Episode 3 Fake Britain

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

Welcome to Fake Britain.

Get down! Get down!

-Now!

-Get your hands behind your back now!

It's just an ordinary house, it could be anywhere in the country,

but this is a house that's filled with fakes

and, you may not know it, but your home could be full of them, too.

During the series, we'll be investigating the criminals

trying to get their hands on your cash

by using forgeries, frauds and fakery

and I'll be showing you how you can avoid being taken for a ride.

Coming up, we find out

how the fakers are cashing in on best-selling products

from one of Britain's well-known companies - Dyson.

They are copying things lawlessly. It's the Wild West there.

How a seven-year-old's life-threatening electric shock

from a counterfeit iPhone charger

led to the discovery of dangerous fakes on sale in the UK.

The problem's been that somebody's plugged one

into a socket and it's exploded.

And how bridal dress fakers

are ruining what's supposed to be the perfect day.

When I did open the dress, the first thing I did was

ring my mum in floods of tears and said, "What am I going to do?

"It's turned up, it's awful."

This is an invention that took ten years to develop.

It's a radically different take on the idea of a fan, which,

as you can see, has no blades to get your fingers caught in.

It's the first big change

to the way fans have been made for over 100 years, but despite

the fact it has countless different patents to protect it,

these are now widely available.

You're not seeing double.

It's a fake.

Britain's best-known modern inventor, Sir James Dyson,

has built his company into a billion-pound British institution.

This is the Dyson warehouse, but these aren't Dyson fans.

They're all fakes,

and Dyson have had them taken off the market.

But around the world, there are thousands more.

Dyson have over 650 legal cases targeting fake fan sellers,

and they're also destroying huge numbers of their products.

Everyone represents a potential conned customer.

This one's a fake,

and this is a Dyson.

The reason counterfeiting is much more prevalent now

is that the world is a global market place.

If you make something in China, you can sell it round the world

very easily, and look at all these copies here,

which are indistinguishable, almost, from our product.

They are copying things lawlessly. It's the Wild West there.

And the problem is, when they do this,

it's very, very difficult to catch them.

Somehow, the idea has arisen that it's OK for people to copy,

um, people's products, but it isn't. They're stealing something.

It's robbery, it's theft.

One customer of the Dyson fan fakers was Jean,

who lives in Canterbury.

She thought Dyson's bladeless fan would be perfect for her.

I wanted that Dyson fan,

because it appeared to be totally safe with animals

and I have three cats and, I would think, children and old people.

You... You can't put your hand in and get your fingers chopped off.

Like many of us, Jean thought the easiest place

to buy it would be online from a well-known website.

I went to the Amazon website and typed in "Dyson fan"

and I was then given a whole list of vendors of Dyson fans.

The picture that accompanied the advert was the same in every case,

so I clicked the picture of the cheapest.

One click buy, thought no more of it.

At £107, Jean thought she was buying a British invention

and she was expecting the very highest quality.

When I got the fan out of the box, I was 100% sure it was a genuine Dyson.

But on closer inspection, she began to have her doubts.

The instructions for putting it together were very limited

and I couldn't actually fix it together.

And another discovery left Jean absolutely astonished.

I noticed that there was only a two-pin plug on it.

And I thought, "Hello, hello?

"Only two-pin plug? This can't be for the UK market."

Jean e-mailed the seller to complain

and she couldn't believe the response she was given.

She wanted me to cut off the two-pin plug

and attach a three-pin plug.

I thought, "No, this is very dangerous."

Um, the last thing I want is a fire in the house.

I didn't think that, if it was a Dyson fan, it would be like this.

Jean began to get suspicious

that perhaps the fan wasn't actually a Dyson.

Extremely unhappy with the product, Jean wanted to send it back,

but was shocked to find out the cost.

After twice telling me to cut the plug off,

"If you want to send it back, it'll cost you about £15."

When I took it to the post office, I found that, in fact,

it wasn't going to cost £15, it was going to cost £72.

And the reason for the £72 postage

was it had to go all the way back to China, where it had been made.

Unsurprisingly, Jean brought it home again.

She'd been left out of pocket by the fakers

and her futuristic fan has left her embarrassed.

Well, I felt very foolish.

It took me two or three days for the penny to drop.

It was very slow.

But yeah, I felt foolish.

Amazon.co.uk say that...

Later, we find out how Jean was not only taken in by the fan fakers,

but how they also put her life in danger.

That ignited very, very easily.

Every one of these phone chargers is a fake,

designed to look like the real deal on the outside, but of course,

with a phone charger, it's what's on the inside that counts.

They might look like a bit of a bargain

and at a fraction of the cost of the original item,

they're certainly cheap, but if you buy one,

it could be one of the most disastrous purchases you ever make.

Apple is one of the most successful companies in the world,

so, unsurprisingly, fakers around the globe are trying to cash in.

Astonishingly, in China, they didn't stop at faking Apple products,

they faked the whole shop,

complete with logos, displays and staff uniforms. In fact,

they found more than 20 of these fake stores across the country.

In this one, even the staff were duped.

They thought they were working for the real Apple Corporation.

And in Russia, hundreds of fake iPhones

were seized by the authorities and destroyed.

But there are fake iPhones much closer to home, as Sonia found out.

She was delighted when she found a seller on Gumtree

with a second-hand iPhone 4S for £230.

She wanted to buy it as a present for her husband.

When she picked up the iPhone, Sonia checked it out as best she could.

To me, it looked fine. It didn't look like a fake at all.

I mean, the quality was really good.

The iPhone fake looked so much like a real one,

it wasn't until she got home that her husband realised

it didn't work like a real iPhone.

He checked, the Wi-Fi wasn't working.

So he checked it online,

looked for the tell-tale signs

and then I think the last thing was he tried iTunes.

When they tried to register the phone,

they found out the identification code belonged to another model.

Obviously, then we knew that it wasn't the right phone.

Sonia was devastated to find out

that the iPhone she'd bought was a fake.

I was gutted, absolutely gutted. I mean, and you feel stupid, as well,

the fact that, you know, somebody's conned you.

Sonia had lost her £230

and her husband had a present that didn't work.

-Now Sonia feels completely taken in.

-It's embarrassing

to think I've just handed over 200-odd pounds for a...

a fake phone, so I was gutted, genuinely gutted.

But for Apple customers, there's far more dangerous fakery going on.

Fake iPhone chargers are big business in the UK

and they can be bought for as little as 99p.

But as one mother discovered, the fakes are potentially lethal.

Her terrifying experience means she doesn't want to be identified.

We'll call her Sarah, but that's not her real name.

Sarah bought her iPhone charger online using eBay

and it was sold by a local East London trader.

There was hundreds and hundreds of people

selling iPhone chargers.

But I found this company specifically because they had sold so many.

When it arrived, she was very happy with what she had bought,

especially since she thought she'd saved some money.

A real iPhone charger costs around £25. She paid less than a fiver.

It looked like a real charger,

it had all the markings on it of a real charger, um,

it actually stated on there that it was CE approved,

which, in my mind, meant it was safe.

Her seven-year-old daughter was unaware of the rotten core

at the heart of the fake Apple iPhone charger.

She was sitting playing on her iPod and the battery had gone low

and she plugged it into the charger that I had brought down

and then turned the switch on

and there was a big bang.

And with that, the pins of the plug stayed in the wall,

but the back of it came off and hit her on the head

and she ended up being thrown to the other side of the kitchen.

The poor little thing

just literally had the shape of the iPhone charger on her forehead.

Thrown across the room, the horrific incident

left her daughter traumatised and a lot of pain.

She was lucky to be alive.

It wasn't until she really started complaining that it was her arm

that was hurting and it was the arm that turned it on

that that's when I thought, "No, something bad has happened,

"I need to take her to the hospital."

The hospital confirmed to Sarah that her seven-year-old daughter

had received a life-threatening shock from the mains.

Unsurprisingly,

her daughter is now terrified of touching anything electrical.

It was, "Mummy, can you come and do this? Mummy, can you turn this on?

"Mummy, how do I turn this on again?"

If I'm around, she will ask me to do it rather than do it herself.

And Sarah's doctor told her that the electric shock may have

triggered a recurrence of her daughter's old medical condition.

About three or four days after the shock, her eczema flared up

just on her torso, just on the right side of her body.

Understandably, Sarah is distraught at what happened.

She blames herself for her daughter's near-fatal accident.

Well, obviously, I was devastated that

I had bought a charger that would do that to my own daughter.

Obviously, you spend your whole life trying to protect them and I had

bought the item that then had caused her, you know, that much trouble.

I know I didn't know, but you sort of get annoyed

with yourself to think that,

just because you've saved a little bit of money,

why then did I not just go to the shop and buy one?

I thought just by saving that little bit of money

has now caused that amount of trouble,

which, obviously, is heartbreaking for me and it's upsetting for her.

Angry and not wanting this to happen to anyone else,

she contacted Trading Standards hoping they would tackle the fakers.

They're still selling them, so that's when I thought,

"No, I've got to take this further,"

because there is obviously no remorse with the company.

I just wanted them to apologise and to know what they were selling,

because the next person might not be so fortunate.

Sarah's complaint led to

Kari Aslam and his team from Newham Trading Standards

tackling the trader who sold the charger to her

and they seized 60 other fakes he had for sale.

The trader was cautioned, but then, an investigation began

to see how many more were on sale in shops in the area.

There's been a seven-year-old girl

who's had an accident with a fake/dangerous charger.

On a busy shopping street in Newham,

Kari and his team target shops they believe may have

the potentially lethal chargers openly on sale.

Hello, mate. How are you doing?

Um, so my name's Kari Aslam, I'm a Trading Standards officer.

Can I speak to the manager, please?

I don't need to speak to him on the phone. Are you in charge here?

Have you got any iPhone chargers, yeah?

Yeah, these are the ones I'm interested in.

Now, how many of these have you got? Just the two?

Have you got some at the back?

Because you actually gave me some from the back.

OK. The problem with these chargers is that there's been an accident

and we suspect that they might be unsafe.

So any of these chargers you've got in the shop,

we're going to have to take them off you.

The chargers could cause the shop and the owners a lot of problems.

And if they are found to be dangerous,

then they're going to be in trouble, basically.

Disturbingly, in the next shop,

exactly the same chargers are also on open sale.

How many of these have you got in stock?

Is that all you've got?

Where did you get these from?

Right, have you got any receipts or invoices?

While Kari has to stop the sale of these potentially deadly chargers,

he also wants to cut off the supply.

He needs to know who sold them to the shop.

The problem's been that somebody's plugged a similar one into a socket

and it's exploded, so we'd like to test them.

The chargers here are seized and the team head off to the next shop.

Have you got any invoices or receipts to show where you got them?

Yeah, is that a white van? Does it, like, come in a van?

Kari becomes increasingly frustrated with the shop worker's attitude.

These are quite serious safety issues,

because somebody's been injured with one of these, so you need

to be quite accurate in terms of the information you provide,

because you might yourself get into trouble,

so I know you're saying somebody rolls off the street,

and you don't know who that is,

but that's not really believable in court.

But it's not just the iPhone chargers that could be fake.

One of Kari's officers has uncovered some other brands.

Again, we've got some more chargers here

we suspect that might be counterfeit or not safe.

Are we going to take these? Yeah. ..Where are you getting these?

Right, normal people came in here? OK.

Once the chargers are bagged and tagged,

they're taken away to be tested.

In just a couple of hours, on just one high Street,

all these potentially lethal chargers have been found.

We've seized over 60 items

which we believe are all potentially dangerous,

so we've potentially saved 60 people from injuries

or fires or explosions, just in one morning.

Three shops within 100 metres of, um, each other.

Later, we'll see what happens

when the seized iPhone chargers are tested...

Whoa-ho-ho!

I haven't seen one like this before.

..and discover how the fakes are fooling even the experts.

I could've ended up killing somebody.

Weddings in the UK are big business.

Every year, a quarter of a million couples take the plunge

and the sometimes huge sums they spend support a vast industry.

So what happens when the dress, the focus of the whole day,

turns out to be a huge slice of wedding fake?

The wedding industry in the UK is worth £10 billion a year.

Giles from Eternity Bridal

knows that what he sells is a key part of it

and just how important the dress is for a bride on her special day.

I've often asked, "Why do people spend so much on a dress for a day?"

And I think the answer is, it's the only day of your life

that you're going to have so many eyes directly on you.

And you are the centre, from the minute you walk in

to the minute you sit down to the minute you have your first dance,

you are the centre of attention and all eyes are on you.

But the cost of a wedding day can be astronomical.

The poll says that the average spend on a wedding

is roughly around about £10,000.

And, of course, the dress is a big slice of that,

often around £1,000,

so, to keep some of those costs under control,

more and more brides are turning to the internet

to try and find a perfect dress at a less painful price.

So when they've been to the bridal shop, and tried on their dream dress

and they think, "Fantastic,"

and, as everybody does these days, they go online

and they find these offers that they can buy a dress for £150.

And, unfortunately, that's where the fakers try and cash in.

Fake dresses have become more prevalent

as the internet has become more prevalent.

Girls will buy their party dress on a Thursday,

it'll be delivered on a Friday, they can wear it on the weekend.

They don't think twice about buying online,

because that's the culture they've grown up in

and they have no qualms in thinking that what will be delivered

is exactly what they've tried on in the shop.

They just think, "Well, obviously, that's retail,

"I'm obviously getting it at the wholesale price. It's all good."

But couples are being caught out by pictures

stolen from the websites of genuine designers.

These companies that are making the fake dresses,

as they do with any product, will go on and find a picture

that has been used in advertising, that has been used

in the company's online genuine sites, and they will take it.

The dresses are made in factories over in China.

They churn them out two to a dozen.

They're made for pennies.

When Jeff from Scunthorpe proposed to his partner Suzanne, he wanted to

give her the wedding of her dreams, even though their budget was tight.

And, for Suzanne, having a white wedding dress would be very special.

The first time I got married,

I didn't get married in a proper wedding dress or anything.

They started looking online for wedding dress ideas

and Suzanne thought her luck was in when she spotted the perfect dress.

She didn't realise the photograph she'd seen

was of a real Eternity Bridal dress.

It's a bestseller, and it's frequently faked.

I told her she could have anything she wanted, um,

but that was the one she wanted, because of the picture.

And they were delighted that they could manage the price.

I didn't really know how much you had to pay to get

a quality wedding dress. I know now, but I didn't at the time.

£80-£100 was a lot of money to Suzanne, anyway.

With the dress ordered, Jeff and Suzanne

carried on planning their big day, until the dress arrived.

Everything seemed to be hunky-dory, but when it arrived,

it arrived in a parcel that was, like, just a bit...about A5 size...

-Yeah.

-..and about an inch thick, and I couldn't quite get my head round

that there was a wedding dress in this parcel,

because I expected a big box.

And when they opened up the packet, they were astounded to discover

the dress of their dreams was anything but.

It was a poorly-made fake.

-It wasn't the same dress.

-No.

-That was obvious.

But it was made to look like the same dress.

When we looked at the picture,

it wasn't what we thought we were getting.

Suzanne couldn't believe what had happened.

-I was heartbroken, really, wasn't I?

-Yeah.

Because, I say, I had set my heart on that dress

and, er, it just wasn't the one we'd picked.

And time was running out.

Two weeks before we got married and everything was booked and paid for,

um...

But we still had this dress to sort out.

Jeff and Suzanne took the fake

to a dress maker to see if it could be improved,

but despite their best efforts, it just made things worse.

When this other person took these ruches out,

whatever they'd used left big holes in the dress

when she cut the stitching away.

Normally, when you cut stitching away and pull it through, you can't

-see the holes.

-You shouldn't, no.

-But these were big holes.

They couldn't believe it

when they were told what the dress was actually made of.

It was lining material, not wedding material.

And having bought a proper wedding dress now,

I know the difference, but I didn't then.

Suzanne's wedding day could eventually only be rescued

by buying a replacement dress,

but the fake had nearly wrecked their dream wedding.

We were sort of blinded by the elegance of the pictures,

rather than where it was coming from.

It's just a shame, really, because there's a lot of people out there

like myself who will fall into the same trap.

They think they're buying what they're seeing, they're not,

and it could shatter someone's dreams, their special day,

because it very nearly did it for Suzanne.

Back at Eternity, this is the dress in the picture

that Suzanne thought she was getting.

This is the dress that we have so many people phoning us up about,

and, er, unfortunately, the girls have been caught out with.

At first glance,

the fakers have clearly tried to copy the overall look and design,

but on closer inspection, the two dresses couldn't be more different.

Here, if we look at

the original article, and what makes this dress,

all the detailing on here is freshwater pearls,

hand-stitched beading, and it's all individually sewn on.

Now, if we look at the copy,

first of all, completely different in the beading area,

because this is embroidery with sequins.

You have absolutely nothing going on underneath,

so the dress just falls like a sack.

The stitching isn't finished properly,

the seams aren't finished properly,

there's absolutely no construction within the dress.

But even without me saying anything,

if you just look at the two dresses, I think it just speaks for itself.

Jeff and Suzanne weren't the only couple

to be caught out by the wedding dress fakers.

This design is so popular that multiple sites are pretending

to sell it when, in fact, they're offering a fake.

In West London, Becky was excited about getting married

and started looking for her perfect dress.

CHILD GIGGLES, BECKY LAUGHS

When we decided to get married,

I'd had a lot of friends that've said, "Oh, eBay's good,

"I've got dresses from there," so I thought I'd have a look.

I had a look through eBay, come across the most gorgeous,

perfect dress and thought, "I really want that dress.

"This is the one that I want."

so clicked into it, rang my dad and said, you know,

"I've found the perfect dress, please can you buy it for me."

And as far as I was concerned, I was buying the perfect dress.

Becky was thrilled about receiving the dress of her dreams.

It said eight to 12 weeks, it would be with me,

so I was quite excited, counting the days

and the weeks that went past to get this dress.

But when an unexpected very small package arrived,

she was in for a shock.

Got this lovely package, about this size,

and when I opened it, out popped what was meant to be a wedding dress.

Becky couldn't believe what she was seeing.

I thought I was getting something that nobody else would have

seen before and then, when it actually came to my front door,

it was one of the most tragic things I've ever seen in my life.

She was distraught.

When I did open the dress, the first thing I did was

ring my mum in floods of tears and said, "What am I going to do?

"It's turned up, it's awful."

I felt bad, why have I done this?

Why have I wasted money on what I thought was getting a perfect dress?

And when she tried it on, things got a lot worse.

When I did put the dress on, it felt horrible.

I think it was meant to be like a chiffon-y satin, but it wasn't,

it was see-through, it was severely creased with poor stitching.

It was a completely different colour and, within five minutes

of having the dress on, I'd had an allergic reaction to the material,

my skin started to blister, a red rash,

so I had to take it off immediately

and try to calm the blisters down with cream and Piriton.

The dress was a fake.

Once I'd had a clear look at it, I could see that it was a fake dress.

They had tried to copy the picture that I'd seen on eBay.

Becky didn't realise that the picture of the dress

had been stolen from the Eternity Bridal website.

At the time, it didn't say "This dress is a copy of another company,"

I just thought I was getting an original style dress

from this person from eBay.

Luckily, she was able to get another dress in time, but she had

lost her money and didn't get the dress she'd really wanted.

Looking back now, I wish I wasn't so hasty and ordering

the first dress that I saw, because, obviously, it didn't go to plan

and I was money down, rather than being the happy person

I should've been when the dress arrived.

Many other big names in bridal design,

Maggie Sottero, Benjamin Roberts

and Pronovias are also having their dresses

targeted by the fakers, and it's very difficult to stop them.

When it does go wrong, the industry says that's money lost for ever.

Fake dresses are an issue.

If a girl has spent the money on a fake dress, for example,

and let's say it comes and she's not happy with it,

that money has gone from her budget,

she cannot then produce that to then buy the real thing.

The vast majority of wedding dresses are sold by small,

independent shops.

It's an important slice of the British economy.

Bridal retailer Michelle in Essex runs a successful business,

but says the fakers are harming shops like hers.

At the end of the day, there are only a finite number of weddings

each year, um, and so, every dress that is bought and used online

is a dress that's not bought from an independent bridal retailer.

Retailers like Michelle attract customers

and build up a relationship with them,

partly because they're local and seen as trustworthy.

But she's seen a disturbing trend -

online fakers who are trying to convince brides

they're also UK-based and, thus, equally reliable.

Now, you've got sites, um,

especially promoting themselves through Facebook,

saying, "We're a UK-based seller, we're trusted, so on and so forth,"

but all they're actually doing

is importing the goods from the same people in the Far East.

Girls are thinking, cos it's UK-based,

that they're getting that actual dress, and they're not,

they're still getting a counterfeit dress, which is of no better quality.

Our industry experts have a warning about how the fakers

are taking advantage of brides to be.

They manufacture them for pennies and they're charging hundreds of pounds,

so their mark-up is astronomical,

because they're not giving a value product.

Unfortunately, from our side, it is very hard to stop this

and it's very, very hard to actually police the whole of the internet.

The main thing to get over is that those images

you're seeing on those websites are not what you're going to get.

Now, earlier, we saw how the fans fakers

were cashing in on Sir James Dyson's designs.

The fakers left Jean out of pocket and feeling, well, rather foolish.

She didn't know this fan was a fake when she bought it,

or that it could put her life in danger.

TUV is an independent testing house that checks electrical products.

Today, Richard Poate and Luke Kington will be seeing

whether this fake Dyson fan, exactly like the one Jean bought,

will pass the safety standards

that all electrical products must meet in the UK.

Today, we're having a look at this copycat fan.

And what we're going to have a look at particularly

is about its electrical safety.

Perfect. That's all I wanted to see.

The plastic closest to the electrical parts of the fan

has to meet critical safety standards.

If there was a fault, it could be very dangerous if it didn't.

So what we can see here is that some of these electrical parts

and components are in quite close contact to the plastic.

They cut out a sample of plastic from the bottom of the fan.

The standard industry test involves putting a rod

heated to 850 degrees Celsius into the plastic.

The plastic is now on fire and the rod is removed.

The fire should go out within 30 seconds.

If it doesn't go out in this time, it's failed the test

and it's a serious fire risk.

After 60 seconds, the fire hasn't gone out

and dripping molten plastic

falls onto the paper below, setting fire to it.

After 90 seconds, black smoke billows out of the test sample.

This is far worse than expected.

Well, that ignited very, very easily.

As you can see, it's still burning

several minutes into the test, the tissue paper's completely consumed.

That's going to burn until there's no material left. That's pretty bad.

A product like this fake fan could cause a serious fire in your house.

Well, believe it or not, that is the final piece, the unburnt piece,

or the nearly unburnt piece of the sample that we tested.

This is completely burnt out of control. It's completely consumed.

Definitely doesn't meet the 850 degree test.

-JAMES DYSON:

-'They're not tested by us.

'They're not built to the same standards that we build them.'

They don't perform anything like as well as ours.

They can catch on fire, they can give you an electric shock.

You know, they don't work like ours do. We go to extreme lengths

of testing and development to make sure it's utterly safe.

Not only are Dyson's products being faked, but the fakers have now

come up with a way to get money out of people who own the real thing.

One in three British households has a Dyson vacuum cleaner.

And with a market this big,

it's no surprise that the fakers are keen to exploit the situation.

Warwick Dixon from Kent was called by someone saying

they were from Dyson and offering to service his vacuum for 19.99.

Basically, I received the phone call

and it was Dyson on the phone saying they were doing a special offer

coming up to Christmas, could they come out and sort it?

But when the engineer came out, Warwick was

surprised as he unrolled a dust mat with another company's logo on it.

Thinking this was odd, he asked the man where he'd come from.

He was expecting a local Dyson service engineer from Kent.

This man said he'd come all the way from Essex.

He said, "Oh, we're filling in and covering each other's areas,"

and persuaded me that it was all legitimate, that he was from Dyson.

The engineer got to work and the costs soon started adding up.

He stripped it down and said that I needed more than just the one filter

and, all in all, instead of being £19.99,

it came up to almost £90.

On top of this, the engineer tried the hard sell on a service contract.

So I was being asked to pay

about £130 for a machine which can be bought nowadays probably for 150,

and this was just the service job.

The engineer told Warwick

he'd have to come back with some new parts and he left.

After the engineer had gone, taking Warwick's money with him,

Warwick turned detective and was shocked by what he found.

When I looked at the parts and the packaging, not one of them

had Dyson on, and so, I rang Dyson's to explain what had happened

and they said, "Oh, no, not another one."

The next day, when the engineer came back,

Warwick confronted him about the fakery.

He got back in his car very irate,

sped up the drive

and screamed off down the road, um, really, really angry

that I'd effectively caught him out that he was an impostor

and, er, I was intended to be yet another victim.

Dyson say they don't call people about their vacuums

and are very concerned about customers being targeted.

This is really worrying, A, because they're not from Dyson

and they're fooling and conning the customer, but then,

since they're not Dyson engineers, the last thing they should be doing

is fiddling around with a Dyson machine.

Fake Britain has tracked down an engineer who witnessed

first hand the operations of a fake Dyson service company.

The whistleblower wants his identity hidden for fear of repercussions.

We'll call him Stewart, but this isn't his real name.

I had seen the job advertised in the local job centre,

"Local service engineers required for local-based vacuum shop".

Stewart's new employer was cashing in on Dyson vacuum owners in the UK.

The call was made straight out of the BT phone book.

They would ring through and say, "Hi, we're from the Dyson service centre

"ringing about your Dyson vacuum cleaner."

They would then go on to offer them a half-price service offer,

which was never half price in the first place,

just to get the customer and the engineer into the home.

Stewart says the company would confuse customers

into thinking they were from Dyson.

A lot of people can be fooled by a telephone operator saying

they were from the Dyson service centre,

believing that they were from THE Dyson themselves

and not an independent company.

From the start, Stewart says he was expected to get

as much money as possible out of the unsuspecting customer.

We were given 30 services a week to do.

We'd go to a house where the service was offered at £30,

but we were expected to draw £60 at every single house,

regardless of age and condition of the machine.

Whether the machine was under warranty, whether the customer

was young or whether the customer was very elderly and senile.

And some engineers went to extreme lengths.

On occasions like that, engineers would advise

that the part be changed when it functioned as it should,

or sabotage machines to get the money for the target.

Stewart says he confronted his boss.

He would reply saying that it's not in their company policy to mislead.

They've done nothing wrong.

But after finding out that

fake Dyson service engineers were targeting vulnerable people,

the pieces began to fall into place and Stewart decided to leave.

I could then paint in our office as part of that scam

and subsequently left within the space of just a few weeks.

Dyson is trying to stop fakers from taking advantage of their customers,

and Sir James Dyson has some strong advice.

They could be saying and doing anything,

so I do recommend that people who are contacted in this way,

by someone claiming to be from Dyson, just put the phone down.

Earlier, we saw Sarah, whose daughter could have been killed

when a fake iPhone charger gave her an electric shock.

Sarah had thought the charger was real

and that's not surprising, because fake iPhone chargers

are so convincing that even an expert was duped.

John Shaw is an electrical engineer from Mossley.

He thought nothing of buying two chargers online.

I saw lots of them available, just bought a couple.

Should've noticed that they were very cheap,

but I didn't really think about it at the time.

Sending one to a friend, he was horrified by what happened next...

And he plugged it in on his boat...

came back the next day and, er, there was black smoke stains on the charger

and the wires and the piece of equipment it was plugged into, er,

had been destroyed.

John decided to investigate,

because the charger he had bought could have killed his friend.

Being an electronic engineer, I had to find out what had gone wrong,

because, potentially, I could've ended up killing somebody

or burning the whole boatyard down.

He was astounded by what he found inside the charger.

I cut it open and, um,

I discovered that it was extremely badly constructed.

I've never seen anything like it.

There was no doubt about it, these chargers were fake

and extremely dangerous.

If I was to hold on to this

standard phone charger wire...

..and that was plugged into the USB...

I would be essentially...

it'd be the same as putting my finger within half a millimetre

of a power supply. It's absolutely lethal.

Just imagine a kid lying on the floor watching the telly

playing with his iPhone, if you're connected to the floor,

and you've got a supply in your hand, you're going to die.

The fake iPhone chargers were so convincing, even John got confused.

I got the fake chargers mixed up with the real one.

Well, it's been perfectly cloned from a visual point of view, certainly.

But the fakers are missing out crucial parts inside to cut costs

and so, they're putting lives at risk.

Apple have gone to a great deal of trouble

to cram all of this stuff into here, but to try and replicate that

for something that doesn't cost very much money

is just impossible.

Buying an iPhone charger cheaply

could end up costing the consumer their life.

Earlier, we saw Newham Trading Standards

seizing potentially dangerous chargers from high-street shops.

Now, Kari Aslam is having them tested.

We're going to be carrying out some independent testing to see

if they're safe or not and whether they're fake.

And already, there's a problem.

It should presumably say California,

but they've misspelled California and it actually says "Caltformula".

The earth pin is too long

and the live pin and the neutral pin are actually too short.

Whoa-ho-ho!

I haven't seen one like this before.

I'm afraid that's failed to comply with the safety regulations.

In fact, all the chargers fail the test. They're all fakes

and all as dangerous as the one that electrocuted Sarah's daughter.

But Kari and his team are determined to try and stamp out the problem.

And every shop, er, will be checked street by street, really,

for these chargers and, um, we will take tough,

robust enforcement action against anyone selling these.

That's all from Fake Britain. Bye-bye.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd