Episode 8 Fake Britain

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

Welcome to Fake Britain.

In this series, I'll be investigating 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.

Fake, hope and charity.

The conmen taking advantage of British generosity.

We've been losing about 50 tons a week to these bogus collectors and these thieves.

It's been estimated millions of pounds have been made by these criminal gangs.

The fake house rigged to catch criminals.

The growing trend of people faking their own death for insurance claims.

Mac was a good salesman.

He was a good talker. And a big con man.

The chip shops shifting fake fish

and the perils of not knowing what you're eating.

Without instant medical assistance, I probably would have died.

Stealing from a charity is one of the most despicable crimes imaginable,

and these crooks are taking incredible risks

for a few pounds' worth of clothes.

And it doesn't stop there. Charity collection agency Clothes Aid

have also been the victim of theft.

Today, they're out on the streets collecting charity bags

that members of the public have left out for them.

The idea is simple, the charities put a bag through your door,

you leave out unwanted clothes, they come and collect it,

sell the clothes, and the proceeds go to charity.

And clothes recycling is big business.

With each ton of clothes being worth up to £80 for the charity,

clothes recycling is making £200 million each year

across the whole industry.

But business manager Michael Lomotey is worried.

There's not as many bags as we'd expect to be out,

which indicates that probably someone's gone round before us and taken those bags,

which is the problem that we're out here to look at.

Criminals across the UK have been carrying out fake charity collections

and stealing the bags left out for genuine charities

before they get a chance to collect them.

We've been driving round for almost 40 minutes

and we've only picked up a handful of bags,

whereas normally we could get half a ton in a morning.

The second-hand textile market has virtually doubled

in the last 12 months,

so there's huge value to the clothes you leave on your doorstep.

But where there's money to be made, the fakers follow,

and fake collections are having an enormous impact

on charities across Britain.

We've been losing about 50 tons a week

to these bogus collectors and these thieves.

Each week. It's probably £200,000 to our charity partners.

But we're not alone.

Everybody in the sector is being affected

and some people have estimated millions of pounds

have been made by these criminal gangs.

But it's not only fake collections that are causing concern,

the fakers are also faking the charity bags themselves

and impersonating genuine charities.

In Blackpool, the North West Air Ambulance got word that

that was exactly what was happening to them.

They've taken to producing a leaflet,

which looks very good,

it looks very realistic

but it's a complete fraud

and the North West public are being duped

into thinking they're donating to the charity,

when, in fact, they're not.

They decided to secretly film the people collecting the bags,

to catch them in the act and captured this footage

of a man casually loading up his own unmarked van with people's donations.

The people that are doing this don't appear to have a conscience.

They may perceive that it's a victimless crime,

it's only old clothes that they're stealing,

but obviously they're aware

how lucrative the recycling operation is.

How it affects us is, we're particularly saddened by it,

cos they're actually stealing money

that's been genuinely donated, in kind,

to the North West Air Ambulance.

It's being removed from us.

For charities like the North West Air Ambulance,

charitable giving is their only way of staying operational

and every income stream they have is vital.

I think this crime's on the increase

because we're not able to stem the flow.

And what it means for us is, we may be losing £100,000 this year

but what about next year?

It's the tip of the iceberg for us.

We're committed to trying to stop it

but physically being able to seems beyond our reach.

Later, we meet the men who tried to fool the public by faking

a well-known cancer charity's bags.

It looked genuine, it really did look genuine.

Fish and chips - it's a British favourite

and when it comes to what we eat

we all expect to get what we're paying for.

But now that the fakers have got hold of it

even a good old plate of fish and chips isn't safe.

Stefano Mariani of Salford University

conducted a survey across Britain

that illustrates just how widespread fish fakery has become.

In the UK we found that 7% of about 100 samples that we screened

were mislabelled.

Stefano's survey was one of the first to flag up

the amount of mislabelling going on in the fish industry,

and with the cheaper cuts of fish costing roughly half

what you would expect to pay for the premium product cod,

for him the benefit for the fakers is clear.

There's no scientific proof that at the moment

the cases of mislabelling are clearly making certain people rich,

but this doesn't mean that it's not exactly what's happening.

I believe that it shouldn't happen,

I believe that everything you buy

should be exactly what it says on the tin.

Increasingly, restaurants with fish on the menu

now don't specify which fish they're serving.

