecting to find all manner of items, really,

related to forgery and counterfeiting,

that he is a master forger, so to speak.

As the officers arrive at the location,

they're met by some serious backup.

The tactical support group are specialist door-breakers

and after two officers silently crack the lock

with a pneumatic door-breaking kit,

a third, carrying a heavy enforcer, quickly gets the job done.

Police! Get down!

The 6am start has literally caught the suspect with his pants down

and upstairs, the officers drag him from his bed.

Put some trousers on, mate. Which trousers? These ones?

-Yes?

-Yeah.

Put that on first.

Hold your hands out for me.

I'm arresting you on suspicion

of conspiracy to produce counterfeit currency.

The man they've arrested is Anthony Higgs,

who's already been in prison before

for conspiring to make counterfeit currency.

As Higgs is taken downstairs,

a quick glance around the bedroom hints at forgery.

What's interesting with this note,

is that sitting on top of it is actually one of the jeweller's optics

that they use to study fine detail.

So I'm guessing that somebody's been studying this note very carefully.

The room is also full of

a variety of professional-quality printers, inks and papers.

The latest prints,

like the many bits of paper scattered on the floor,

are covered in small red colour samples.

These look very similar to the shades of red used on £50 notes.

It would appear that they've been trying to colour-match the note here

in order to potentially run off copies of these notes

for fraudulent purposes.

They've got quite a good print shop going on

in this person's bedroom here.

Downstairs, master forger Higgs is cooperating with the police.

So, what's this all about?

What we'll do for now is keep you in here...

-Yeah.

-Just going to put a dog through your premises...

-Yeah.

..and then we'll have a bit more of a chat, all right?

A police dog is brought in

to sniff out whether there is cash hidden in the property.

It's possible that there may be large quantities of money in the house.

The dogs can smell in places that we can't see,

so they'll hopefully find any items in here

and at least give the officers an idea of where to go and have a look.

As the dog searches the house,

he quickly sniffs out something significant.

It looks like a safe, here in the corner. Yeah, it is a safe.

In this case, it would be genuine cash

so there may be a very large sum of money inside this item here.

Higgs is brought upstairs to open his safe.

Inside, there's a large quantity of cash, the spoils of a life of crime.

And downstairs, police continue the search for more.

Cash be hidden in small places in large quantities.

£50 notes are not very big things

and that's why they've checked everywhere that they can

to make sure that there's nowhere, like a loose brick,

with a little stash hidden behind them.

Meanwhile, in another bedroom,

officers find yet more evidence of forgery on an industrial scale.

Normally, you'd only have, say, a maximum of two printers,

but he's got three in there, another probably...

five or six in here.

So the only possible reason for having all these printers

is he's either trying to set up a large amount of production

or he has been having a large amount of production.

If fake notes are being printed here,

the officers believe the machinery to compress, cut,

foil and finish them must be somewhere else.

Later, they go searching for a crucial piece of evidence -

a specialist industrial presser needed to make fake banknotes.

The battlefields of the First and Second World Wars

are destinations that are not only historical tourist attractions,

but also sites that are, for many, a place of pilgrimage and remembrance.

Veterans travel there to say farewell to fallen comrades

and family members go to visit the site of the historical battles

where their loved ones fought.

But battlefield tours are big business

and even such an emotional subject is not immune to the fakers.

The Fife branch of the Parachute Regiment

received a lottery grant of £10,000

to travel to the battlefield of Arnhem in the Netherlands.

It was the 65th anniversary of the Battle of Arnhem.

The reason being that the people who fought at Arnhem,

it was pivotal to the forming of a regiment,

and making the regiment as famous as it is now.

It was very important that we got our veterans there

to revisit the war graves where their comrades had fallen

and to revisit the place where they actually fought in battle

and, as I say, it was probably the last opportunity for them to do that.

Petty officer John Jack was one of the lucky ones

who made it home from the Second World War,

and his son, Daniel,

wanted to visit the site where his father had fought.

My father had been in the original D-Day landings in 1944.

He was a Petty officer on the big LST landing ships

and this was the 65th anniversary

and obviously, it was going to be a real final big hoo-ha,

and that was the main reason.

And for Sandra and Malcolm Buchan, the trip was a dream

that they'd had for a while.

My husband's always wanted to go,

just to see it, so that was why we decided,

right, it was a short trip - six days. We'll just do that.

They each came across a Scottish company

offering European battlefield tours and wanted to find out more.

I received this brochure -

European Tours Ltd -

and it was advertising various different holidays,

Flanders, The Somme, Normandy, Arnhem.

The social secretary made the initial contact

and they reported back to the branch

that he had found this company who was willing to take us to Arnhem

and basically fitted the bill for everything that we required.

The brochure seemed to be good, well presented.

Exactly what we wanted.

It seemed perfect.

On finding the tour to their satisfaction,

they all decided to take the plunge and book it.

We paid a deposit of £3,400.

And that was to cover the deposit for 28 people to travel to Arnhem,

obviously on a return trip.

The whole cost of my holiday was £504.

For everything that was covered, it seemed fair enough.

That was the travel from Glasgow down to Hull,

overnight on the ferry.

It was four nights in the Normandy area

and then travel back again.

It was, um, £789.

It seemed a good price for the two of us for six days.

It seemed quite reasonable.

With the money paid, and a slight worry in his mind,

Bill Donaldson invited John Lennox to his house

to answer a few questions.

When he came in, he had T-shirts, teddy bears, little mugs.

A book which showed previous trips to the battlefield.

The battlefields... Not just Holland - Germany, France, Belgium.

We thought, everything's looking good - maybe we're wrong.

Daniel only realised a week before he was due to leave

that he had no tickets for his trip.

I think it was about the week before, an itinerary came in.

And I thought, "OK, right. Here we go."

But it had all been so lackadaisical

that I kind of thought, "Is this really going to happen?"

And, for Sandra and Malcolm,

a last-minute change made them feel anxious

about the future of their holiday.

On the day we were leaving, it was about 7 o'clock. Just after seven.

And he said, "Hello, this is John Lennox from European Tours.

"I'm just phoning to let you know that the bus has broke down

"and it's running late but it will arrive."

But when Bill Donaldson made a phone call to P&O Ferries,

they realised that their whole trip was a fake.

We contacted P&O Ferries

just to find out if any deposits had been paid.

Um, they had heard of Lennox previously

for other things that he was supposed to have booked.

It seems he always made a cursory inquiry

into how much it would cost to book cabins -

how much it would cost to get from A to B,

but never, ever paid a deposit.

Brian Rees at P&O Ferries received word

that the Parachute Regiment had been left in the lurch.

We heard right at the last minute. It was only about 24 hours

before the Paras were due to travel that the alarm call came.

No coach, no ferry, no hotel booking.

Up until 10 o'clock that night, we still thought the trip was doomed.

I stepped in and said, "Look, you've got to go.

"We've got space on the ferry.

"You will go with the compliments of P&O Ferries."

When we got the news, I was elated.

The branch wasn't aware at that time that we weren't going to Arnhem.

We kept it from them until the very last minute.

We said, "Well, we might have to tell them on the morning

"that's it a non-starter."

But luckily enough, that night we got the good news,

we were going to Arnhem.

Over the moon - I had a few whiskies that night!

It was brilliant.

While the Parachute Regiment were lucky enough to take their trip,

Sandra and Malcolm were left waiting at the bus stop

for a bus that was never going to arrive.

You believe people, don't you?

We sat there and sat there and sat there.

All these people getting on trains and buses...

-And we're still sitting there.

-Still sitting there.

We just felt fooled.

I think we realised the time from where we are

to Carlisle, to meet a feeder coach to Hull,

we were never going to make that ferry.

But in Daniel's case, he actually met Ian Lennox at the bus station

and waited with him there.

We were to meet opposite the bus station at Glasgow Concert Hall.

And I just got there,

and here, as I came out at Buchanan Bus Station,

here's this chap, introduces himself as Ian Lennox.

Embroidered on his chest, "European Battlefield Tours".

And I thought, "Great!" I suddenly was, "It is happening. We're off."

Half an hour went past, 45 minutes went past,

he was making phone calls.

"Oh, the bus has broken down.

And then, "Oh, we'll try and get another bus.

"I'll phone up Hull and see if we can get another ferry."

This went on and on and on -

I think it was about an hour and a half, two hours,

and then he says, "No, I'm sorry, the bus isn't going to make it."

Even after taking their money

and leaving them stranded by the side of the road,

he still continued to lie

to put off his capture off for as long as possible.

Six days later, when we should have arrived back in Britain,

he phoned me that morning to say that he had taken a different coach -

a different coach - to a different place

and he had just heard.

And his phone didn't work when he was abroad

and that's how he couldn't get messages

and he was phoning to apologise.

He was mad and livid at the bus company

and we would definitely get our money back.

John Lennox's lies finally caught up with him

and, after two years of ripping off innocent people,

with his fake battlefield tours, for tens of thousands of pounds,

he was arrested and charged with theft.

He pleaded guilty in court and was sentenced to 25 months in prison.

But, for Sandra and Malcolm, this fake trip

has ruined their chances of ever visiting the battlefields.

Two or three years ago, my husband would be able to walk round

um, the trenches and things,

but because of his ill health now,

no, he wouldn't be able to.

So, I don't think we will be able to. That was our opportunity to go

and I don't think that will happen again.

John Lennox is now behind bars,

but the legacy of what he did lives on.

At Victoria Coach Station in London,

Richard Maynard and his team

from the Dedicated Cheque and Plastic Crime Unit

recently discovered an audacious plan

to smuggle devices into the country

that would create fake chip-and-PIN terminals

and threaten the security of Britain's whole payment system.

And there was one particular criminal they had their eye on.

Thomas Beeckman moves around most of the world.

As far as we're aware, he has connections in the Far East,

the Low Countries of Europe and in the United Kingdom.

We were aware of the fact that he was moving in and out of UK,

through our work with the Borders Agency,

and that he was meeting with members of organised crime in the UK.

Richard's team had been monitoring Beeckman's movements for a while

and it wasn't long before they'd received word

that he was on his way to Britain.

We became aware that he was about to enter the country on a coach,

through the Channel Tunnel,

and this was our opportunity to try and detain him and arrest him

for the offence of compromising and possession of articles used in fraud.

In the early evening, around 6.30pm-6.45pm he arrived here,

at the coach station, in the arrivals section,

on a coach directly from the Channel Tunnel,

where he was met by myself and a colleague, DC Richard New.

He was detained for the purposes of a search

and taken to a nearby police station.

Beeckman was searched

and found to be in possession of several strange electronic devices.

The first thing that we came across

that really alerted our suspicion as to his activities was this,

a photograph of a printed circuit board

encased in a flash memory case that you would buy normally.

It is powered up by a watch battery

that's connected to it by the wires you can see.

These wires are left dangling because they're ready to go

to be connected up to the back of a circuit board,

inside a PIN-entry device.

Richard believes that criminal gangs across Europe

had been stealing chip-and-PIN terminals from shops and restaurants

and bringing them here to the UK,

where they would be secretly loaded with this devious technology.

Steven Murdoch from Cambridge University can explain how it works.

The easiest way to put additional electronics in

is in this large hole in the back of the device.

It is designed for manufacturer-added equipment,

but it can be equally used for malicious equipment.

And by drilling a hole in the case,

like we've done here,

the bad electronics here can connect to the smartcard

and therefore get full copies of the card details and the PIN.

The corrupted chip-and-PIN device is then put back into a shop

and will be used as normal by members of the public.

Terrifyingly, these devices

were also fitted with Bluetooth technology,

meaning the crooks need never go back to the scene of the crime.

We believe the blue item on the printed circuit board

is a Bluetooth-transmitting hardware.

The machine, therefore, works properly

but also records the card details from the magnetic stripe

and the PIN number, as entered.

Then that information is transmitted

to the organised crime gang member's telephone or laptop,

as long as he's nearby, within Bluetooth range.

And once the crooks have collected your bank details and PIN number,

they then make fake cards loaded with all your details.

A cloned card with a magnetic stripe on the back,

can then be used to purchase goods, or if the PIN number is accessed,

they can then be used in ATMs to access cash straight away

from that account, until it's closed down by the bank.

With the thousands of bank cards they are able to clone in this way,

police estimate the fakers could steal tens of millions of pounds.

The implications for the individual are very serious.

The compromise of someone's account

may or may not be noticed immediately,

and that account can get emptied out.

But for Thomas Beeckman, the game was up,

as Richard and his team had stopped this fraud in its tracks.

And even though Beeckman refused to reveal

the encryption key to his laptop,

officers were able to use this as an admission of guilt

in his court case.

Beeckman received 18 months

for the possession of articles for use in fraud,

and a further six months

for failing to reveal the encryption key to the police.

In this case,

the police believed the devices were destined for Europe,

but computer security expert Ross Anderson

believes that tampered chip-and-PIN devices are already in the UK,

but that the banks would never admit it.

The view internally in the banks

is that, OK, there's a bit of fraud, but you can't possibly admit it.

What bankers say internally

is that if they ever admitted that their systems weren't secure,

then there would be an avalanche of fraudulent claims of fraud.

They're terrified that lots of people

would start disavowing transactions that they had actually made.

This would cause the system to collapse in chaos.

And unfortunately for us,

it's almost impossible to tell which devices are fake and which are real.

There's no practical way,

for a man in the street,

to tell the difference between a genuine chip-and-PIN machine,

and a genuine chip-and-PIN machine that's been tampered with,

if it's been done properly.

Let's face it, the shops couldn't tell the difference,

some banks couldn't tell the difference. You and me?

We've got no chance.

Back on the trail of the suspected money-forgers,

officers are searching for the materials and machinery needed

to produce fake banknotes.

They have already arrested the gang leader, Anthony Higgs,

and found a number of expensive printers and test prints

at his house.

But today's operation

is also targeting a number of other locations

believed to be related to the gang's crimes.

DC Bell is searching the flat of one of Higgs' accomplices

and evidence found inside a cupboard in the living room suggests

that part of the fake money-making process happens right here.

There's a brown case here

that has rolls and rolls and rolls of various papers,

you can see the silver foil there.

Classically, this would be the type of foil used

to make counterfeit currency.

To put the strip into the actual note itself.

This is very expensive.

It's very hard to get hold of, only made by a small amount of companies

and it's classically part of a money-making kit.

The bag the specialist foil was found in

also contains a number of half-used and empty rolls.

DC Bell believes this is good evidence,

and that these may already have been used to produce

a large quantity of fakes.

Suddenly something else in the cupboard catches his eye.

This is not your typical printer photocopier paper.

This is a high-grade paper which is used to actually produce the money.

The find in the cupboard is equally important.

It's an industrial compressor,

used with the paper and rolls of foil

to try and imitate the foil strips found in real banknotes.

This cupboard contains all the vital parts

about making the money believable

and passable on the public.

All right, no worries.

Back at Higgs' house an officer searching the hallway

has found some suspicious bankers' draughts.

DC Briars takes them outside to check if they're forgeries.

They're exactly the same numbers.

Yeah, you wouldn't get the same one.

You can see the quality of the printing isn't sharp, that's dodgy.

Passable fake bankers' drafts could be very valuable documents indeed.

Also known as cashier's cheques, they are issued by banks

and are instantly cashable in any other bank around the world.

If perfected, these fakes would be like having access

to almost unlimited money.

In the search for the equipment used in the forging process,

DC Bell has travelled to a rented lock-up,

known to be used by Higgs and his gang.

He's hoping to find the final pieces of evidence he needs

behind this door.

OK. We've got a wooden unit here which has been screwed shut,

so what we're going to do is just open this one up,

and see what we can find inside.

Just trying to gauge what we've got here.

What it looks like, having seen these items before,

it looks like an industrial-style guillotine.

Now, what these are used for is to actually slice the money,

cut the money, after it's been made.

The next heavy box DC Bell pulls from the lockup

contains the final piece of this money-forging puzzle.

The last phase of the process

is to print the metallic details and holograms on the notes

and this industrial toner-foiler is the ideal machine for the job.

The officers have now found all the evidence they need.

Taken together, this is all the kit, the paraphernalia you would use

to produce and make counterfeit currency.

And once it's been through here and once it's been cut by the guillotine

it's then fresh and ready to be circulated in the public domain.

The contents of the lock-up are seized as evidence

and taken back to the police station.

Even though the officers have not found a stash of counterfeit notes,

the operation has still been a huge success.

Later, officers manage to forensically link

the printers they found

to £160,000 worth of fake banknotes

removed from circulation by the Bank of England.

A memory stick found at Higgs' home was also found to contain

the security features needed to replicate £20 and £50 notes.

We've disrupted a highly organised and highly lucrative

counterfeit-currency operation,

and that will stop further distribution of currency

by this particular group of individuals.

This was one of the largest counterfeit-money operations

ever discovered in the UK.

Anthony Higgs was convicted

of producing and distributing counterfeit currency.

He's currently serving eight years in jail.

Six other people were also convicted as a result of this investigation.

In Essex, the police are looking into another way

that the fakers are trying to get goods into the country.

This time, they're smuggling alcohol.

Customs have a list of lorries that they're interested in inspecting

and as they pass through the Dartford Crossing,

police motorcycles are picking them up

and guiding them into the services.

Today is Operation Mermaid,

which is part of a national operation

on targeting moving criminals, especially in heavy goods vehicles.

We've got colleagues from Customs and Excise

who will be checking for what we can term illegal loads.

We are having an increasing problem

with alcohol being brought across from the continent,

that people are attempting to evade paying duty on.

PC Alistair Cuthbertson and his team inspect each vehicle as it comes in,

and the Customs officers look out for anything unusual.

A suspicious alcohol-laden lorry is brought in and inspected -

it's loaded with wine.

Customs have taken the paperwork,

they're going to make their enquiries,

I'm going to check the driver's hours and the documents

and we shall see where we go from there.

The duty that needs to be paid on alcohol varies

depending on the strength of the alcohol in question.

On a load of this size, the duty would cost around £35,000.

Customs have completed their enquiries

on this imported load of wine

and have found that counterfeit paperwork has been used.

This lorry is actually a fake.

The real lorry would have looked exactly like this one,

would have had the same load,

and would have passed through customs a few days before.

This fake lorry was using the same paperwork as the real one,

but while the real lorry had paid its duty,

this one was trying to get away without paying its dues.

The counterfeit paperwork means that it's void,

it won't be allowed to travel,

and both the load, the trailer and the vehicle

will be seized and taken away to the pound.

Customs believe that importers

try to get away with sending through as many fake lorries as they can,

all trying to get away with using the same counterfeit paperwork.

And with this kind of fakery on the rise,

this is exactly the sort of thing they've been looking out for.

A lorry of this size could be worth up to £50,000.

So with his lorry seized forever,

this man has certainly paid the price for the fakery.

As Customs officers proceed with seizing the goods,

the owner of the lorry

reluctantly removes his belongings from the cabin.

The vehicle that was seized by HM Customs

is a very big success as far as we're all concerned.

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

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd