Episode 4 Fake Britain


Episode 4

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Transcript


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

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Welcome to Fake Britain.

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It's just an ordinary house.

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It could be anywhere in the country

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but this is a house that's filled with fakes,

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

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During the series, we will be investigating the criminals

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trying to get their hands on your cash by using forgeries,

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frauds and fakery,

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

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On today's show,

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fake safety labels on the powerful laser pointers that can blind.

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It's quite shocking, really, that a pen with one button

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can have such an influence on whether somebody lives or dies.

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And the shocking fake dangerous laptop chargers flooding Britain.

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I remember thinking that's it.

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So that's how my life ends.

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Now this may look like a pen, but it's not. It's, in fact, a laser.

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The sort that's often used for teaching or giving presentations,

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but because it's a laser,

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there are very strict rules on the strength of beam that's being sold

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and that strength is usually indicated on this label here.

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As we are about to discover, these labels are being faked

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and that means that powerful lasers are being mis-sold

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and could end up in the wrong hands and that is highly dangerous.

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Craig Redman is an air ambulance helicopter pilot.

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When he's called out to a patient, every second counts.

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He needs to be able to see clearly to do his job,

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but he's coming up against troublemakers on the ground

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who are shining powerful laser beams up at his helicopter.

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And Craig's not the only one to be affected.

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Recent figures show that in one year alone there were

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nearly 2,000 incidents of laser pens being shone towards aircraft.

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Many of the lasers aren't quite what they seem.

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A lot of the labels that are on them are fake.

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The pens are fake themselves.

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They are made by the cheapest components

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and not necessarily the safest ones.

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The legal limit for laser pens in the UK is one milliwatt.

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The problem is you can't tell how powerful a laser pen is

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if it's got a fake label.

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What is the power of that?

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It could be ten milliwatts.

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One that is maybe 20 could actually blind me and therefore I might crash.

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It's Craig's job to get medical help to his patients

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as quickly as possible.

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There's someone that needs the paramedic that is on board.

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There is somebody either about to die, who is dying,

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and getting that guy to them straightaway will obviously help.

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But one night when Craig was on his way to rescue a pensioner

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who had had a heart attack, the very worst happened.

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As we were doing the orbits around the town,

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we got lasered from one of the green laser pens from a property.

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Helicopter pilots are trained to keep their cool under pressure

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but with a laser attack your options are very limited.

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When the first initial laser blast hit the aircraft, the first

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thing it kind of makes you want to do is close your eyes and turn away.

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It's got a big dazzling effect, which makes it very hard to look out.

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However, you've still got to fly the aircraft.

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It's a very, very dangerous situation that we are in.

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Police cameras on board the helicopter picked up

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the source of the laser beam.

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You can see how bright that beam is and how long it's kept on for.

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Quite dramatic, really.

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You have to imagine that the three people that were in the aircraft

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are getting this laser into their eyes at the time.

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It's taken me back to the night, actually.

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Yeah, I remember it as if it was kind of yesterday.

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Craig helped us to recreate the dazzling effect of being

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lasered using his helicopter, a powerful laser pen,

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and the cover of darkness.

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Clear.

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'What we're going to do, we've got a camera set up inside with nobody in.

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'There's nobody in the aircraft for safety reasons.'

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I'm just going to shine that into the cockpit just

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so you might be able to see the glow of the laser itself.

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So, here we go.

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These vivid images show how Craig

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and his team would have been dazzled on the night of the incident.

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And it left Craig with only one option.

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I elected that night not to land because every time

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we did an orbit and an approach to land, we were lasered.

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The consequences of that were the paramedic that we had on board

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couldn't help the technicians etc that were on scene,

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which is a very experienced paramedic.

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He may have been able to help the patient

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and get the extra care that a paramedic brings.

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Sadly, the heart attack victim later died.

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The true consequences of this laser attack,

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delaying the paramedic and his life-saving equipment,

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getting to the patient, will never really be known.

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He would have been in a better place with better care

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and better medical equipment maybe to save his life.

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And that's still on our minds,

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as the crew of that night,

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that we could have helped but we weren't allowed to.

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The men behind the laser attack

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later pleaded guilty to directing or shining a light

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at an aircraft in flight.

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There's no doubt, though, that Craig was lasered by a pen much more

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powerful than that one milliwatt legal limit.

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It's quite shocking, really, that a pen with one button can have such an

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influence on our job and an influence on whether somebody lives or dies.

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A laser beam can travel for miles until it hits an object in the sky.

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But what happens when the target is a person on the ground?

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Teenager Kieran Waters found out the hard way

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when he was minding his own business at school.

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I was stood by the window in my form room

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and one of my classmates decided to walk over and hit me

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with a laser pen and just shone it point-blank in my eye, really.

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At first, it just seemed harmless high jinks or loutish behaviour.

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The laser was shone in my eye for about two seconds, if that.

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It was really just brightness.

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But Kieran soon realised that his vision had been affected.

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My vision got a lot blurrier than it was.

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There was also just a spot where I couldn't really see anything.

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It was just gone. There was nothing there.

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With his vision deteriorating rapidly,

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Kieran's mum Rhonda rushed him to hospital to get him checked out.

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I took him to the A&E and they took him to

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the eye specialist in the hospital

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and they took photographs of the back of his eye and did sight checks.

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Kieran was examined by Mr Ahmed Kamal,

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a retinal consultant at Liverpool's Aintree Hospital.

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He soon found that the high school prank had gone horribly wrong.

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Kieran had scarring, a very small "spot scar", we call it,

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in the fovea area, which is most important to see through,

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and one loses vision immediately.

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Unfortunately, the central vision which is damaged,

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that is permanently affected.

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It was devastating news for Kieran who will now have to live

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with partial vision for the rest of his life.

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He allowed Mr Kamal to show us his medical records

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to demonstrate the damage caused by the laser pointer.

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What I'm seeing here is Kieran's right eye.

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This is the scarred a bit along with a black spot there.

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You can see that there's a big defect of the layer here,

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which probably appears like a cyst.

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Like a black spot.

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That's the area which is damaged.

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There's no doubt that the laser pen that partially blinded Kieran

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was illegal.

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No legal one milliwatt laser pen has ever caused this

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kind of substantial damage.

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This is a result of a high-intensity,

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high wattage laser, just for a few seconds,

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and it's unbelievable that such a small duration

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can cause such permanent, irreversible damage.

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Mr Kamal is treating an increasing number of patients with

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laser pen injuries and it looks as though Kieran won't be his last.

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Coming up, the man who made

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and sold thousands of fake laser pens from the Lancashire suburbs,

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some of which were 700 times more powerful than the legal limit.

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Officers were shocked to find a laser device of this size.

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We are mad about mobile computing in this country,

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but from time to time, we can also be rather forgetful and that's

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why there's a huge market for these things, replacement laptop chargers.

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They sell tens of thousands of them every year,

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and like any electrical item, safety is paramount.

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After all, you have mains coming in at one end

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and you and your laptop at the other end.

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So what happens if your laptop charger is a fake?

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Martin Russell is a teacher who regularly uses his laptop

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when he is preparing his lessons at school.

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For a while, he thought nothing of using

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a replacement laptop charger ordered from the internet.

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It was a regular day at school.

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I remember it well. It was quite a nice summer's afternoon.

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As I was working away, I noticed that the battery was starting to

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drain on the laptop so I picked up the charger.

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I held the body of the charger in my left hand.

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Nothing could prepare Martin for what happened next.

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I plugged the laptop charger into the mains and there was an almighty bang.

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And a blinding flash.

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And in that moment, I temporarily lost my vision,

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lost my hearing and remember being stood in one place and,

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for a split second, thinking, "That's it, so that's how my life ends."

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At first, Martin had no idea what had happened.

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Neither, for that matter, did anyone else in the room.

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I just came back into this awareness of a silent room and all

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eyes on me and I wondered in that moment what had actually happened.

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Was I actually still in one piece? It was quite a scary moment.

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The force of the blast

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and the molten plastic damaged Martin's clothing.

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What was particularly scary was seeing that the explosion had

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actually penetrated through the tie, all the way through

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and into the shirt.

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You can see the burn hole in the shirt,

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and quite clearly, the burn on the tie.

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But Martin quickly realised that the explosion had, in fact,

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left him injured.

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In this picture you can see quite clearly

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the sooting on my hand that was holding the laptop charger.

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The pain I can only liken to a scald of some sort.

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And the blast had left the charger in a potentially lethal condition.

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I was holding exposed live wires against my chest.

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It's obviously very close to the vital organs, the heart

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and the like, and it's only by pure chance that

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I didn't actually come into contact with those.

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There were concerns that Martin could have received

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a massive electric shock from the charger during the explosion,

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so he was rushed to the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital

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to get checked over.

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The doctor was concerned.

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He took me straight through to the examination room,

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and wired me up to a machine

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and gave me an ECG to check the function of my heart.

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He actually explained to me that any shock like that is potentially

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very, very dangerous and could interrupt the function of the heart.

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Thankfully, Martin was given the all clear.

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I remember leaving the hospital and walking home with, yeah,

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a new perspective, I suppose.

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Thinking about how close I had actually come to

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either serious injury or a fatality really brought home for me

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how dangerous

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replacement or counterfeit chargers actually can be.

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Once back on his feet, Martin took a closer look

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at the safety labelling on the fake laptop charger

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that could have cost him his life

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and noticed something very strange about the wording.

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"This device must accept any interference received

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"including interference that may cause undesired operation."

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Clearly something has been lost in translation somewhere.

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Hannah Davies and Mohammed Tariq from Birmingham Trading Standards

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have seen exactly the same badly written

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and confusing English on thousands of fake laptop chargers

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that they have seized.

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"Warning, this device may not cause harmful interference."

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If anyone out there actually understands what that means

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then please give us a call because I haven't got a clue.

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The CE mark is fake and it's unsafe.

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She's got some advice for people in the market for a new charger.

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Check the packaging to make sure

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that there's an importer's details on there,

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that retailer's details are on there, that the English is written

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in a readable manner and that you can understand it.

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In a recent raid in Birmingham, 28,000 fake laptop chargers,

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just like the one that exploded on Martin Russell,

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were seized from an eBay trader.

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In the future, Martin will be taking a much closer look

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at the laptop chargers that he uses.

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Having realised just how dangerous fake chargers can be, or indeed

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any fake electrical item, it's a risk that nobody should ever be taking.

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We are actually playing with our own lives and the lives of others.

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Now we've seen how dangerous illegal laser pens are falling

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into the wrong hands and causing havoc up in the air...

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..and down on the ground.

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And it turns out that fake laser pens are being manufactured

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right here in Britain.

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When Lee Ormandy from Lancashire Trading Standards received

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complaints about laser pens people had bought from an internet trader,

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he thought he might be dealing with a product quality issue.

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This is the actual laser pointer in question that was purchased.

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It cost 40 quid

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and it was advertised as being one milliwatt in strength.

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In Britain, laser pointers should carry labels

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showing how powerful they are.

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It's illegal to sell laser pointers more powerful than one milliwatt.

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Lee decided to send the apparently one milliwatt laser pointer

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for testing in a specialist laboratory

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at the Health Protection Agency

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and he was amazed by the results.

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The Health Protection Agency found it to be 40 times that strength.

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The mislabelled pen was blasting out 40 milliwatts of laser power.

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The information label is fake because it's indicating that

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the product is of the legal strength of one milliwatt.

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But how many more powerful laser pens

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with fake labelling were out there?

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Trading Standards had enough evidence to take action.

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Lee took us back to the suburbs

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where the laser pen trader was raided.

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This is the area where

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the laser pen manufacturing was taking place.

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The officers were astounded by what they found behind the front door

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of one of these very ordinary homes.

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Trading Standards had walked right into a laser pen factory.

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He was purchasing the constituent parts of the laser device

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and then putting them together in order to sell a completed item.

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Thousands of home assembled laser pens were crammed into every

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nook and cranny of the house.

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And were even found in a large cargo container in the back garden.

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15,000 laser devices of various sizes

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and various designs were found,

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of which this is the most extreme.

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Officers were quite shocked to find a laser device of this size.

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The laser pens were rounded up

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and once again sent to the Health Protection Agency to be tested

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by laser expert Dr John O'Hagan.

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Bearing in mind the one milliwatt legal power limit for laser pens

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sold in the UK, the results were astonishing.

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That's giving us 80 milliwatts.

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This is 80 times the level at which we would expect to be

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available to the public and, of course,

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it doesn't look any bigger than the other laser products.

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That's a problem when these are just on market stalls or even just

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publicised on the internet.

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It doesn't look very big.

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The sort of thing you can stick in your pocket

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and yet it's a very powerful device.

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John also tested this beast of a laser which was

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seized during the raid.

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They tend to be about 700-800 milliwatts.

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This illegal laser turned out to be a massive 700 times

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more powerful than the legal limit.

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Hot enough to burn skin at close range if used maliciously.

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It could certainly damage your eye in less than a blink of an eyelid.

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It's almost verging on being an offensive weapon out on the street.

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Lee Ormandy from Lancashire Trading Standards

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was passed the test results.

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It was time to take a closer look at the labelling on these laser pens,

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which were marked as Sony.

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It's got the fake registered trademark of Sony.

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But more worrying than the fake trademark

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was the safety information.

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This is the information that is telling you

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what class of laser pointer it is,

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how strong the laser is.

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These labels are completely fake

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and they do not relate to the laser pointers at all.

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Even the European safety marks on these laser pens

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couldn't be trusted.

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Those are counterfeit.

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Those are fake marks.

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This one here constructed in Singapore, again fake,

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because these were being produced in Preston.

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The fake home-made safety instructions were like a seal of

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approval for any troublemakers tempted to use the pen irresponsibly.

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In a safety instruction booklet,

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I would not expect it to be telling me how to pop balloons

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or how to ignite matches with the product.

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That is not a safe use of that particular product.

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There was more than enough damning evidence to bring a case

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against the seller of the fake laser pens.

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Tech Yun Hii was sentenced to 180 days in prison

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suspended for 18 months and 300 hours of community service.

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His 15,000 powerful laser pens were dangerous, illegal and fake.

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They've now been safely destroyed to stop them

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falling into the wrong hands.

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But for Kieran Waters, that doesn't help.

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In a few seconds, the laser that was pointed at him

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changed his life forever.

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It did affect him a lot.

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He didn't want to go out

0:22:220:22:24

and he stayed more in his room, out of the way.

0:22:240:22:27

I'd say it's affected my school...quite badly.

0:22:270:22:31

It takes me a lot longer to read now than it used to.

0:22:310:22:34

It could possibly also ruin my future life

0:22:340:22:38

because I want to work in forensics

0:22:380:22:40

and that might not be possible now

0:22:400:22:42

because I'd require the eyesight.

0:22:420:22:44

The Waters family are still worried about others

0:22:440:22:47

who might fall victim to the power of a fake laser pen.

0:22:470:22:51

The thought of there being fakes out there that you can buy

0:22:510:22:54

so cheap, that are so dangerous, it's horrifying,

0:22:540:22:58

but it also makes me really angry.

0:22:580:23:01

It's just scary that kids don't know what they're getting hold of

0:23:020:23:05

and the potential damage they could be doing

0:23:050:23:07

just because of a label that says they're safe when they're not.

0:23:070:23:10

Of course, once the fakers get their counterfeit goods into the country,

0:23:160:23:20

they then have to find somewhere to store them

0:23:200:23:23

and this is where Trading Standards can make a big difference.

0:23:230:23:27

Stopping those goods at that point in the supply chain,

0:23:270:23:30

before they get to consumers like you and me.

0:23:300:23:33

Richard Nowacki, from Hillingdon Trading Standards,

0:23:360:23:38

has received intelligence there may be an assembly line for fakes

0:23:380:23:43

in a warehouse unit on his patch.

0:23:430:23:45

We want to make sure these goods aren't being sold.

0:23:450:23:48

Our main job is to protect consumers and legitimate businesses.

0:23:480:23:51

Today he's leading his team to the suspect warehouse.

0:23:510:23:54

They've got vans to remove any counterfeits they find.

0:23:560:23:59

They've even got a sniffer dog.

0:23:590:24:00

There he goes. The team's straight in.

0:24:020:24:05

Just look around you. There's plenty of boxes here to examine

0:24:050:24:08

and have a look at, and God knows what we'll find in them.

0:24:080:24:11

At first glance this doesn't look like a distribution centre

0:24:110:24:15

that major international companies would be using.

0:24:150:24:19

The team begins a thorough search.

0:24:190:24:21

Within moments, Richard's made a find.

0:24:210:24:24

We've just come across these watch batteries

0:24:240:24:26

and as you can see they're labelled Sony. They look a little suspect.

0:24:260:24:30

One wonders whether Sony would market them in this particular way.

0:24:300:24:33

If you look at the spelling here - "Madein Japan". It's "Made IN Japan".

0:24:330:24:39

Spelling mistakes are a giveaway that it's counterfeit.

0:24:390:24:43

I think these might be counterfeit and we'll be seizing them today.

0:24:430:24:47

And it doesn't just stop with batteries.

0:24:470:24:49

There are other fake items as well.

0:24:490:24:51

While the others continue to search the warehouse,

0:24:510:24:54

Richard finds what he suspects are supplies for a production line.

0:24:540:24:58

What we've come across is a cottage industry.

0:25:000:25:02

Here you see a range of stickers and they're just fixing them to lighters.

0:25:020:25:06

A blank lighter, and to it is affixed a Manchester United trademark.

0:25:060:25:10

And that makes them more valuable once they're out in the marketplace.

0:25:100:25:15

From the records they've found, the team identifies that the area

0:25:150:25:19

they're looking at all belongs to one man.

0:25:190:25:22

All of this is owned apparently by the same guy.

0:25:220:25:25

They ask him to come and explain all the counterfeits.

0:25:250:25:28

While they're waiting for him, they make even more discoveries.

0:25:300:25:35

We've got these earphones - Beats by Dr Dre.

0:25:350:25:38

This appears to be a production line of fakes.

0:25:380:25:41

The headphones are £130 upwards in the shops,

0:25:410:25:44

but these counterfeits will have cost a fraction of that.

0:25:440:25:47

Here's the headphones.

0:25:490:25:51

No logo. You've got the packaging there.

0:25:510:25:54

There we go. There's the logos.

0:25:570:25:59

The headphones are shipped in without any logos,

0:25:590:26:02

to make it harder for Customs to seize them.

0:26:020:26:04

With no branding, they're not so obviously counterfeit.

0:26:040:26:07

Once they make it to the warehouse, the logos are put on and they

0:26:070:26:11

get boxed up for sale for a lot more than they cost the counterfeiter.

0:26:110:26:15

All the headphones, which looks like they're a bit

0:26:150:26:18

further along in the process cos they've got the logo affixed to them.

0:26:180:26:21

A complete assembly line.

0:26:210:26:24

This isn't the man who owns the warehouse,

0:26:240:26:26

it's the man who rents it, and he says he lets it to someone else.

0:26:260:26:30

Could you tell us, out of this area, what's yours and what's not yours?

0:26:300:26:34

In this area here, what's yours in this area here?

0:26:370:26:40

No?

0:26:420:26:43

Are these yours?

0:26:430:26:45

They're not yours?

0:26:450:26:46

Are these yours?

0:26:460:26:48

The Sony batteries.

0:26:480:26:50

What actually is yours then?

0:26:500:26:52

So you're not taking responsibility for any of this?

0:26:560:26:59

Have you paid for this storage area? You've sublet it to someone else?

0:26:590:27:02

The other person who's coming down, you've sublet it to?

0:27:020:27:05

OK, so he'll take responsibility for this.

0:27:050:27:09

Surrounded by fake goods,

0:27:090:27:10

his answers aren't convincing Trading Standards.

0:27:100:27:14

The only problem I've got is obviously someone has to be legally

0:27:140:27:19

responsible for this.

0:27:190:27:21

How can you prove to us that this isn't yours?

0:27:210:27:23

Is there any way that you could help us to help you?

0:27:230:27:25

OK, OK. I think we'll leave it now, OK?

0:27:330:27:36

All these good are being seized.

0:27:380:27:39

Trading Standards believe what they've got here is

0:27:390:27:42

a production line, where counterfeit items were having famous brand logos

0:27:420:27:46

applied, ready for sale.

0:27:460:27:48

It's difficult to put a value on what we've seized today,

0:27:490:27:52

but I suspect it's going to be upwards of £100,000.

0:27:520:27:55

You don't have to say anything...

0:27:550:27:57

So who exactly is responsible for the production line of counterfeit

0:27:570:28:01

goods we saw in the warehouse? Well, it's still not entirely clear,

0:28:010:28:04

but the man supposedly subletting the space has never emerged

0:28:040:28:08

and the investigation is still continuing.

0:28:080:28:10

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

0:28:160:28:19

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