But for Luke Marvell,

a visit to a pub he used to work in

highlighted the dangers

of not knowing what you're eating.

We both decided to order fish and chips.

When I worked there, the fish was haddock and all hand-battered.

So, we chose to have that.

It was good produce and I'd enjoyed it before.

So, it wasn't something completely new to me.

But Luke didn't realise,

since he worked there

the fish had been changed

and was no longer haddock.

I instantly knew something was wrong within a mouthful.

There was an instant reaction, and I couldn't breathe.

My face began to itch and it went from there.

Luke's throat began to swell,

but having never had an experience like this before,

he had absolutely no idea what was wrong with him.

At first I thought I was choking on a bit of food,

I'll get a glass of water,

and it didn't help

cos I couldn't swallow it.

It was like a stinging sensation, like a stinging nettle

all across my head and my lips apparently went blue.

Luke had suffered a massive allergic reaction

so his friend called an ambulance.

Within ten minutes of eating the fish,

he was on his way to hospital,

where he was pumped full of adrenalin

to make the reaction subside.

Anaphylactic shock, so people can, unfortunately, die from it

if it's not treated quickly enough.

It was very much a life-and-death situation, really.

Without instant medical assistance, I probably would have died.

Luke was soon referred to an allergy consultant

to find out what it was that he had reacted to so violently.

I went into the pub and asked what the fish was,

and they had to check and read it

off the box cos they had no idea.

I emailed the name to my allergy consultant,

because she'd never heard of it.

Luke found out that the name of the fish he'd eaten was pangasius,

a type of catfish from Vietnam.

I got a bit of the fish,

took it into the hospital

went through the system of putting little dabs on your arms

and within ten seconds of it

touching my skin, a lump came up on my arm so we knew it was that.

Luke now has to carry an EpiPen with him wherever he goes.

Once you've had one allergic reaction,

the second one can be twice as severe,

so, it is a case of being careful about where and what I eat.

At the moment, if you ask for fish in a fish and chip shop

they can serve you any fish they like,

so, Luke's assumption that he would receive haddock was wrong.

However, if you specifically ask for a certain species

then that must be what is supplied.

In North Wales, the Trading Standards team had become aware

that fish were being mis-sold in their area,

so they decided to conduct a survey into fish mislabelling.

Mark Brierley is off to take samples from fish and chip shops around Rhyl.

Can I have a piece of cod, please?

Mark specifically asks for a piece of cod at each shop,

so that when it's tested,

they can tell the fakers are trying to supply a different fish instead.

I'm here from Trading Standards.

All it is, is, we're at the moment just doing routine samples for fish.

-OK.

-So, if I can, is just split this into three and bag it somewhere.

Once Mark reveals who he is, he divides the sample into three,

offers one to the shop and keeps two for himself.

One goes off to the public analyst and he then looks at it

to see if it is or it isn't cod.

There's just one more shop to visit before Mark calls it a day.

Have you got any cod? Got any cod?

-Yes.

-Can I have a piece of cod, please?

Ta.

-Thank you very much.

-Ta very much.

-You OK?

-Right, yep, yep.

From Trading Standards. Manager or owner available?

And it looks like this shop might already have a problem.

The one piece of cod that I bought,

I've split it into three halves, into three parts

-I don't think it's cod. It's haddock.

-I asked for cod.

That's cod, isn't it?

-No, it's haddock.

-OK, no problem.

I'll make a note on here.

-It might... Sometimes they do sell us cod.

-OK.

It's not looking good, but Mark will have to wait to find out

whether this fish is a fake, as all the samples from the shops

are now sent off to the analyst.

Kevin Jones from Wrexham Trading Standards has been

coordinating the survey across the whole of north Wales.

The public have the right

to be given what they ask for, in terms of any food product.

You ask for cod, that's what you should be given.

If cod isn't available or if they are serving haddock,

or another variety of fish, the customer should be told,

"Well, you asked for cod and chips, but we've got haddock,"

and it gives the customer the choice then to say,

"No, I prefer to have cod, I'll go elsewhere for my takeaway meal."

All samples taken by Trading Standards

from fish and chip shops

have a piece of their DNA extracted

and compared against a database of known fish species.

With six out of the seven shops in Mark's area having supplied cod,

he's now off to deliver the results to the final shop.

-The result's come back in on the sample that we took.

-Right.

I don't know whether you remember,

-on the day there was a bit of confusion on the day, as well.

-Yes.

-Unfortunately, it has reported back as wrong.

-Wrong?

-Yeah.

-What is it again?

Well, from, when we picked it up, I'd asked for cod.

-Yeah.

-And it has come back as haddock.

She did say, then you wrote it down, didn't you?

You explained later on, yeah.

Mark goes into their kitchen to discuss the fakery in more detail.

Thank you very much.

Cos Jan did say it could have been haddock.

She said it afterwards, though.

That's the problem. I came in and I asked for a piece of cod.

-Right, I see.

-So, there was nothing said at the time, it could be cod, it could be haddock,

it was just, yeah, fine, not a problem. Fish was served.

Then it was afterwards when it was...

because of our supplier, it might be this or it might be that.

So, if you hadn't said on the day,

then I'd probably be looking at things differently,

cos I'd be coming in and asking you more questions

as to what had gone on.

Can I just get you to sign in the box for the notice?

Fish and chip shop owners are finding that the price of cod is so high

that it's difficult for them to keep supplying their customers

with the premium-priced product.

We can't get suppliers that have... They've...

maybe have got cod, but the prices have gone so high in the markets

that when they get it and they get it onto us,

it's just not worth us selling the cod,

because it's too expensive at the moment.

So, that's why the haddock is slightly cheaper.

This shop had been selling haddock instead of cod

and were issued with a warning.

And it looks like this issue is occurring across the whole

of North Wales.

The overall results were that across all six authorities,

of the 42 samples taken, seven came back incorrectly

which is around 16-17%.

None of them were related to,

for example, Vietnamese river cobbler,

and other inferior species.

Of the seven samples that came back wrong,

when cod was asked for, haddock was delivered.

British law states that customers should always get what they ask for

and with food allergies increasingly common,

it's clear that that law is there for a good reason.

Luke Marvell didn't know he had an allergy. What happened to him

could happen to any of us.

I occasionally eat fish and chips now, but I'm very careful.

I don't eat it if I go to a restaurant.

I still enjoy fish and chips

but it's very much a case of I'll make it myself,

so I know what's gone in it.

More and more people in Britain are trying to fake their own death

and they're doing it for money.

Infamously, canoe man John Darwin tried and failed

to get away with his £250,000 claim back in 2002,

but the fakers keep trying and fake death claims

are becoming increasingly common.

In a quiet town in Kent, Anthony McErlean was hatching a devious plot

to make a fake death claim of his own.

Anthony started his cover story early when he told local pub owners

Anita and Kevin that he and his wife

were planning a trip to Honduras.

Mac did come in here and say he'd got a problem with the bank

and that him and Sonia were going out to Honduras

to sell some land or property that she owned

and then they would be back, but he was going out for six months.

They left for their trip. What no-one realised

was that this was part of an elaborate plan

for Anthony to fake his own death.

When news filtered back about what had happened,

Kent Police were amongst the first to hear the story.

He left where they were staying early in the morning,

maybe 4.30am, 5.00am, to go and photograph wildlife in the forest.

Um, he said about an hour into the journey, they had a puncture

and, whilst he was mending the puncture, a lorry came along

and ran him over.

What actually happened was that Mr McErlean decided

he was going to fake his own death to claim £500,000 insurance money.

Anthony had bribed officials and bought genuine certificates

to prove his death, but all the details on them were fake.

He was able to obtain the necessary documentation -

which was the death certificate, the burial certificate,

witness statement of the accident, police report and doctor's report.

All those items were sent to the insurance company in Glasgow.

Anthony then hacked into his wife's e-mail account

and made contact with his insurance company in her name.

All his contact with the insurance company was in his wife's name.

He would sign letters. He would e-mail them

but it would always be signed off as Sonia McErlean,

so they thought they were dealing with the wife.

Despite all his best efforts,

Anthony had missed one crucial element - his passport.

When the insurance company didn't receive it,

along with the rest of the claim, they became suspicious,

so referred the matter to John Saunders from Linden Claims,

who investigate around 20 fake death claims a year

and is accustomed to weeding out the fakers.

In a real death claim, I'd expect to see someone's passport returned,

cancelled by the British Embassy abroad, perhaps.

Or at least brought back to the UK.

In a lot of death claims, where death is by road traffic accident,

people often say it was stolen from the scene of the accident,

which is an indication that perhaps all is not correct.

I made a number of background enquiries

and I actually met a relation of his in London,

who appeared not to be aware of his death.

It was a close relation, so I thought that was suspicious

and the circumstances of the death didn't tie in. It didn't add up.

But then, Anthony made another crucial error.

When the matter was referred to the Insurance Fraud Bureau

they used their resources and flagged up a glaring problem

with the fake death claim.

Key to the McErlean case was that we knew

that he'd taken out a motor insurance policy

after the date at which it was alleged that he'd been killed.

That just wasn't possible.

With this evidence that the death had definitely been faked,

the police in Kent took hold of the investigation.

Once we established he was alive,

we then contacted the insurance company

and obtained the documentation,

which proved he'd made the claim.

We submitted the documents for finger-printing

and established his fingerprints were on the documents,

which of course is an impossibility if you're dead.

In the meantime, confident that his deception had worked,

Anthony returned to his home town.

But he was still keen to keep his true identity secret.

Mac came into the pub one afternoon,

and his appearance had totally changed.

He'd grown his hair, grown a beard, he was tanned

and I didn't even recognise him until he started talking

and telling his stories, and then I realised who it was.

I did ask him why he'd changed his appearance

and he just laughed, and I thought, oh well,

perhaps Sonia's left him and he's looking for somebody new.

I just didn't know what he'd been doing or why.

For John Saunders, it's extremely unusual for a person

faking their own death to return to the UK,

and almost always spells the end of their fraud.

People tend not to advertise, people might go down the pub

and say how much they got from a travel insurance claim

that was a fraud, but they don't go down the pub

and say that they died the week before.

With his address gained from the Insurance Fraud Bureau,

and the fingerprint proof they needed,

Martin Bradbeer and his team

descended on Anthony's home to arrest him.

He was arrested at his home address in Petham near Canterbury

and he straight away said,

"It's me, I'm the man you're looking for, I did it."

He said that he was 66, he didn't want to be destitute

in his old age and he thought he needed half a million pounds.

He thought this was the best way of going about getting it.

Anthony McErlean was found guilty of attempted fraud

and was sentenced to six years in prison.

Often fraudsters make silly mistakes.

They trip up over the smallest details.

It's very, very difficult to effectively commit a fraud.

When you're dealing with the Insurance Fraud Bureau,

you know we'll find you.

Mac was a good salesman, a good talker and a big con man.

In Rosswell in Leeds, Jennifer and Malcolm Chapman

were two people only too happy to give to charity.

But they too were about to be deceived by the charity bag fakers.

They had concerns when a Macmillan bag fell through their door.

It had the Macmillan logo on the bag.

It looked genuine. It really did look genuine.

And the only thing that was different was the telephone number.

It was an 0800 number and it looked similar to theirs,

I can't remember exactly what it was,

there was just maybe a digit changed on it.

But the charity number was exactly the same.

They'd used their charity number.

And the bag looked genuine.

It were genuine all right, definitely!

Andy Greatorex from West Yorkshire Police

had dealt with charity bag theft in the past,

but this was the first he'd heard of people faking the bags themselves.

Members of the public had obviously received these flyers

through their letterboxes,

so it gave us ideal access to what the flyers were.

And as you can see, they look very realistic.

We've got the correct logo there.

We've got the correct colouring.

We've got the charity number.

We've got the contact numbers, the 08 number

and the email address, which is there as well.

Malcolm called the number on the bag

but found that it didn't work.

So he looked up Macmillan online

to find their real number and get in touch with them.

Macmillan said, when I phoned them that they had nothing.

They didn't do bags

and they wasn't doing anything in this area at the time.

So I said then I would ring the police

and they were going to ring the police as well.

The police began investigating

and soon enough they found the van they'd been looking for.

We commenced a hotspot patrol in that area

with the local neighbourhood policing teams.

And lucky enough, they came across this vehicle

as a routine stop-check.

A Mercedes Sprinter van.

Inside it were two brothers, one of them being the owner of the company.

A search of that vehicle recovered numerous bags.

Bin liners in the rear of that van

with these leaflets attached.

In the front of the van, again, numerous leaflets

that were going to be distributed were also recovered.

So they were both arrested

in relation to fraud by false representation.

The Liepins brothers were found guilty of fraud

and each received a two-year suspended sentence,

had to pay court costs and serve 300 hours of community service.

Macmillan Cancer is quite a world-renowned charity.

It's like, in a sense, they're not only stealing from the charity,

but it's got a secondary impact.

They're actually taking money and funding from people

who are suffering from a horrendous disease.

I feel quite emotional at the moment,

because they looked after my brother, did Macmillan nurses.

It's a large amount of money,

they're doing these charities out of.

They shouldn't walk this earth.

The Fundraising Standards Board are working with

Trading Standards across the country to get the situation under control.

Well, I think if a member of the public

has decided to put some clothes out in a collection bag

for a collection for a charity,

it would be important that the member of the public realises

that's actually real money.

It's almost like putting a £20 note on the doorstep.

And if you put a £20 note on the doorstep for somebody to collect,

you'd probably want to make sure

you knew who was going to collect it.

In a further twist, now the fakers are setting up

bogus charities of their own

and keeping all the proceeds for themselves.

Alistair McClean has seen so many fake bags

he now knows what to look out for.

For me, the obvious differences between these

are fairly conspicuous.

No reference on this one about the charity.

There's a mobile telephone number here and a Hotmail address,

which is quite peculiar for a business.

This one, a clear statement about the name of the charity,

very conspicuous mark about the charity number.

And if you turn over, on the Save The Children document,

it's telling you when the collection is

and it's telling you about a hotline.

The first leaflet is clearly a fake.

And with more and more charities springing up across the UK,

this crime is now completely out of control.

The police and Trading Standards are finding it increasingly difficult

to catch the perpetrators.

There's no doubt that charities are losing enormous sums of money.

It's been estimated that it could be as much as £50 million a year

that charities are losing, and not able to give to good causes.

And in addition, that money is not actually being taken up

by some private individual.

It's going into the hands of criminals

who are involved in some serious criminal activity.

Involved in money laundering,

involved in drug trafficking, human trafficking.

So it's really serious criminal activities.

For Malcolm and Jennifer,

this experience has made them think twice about giving in this way.

When charity bags come now, unfortunately,

we put them in the bin.

But for Alistair McClean and the Fundraising Standards Board,

that's exactly what they're trying to avoid.

There's no doubt this is a significant issue for the public,

and I can understand the concerns about giving clothes

that ultimately fall into the hands of criminals.

But it's really important to please keep giving.

This is a really important fundraising method for charities.

There's been a substantial gain in the value of textiles,

and charities are benefiting from that.

Sadly, some of that has been eroded by this criminal activity,

but your work and your continued generosity

is going to make a huge difference

to the work of the charities that you support.

In the world of Fake Britain,

the victims are normally the people being deceived.

But in one area of the country, that's being turned on its head,

and it's the police using fakery to catch the criminals.

In the burglary hot-spot areas of Birmingham,

West Midlands Police have set up fake houses,

which they call capture houses,

rigged with state-of-the-art covert cameras...

DOOR CLATTERS

..designed to catch criminals in the act.

Sergeant Dave Keen heads up the mission.

The cameras themselves can be put in any household device.

Toasters, in the wall, in furniture.

Literally in anything.

If you think how small these cameras are, you can put it anywhere.

And that's what we do.

Once the fake house is filled with cameras,

Dave waits until he gets word that a burglary is taking place.

When somebody enters the premises, they trigger a motion sensor.

That motion sensor directs a message to a mobile phone,

or several messages, to say that there's movement in the premises.

What I can do then is dial into house cameras

and then view what's going on straight away, in real time.

See people burgling the house, grab their descriptions,

obviously note them down,

and at the same time, coordinate resources,

by another phone or my radio, to go and arrest the people.

When they trialled the scheme, Dave didn't have to wait long.

CRASHING NOISES

That was kitted up at 9am

and broken into at about 2pm.

So five hours. That's probably the shortest that we've had,

but it just goes to show people are looking to target premises,

and if you put it in the right place,

you'll catch the right people.

At Dave's command, police officers enter the flat.

MUFFLED SHOUTS

Police officers! > Stay where you are!

The officers have been directed by me.

I'm watching it live, just telling them where to go.

They're able to surround the flat,

obviously force entry and arrest the guy.

Caught in the act, if you like.

The police use data from past burglaries

to help them choose the best location for fake houses.

Statistics show that once a burglary has taken place in a particular area,

the immediate neighbours are at an increased risk

of being burgled during the first two weeks.

If you have an offender or a group of offenders

operating in a certain area,

that's where hotspots will show up on our map.

We'll have the community telling us,

"We're having burglaries in this area."

And that's where we'll deploy kit and people.

CRASHING NOISES

In a different fake house in Birmingham,

Dave got a text at 3am to let him know

that another burglary was in progress.

The minute they've entered, so a number of seconds ago now,

that's triggered the alarm on my phone.

So I've had a number of text messages saying,

"Check your phone, check the cameras."

At which point, I've dialled in and seen them in the previous room.

So straight away, I can start coordinating people and saying,

"We've got a live burglary. We need to surround this premises.

"This is where you need to go."

And already, unknown to these guys, we're heading towards them

and we're surrounding the premises itself.

Footage like this can be used in court cases to provide evidence.

You can see some of them covering their hands up with their sleeves.

That's to stop fingerprints.

And try and get away with the offence.

That's good evidence for us

because it shows they've got some sort of guilty knowledge

and guilty intent about what they're doing.

The cameras are so small that the criminals have no clue

that this fake house has been rigged just to catch them out.

No idea that we've got cameras everywhere.

You'll see them look directly at the cameras,

come straight up to the cameras.

They don't know that they're there. They're perfect.

They've got absolutely nowhere to go now.

And off they go out the front door,

literally into the waiting arms of police officers

with a load of stolen property still in their pockets,

and all on camera.

Once arrested and shown this footage,

the juvenile criminals immediately confessed

and were found guilty of theft,

each receiving a 12-month suspended sentence.

It's clear from the statistics

that crime dropped again here significantly.

That small area had seen over 20 burglaries

in a really short period of time.

After the deployment of the capture house,

we had no burglaries for over a month in that small area.

It just shows it will cut it dead

because these people, once they get caught,

they will tell their friends, they will tell their family.

The criminal networks will find out what we're doing,

and obviously, it makes them think twice about their offending.

For Dave Keen and his team, the mission doesn't stop here,

as new fake houses are being set up in different areas all the time.

These people will go into people's houses

and probably have no second thought about it.

I want them to be thinking,

"This house that we're looking at and we're thinking of going into,

"Is it a capture house? Do the police own it?

"Am I going to get jumped on when I walk out the house and arrested?

"Am I going to go to court? Am I going to go to jail?"

The fear should be on these people

and not on the members of the public, and that's my hope.

For all their razzle-dazzle, it's not hard to work out

why fireworks are one of the most heavily-regulated products

for sale in the UK.

But while you can still buy a Catherine wheel or Roman candle,

if you're old enough,

the firework you won't be able to get hold of, legally at least,

is a banger.

They were banned after a spate of accidents in the '90s.

So the only British bangers

on sale in Britain today are the fakes.

Worryingly, fake bangers have been found being sold outside schools

up and down the country.

And, in the North of England,

the fakers are using one brand name in particular.

Black Cat fireworks are one of the oldest

and most recognisable firework brands in the UK,

which makes them an obvious target for the fakers.

Dave Lovell of West Yorkshire Trading Standards has recently seized

fake Black Cat bangers in numerous raids across Yorkshire.

We had no idea where these products were coming from.

Obviously we made the routine enquiry

with Black Cat Fireworks, the company based in Huddersfield,

but they told us point blank

that the product wasn't being produced by them.

They were a reputable company.

We took that as read, and then we started to investigate,

as a result of the intelligence that was coming in.

When bangers were banned in 1997,

Black Cat ceased manufacturing them to comply with the law.

So to Dave, it's obvious that these bangers are fakes.

If you look at this product, it says, 'Made In China'.

Well, it's supposed to say, 'Made In China'.

Unfortunately, the second letter,

which is supposed to be an H is unfortunately an N.

So you would have thought that they would have spelled

the name of the country correctly.

Fake bangers also appeared in Stockport,

where an anonymous tip-off

led to Ian O'Donnell's Trading Standards team

seizing hundreds of them.

We were made aware that bangers were on sale,

which was an immediate concern for us,

principally because bangers have been banned for a number of years.

We made enquiries

with the information and numbers we were given

and arranged to purchase three packs of bangers.

So our officers attended a car park in Stockport

and were supplied with these.

And the price that these bangers were being sold for

indicates that they were being aimed at children.

These were being sold for £2 per pack of ten.

Dave Lovell's research also indicated

that the bangers were aimed at children.

We had a number of concerned parents contacting us

and, to a lesser degree,

there was instances where teachers contacted us directly, saying that

they had concerns they were being sold or used at the local school.

We took the bangers to one of the oldest firework companies in the UK,

Phoenix Fireworks, to get an expert opinion on the fakery.

Before they're even out of the box it's clear that something's wrong.

If we look at the two labels,

this being the fake product and this being a legal product,

you'll see the British Standard here, 7114.

With 2 and an 88.

Now that is incorrect.

It should say Part 2 and it should say 1988.

This product's labelling is incorrect and also illegal.

The correct form of labelling is a legal requirement in the UK

and even though the fakers know that, they can't even get that right.

But this isn't just an issue of labelling.

Before Jon has even tested the bangers

he can see that they're dangerously unsafe.

With this product, there are some problems.

Firstly, this piece of fuse here will only, I'd suggest,

last for maybe four or five seconds.

So, of course, you can't get away far enough

from this product in that time.

Worse than that, there is no quality gas seal

from the fuse into the composition,

which is held within this part.

A fuse not being sealed correctly is a serious business.

If a spark flew down into the unsealed gap,

the banger would ignite in your hand.

If you were to light this firework,

very likely this would damage your fingers very severely.

The speed at which this product would ignite

could be anything from zero seconds to four seconds.

Obviously you take your luck in your hand at that point,

if you light one of these,

And if you're holding it, if it's zero seconds,

then inevitably you'll receive some injuries.

At Phoenix Fireworks' test site,

Jon and Alex perform a controlled experiment

on the fake bangers to check what the risks are.

We're trying to recreate in a very basic form

if one of these bangers go off in a hand.

And what we've done is filled a surgical glove with sand

to try and recreate, in a very crude way,

what would happen if one of these fireworks were to go off

in somebody's hand whilst they were holding it.

EXPLOSION

You can see where the stick that was holding the glove

has completely disintegrated.

We're able to find portions of the finger

with sand in the bottom of it still, but torn apart here.

If that was skin and tissue,

it's likely the finger would have been removed during the explosion.

Having done several tests on the bangers,

it is clear that the reaction time of each one varies enormously,

with the shortest explosion measured at three seconds.

The fuses are so erratic that Jon has added extra fuse

for safety during the tests.

EXPLOSIONS

Each one of these type of fireworks are not consistent.

Each one's going off in a different way compared to the next.

Some explode very fiercely, some don't explode quite as hard.

With each banger reacting differently, even within one pack,

the consumer would have no idea what the next one would do,

how intense the explosion would be

or even how long it will take before it goes off.

These particular fireworks

are not well made.

They're not good quality.

There's going to be questionable mixes of powder

that you don't know what they're going to do.

The fireworks industry in the UK is very heavily regulated

and each firework that is available to consumers

has been rigorously tested. And with good reason.

The problem with fake or illegal fireworks

is they've gone through none of this testing.

They put what they want in them.

They put illegal substances in them, illegal chemicals,

and you really don't know what they're going to do.

If you're buying fireworks from a man in a van,

a man in a pub, a man on the side of the road,

you really are taking your life in your own hands.

Looking at this alarming footage on the internet,

it's no wonder the industry and authorities are so concerned

about fake bangers.

Anyone playing with them, like these youngsters,

are clearly putting themselves in serious danger.

There had been an incident where

a young boy had been seriously injured by bangers.

He lost part of his finger.

That is something that the police were investigating.

But clearly, being aware of that, when a further report came through

that the bangers were on sale, we wanted to do everything we could

to get them off sale as soon as possible.

And in another incident in Essex,

George Kemble-Brown's hand was blown to pieces

when the illegal banger he'd been sold

ignited immediately on lighting it.

I definitely would say that anything that's fake is going to be

inherently more dangerous, because you simply don't know what's in it.

And before you know it, you've suffered quite serious injuries

because you've bought something that's fake and illegal.

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

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd