Episode 5 Fake Britain

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

Welcome to Fake Britain.

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.

Today on Fake Britain, we reveal the dangerous DIY teeth bleaching kits

and their bogus safety claims.

I was really shocked to receive the results that the product

contained over 100 times the legal limit of hydrogen peroxide.

We see how fraudsters siphon our charitable donations

into their own pockets.

That would equate to just over half a million pounds worth

of second-hand clothes, so there's every incentive

for fraudsters to get involved in this market.

And we show how fakery is rife in the market for Second World War

memorabilia.

They thought they'd stumbled on the Holy Grail,

that the history books were going to be rewritten,

but in actual fact, it's a fake.

A new industry has sprung up and is booming across the UK

but you won't find it on any industrial estate,

high street or even listed on the stock exchange.

I'm talking about the buying and selling of medicines,

healthcare products

and all the sorts of things you might find down your local chemists.

These, for instance, as you might expect from the Fake Britain house,

they're all fake.

It's taking place in ordinary houses up and down the country.

Even the neighbours might not know it's going on.

But maybe they should, because it's illegal and dangerous.

It's just before dawn somewhere in the North of England.

Outside a police station, sits Danny Lee Frost,

Head of Operations for the Medical Healthcare Regulatory Agency.

His team is about to raid the house of a man suspected of selling

fake health products.

We've got intelligence that leads us to somebody who is selling via eBay.

The intention would be to have him arrested,

then they'll be a search of his premises looking for more products.

Police accompany Danny

and his team on every raid, due to the dangers involved.

Although we do have a warrant issued by a magistrate,

which does permit forced entry if necessary,

if there's any type of resistance or any breach of the peace,

that's why the police will be there to prevent that.

The signal is given and the operation swings into action.

As soon as the team arrives, they make quickly to the suspect's door.

Open the door, please.

We are officers from the Department of Health.

We have a warrant under the Medicine Regulation

-to search this property.

-OK.

-OK? Thank you.

Police officers, together with agents from the NHRA,

enter the property.

Across Britain, behind suburban doors just like this,

a huge new trade in dangerous fake drugs and devices is booming.

-Do you want to put your clothes on?

-Yeah.

While the man gets changed,

officers discover a box of counterfeit razorblades.

Sold through online auction sites, these blades have previously been

found to contain human hair, skin and bacteria.

Horrifyingly, the low quality, blunt metal can also scar users for life.

The man claims these are the only fake health products

in the house, but that's not true.

Upstairs, more razorblades are found,

together with a substantial stash of counterfeit Viagra.

He's probably got 400 or 500 packs of medicines that we can pack up

and take away.

Fake drugs have been found to contain amphetamines,

brick dust, arsenic and even road paint

and supplied without prescription, they can kill.

The reality of a glossy website that shows a doctor with a white coat

and a stethoscope, is not that it's coming from a pharmacy or a doctor.

It's actually coming from a housing estate like where we are today.

The man is handcuffed and the operation continues.

Anything that may contain evidence of selling illegal health

-products is seized.

-Are there any other computers in the house?

The Internet makes it easy to sell fake and illegal goods.

This man is even putting his own family at risk storing

drugs and other products in the bedroom of his young child.

Once you go through the front door,

you don't know what you're going to find.

There's no indication from the website

when we were looking earlier, that anything else was going on.

We are at a private address. What goes on inside is private.

You just don't know what you'll find when you go in.

Everything the team has found is taken away as evidence.

The day has only just begun but it's a bad start for this man.

He's led away to the police van and then to the cells.

He'll be questioned later in the day.

But it's been a successful morning for Danny and the team.

The trade in fake health products is a multi-billion pound industry.

The NHRA's mission is to remove these items

from the streets of Britain.

We'll be taking this back to London

and we'll be sending a sample off to the laboratory.

Illegally selling prescription drugs can be more profitable than

dealing heroin, so for criminals across Britain,

there's a huge incentive to get a piece of the action.

This bag alone is worth over £10,000.

The man is later cautioned and the counterfeit drugs

and other products are destroyed.

I suppose we all like to look in the mirror

and see a Hollywood grin gleaming straight back at us.

But the reality is, getting your teeth whitened professionally,

can cost a small fortune.

That is where home teeth whitening kits can come in.

Unfortunately, they leave you open to the fakers

and the smile they leave you with, might not last that long.

Teeth whitening is big business.

Most dentists now offer a teeth whitening service

and dedicated teeth whitening companies have sprung up across

the country committed to giving Britain is slightly pearlier whites.

First, patient's teeth are examined, then a mould taken,

specially fitted mouth guards are then created.

Into these moulds, the dentist puts a gel containing hydrogen peroxide,

a chemical that works to whiten the teeth.

After a series of treatments,

patients can have dramatically whiter teeth.

However, alongside the growth in professional services, sites

have appeared online offering cheap, do-it-yourself bleaching kits.

Whilst treatments run by qualified dentists can cost £500,

website, Smile-Brighter Marketing offered kits from as little as 5.99.

But, claim to give you the perfect smile.

Essex Trading Standards officer, Sarah Eykelbosch,

decided to investigate and made a test purchase.

The kit consisted of syringes containing bleaching chemicals

and a mouth guard.

Users could self administer at home.

It seemed simple.

You fill the tray up with the product and then put it into your mouth

and bite down on it and over a period of time,

the chemicals that are in the product would actively whiten your teeth.

It also seemed safe.

The teeth whitening kit claimed to abide by international law.

Both the website and the product itself were marked with the claim

that the product had been EU approved,

so it was all over the website.

He was creating the impression that the product was somehow safe

and legal.

But teeth whitening products are governed by strict

safety guidelines under cosmetic regulations.

Sarah wanted to make sure the claims on the product were real

and that it fell within legal limits.

So, samples were sent to Kent Scientific Services.

Now EU law dictates that only 0.1% of the chemical, hydrogen peroxide,

is allowed in DIY teeth whitening products.

Paulette Smith carried out an experiment to test

the level of the chemical in the kits.

She adds various other chemicals to change

the gel into a form that she can then analyse.

The amount of this liquid it takes to turn this solution colourless,

will tell us how much hydrogen peroxide was in the original

teeth whitening gel.

After some quick follow-up calculations, the results are in.

From the analysis we've just carried out, we've calculated

that there's 10.3% hydrogen peroxide in the teeth whitening gel.

And that's a whopping 103 times the legal limit.

It means the product's claims about being EU tested must be fake.

Remember, under EU law, it can only be 0.1%.

To find a level of hydrogen peroxide in something that you put

in your mouth that was so far over the legal limit, is quite shocking.

It also means the product is dangerous.

Using this type of tooth whitening product can lead to

sensitivity of the teeth and gums, damage to the tooth enamel

and even burns in the mouth.

So, what does the industry make of this product?

Dr Wyman Chang is teeth whitener to the stars.

I'm shocked that such a high concentration can be

sold over the Internet in the UK.

Hydrogen peroxide is a toxic chemical

if it's not used properly or formulated properly.

It means it can cause damage to your soft tissues

and also can cause damage to the enamel.

Back at Essex Trading Standards, Sarah Eykelbosch was astounded

by the test results for Smile-Brighter Marketing's products.

I was really shocked to receive the results and really, in my mind,

confirmed the fact that this was an important product safety issue

and we really did need to address it.

Sarah mobilised her team

and raided the registered address of the business.

The man behind it was Mr Barrington Armstrong-Thorpe.

He directed us to a shed in the rear garden

and it was quite a large shed, absolutely full of product.

Piles of syringes containing the product and boxes plastered

with the fake safety claims, were found and confiscated.

Thorpe was cautioned, but within weeks, he was back at it.

Because we'd done the first test purchase,

we were on his e-mail list so he then e-mailed out to

everybody saying, I have had to change my website.

Now trading as Brighter-Smile, Armstrong-Thorpe was still

making fake claims that the product was EU approved.

The syringes, now marked with Brighter-Smile, were tested again

and again, they failed.

Sarah raided Armstrong-Thorpe for a second time.

There were syringes strewn across the coffee table,

Jiffy bags in a box waiting to be stuffed, posted labels,

extracts from orders that were on the table.

One of the bedrooms was being used as a study.

The study was absolutely chock-a-block with syringes.

Armstrong-Thorpe claimed the products all belonged to

a friend of his and he was just storing them as a favour.

Unfortunately for him,

it was an obvious clue that this just wasn't true.

The telephone number that was marked on the syringes was a mobile

telephone number and when we came into his property that morning,

we had rung that number and asked him where his phone was.

He pointed to the telephone that was ringing.

In reality,

the faker had re-invested heavily in the dangerous product.

During the raid on his property for a second time,

we seized over 3,700 syringes with a retail value of over £21,000.

Amazingly, within days, Armstrong-Thorpe had put up a third

website, Smile Brighter Now, another raid followed.

Over three operations, Sarah seized colossal quantities

of the dangerous teeth bleacher from the Essex fraudster.

This is just a small selection of product from the large quantity

that we seized across the three warrants

that we undertook at Mr Thorpe's properties.

We've got a box of syringes here

but this is just one of five that we actually seized on the day.

No longer smiling brightly, Armstrong-Thorpe was jailed at

Chelmsford Crown Court for 16 months for selling products with

fake safety claims and for repeatedly breaching

the Cosmetic Product Regulations Act 2008.

After a three-year investigation,

Sarah Eykelbosch was delighted with the results.

He said, during interview, that he thought that Trading Standards

were toothless tigers and that if he ignored us, we would simply go away.

He realised now, that that was not the case.

Charities in the UK make life better for millions of people

every year, but they need our help to do it.

And one of the ways we can help them

raise funds is by taking a bag like this, filling it full

of unwanted clothes and then leaving it on the doorstep for collection.

But it turns out that even charities can fall prey to the fakers.

And the sums of money that are involved are staggering.

Fake Britain has shown previously how figures are exploiting

the charity sector, sending out fake leaflets for real charities

and stealing donations of clothes to then sell on for a profit.

We've been losing about 50 tonnes a week to these bogus collectors

and these thieves.

But we can reveal that this charity fakery has now reached

epic proportions.

Customs officials at the Port of Dover have

seized 80,000 counterfeit collection bags being shipped across the border

into the UK, in just one vehicle.

Mark Rolfe is head of East Kent's Trading Standards.

He's come here to his team storage facility to examine

the shocking haul.

This is one of our secure stores, it's where we keep

evidence of the various cases that we are working on at the moment.

You will see around here we've got fake DVDs, fake clothing,

fake alcohol, but this is our biggest seizure of recent weeks,

which is fake charity collection bags.

It's the biggest seizure of fake charity bags ever recorded.

Cancer Relief UK is a real organisation

but these bags are 100%-counterfeit.

We spoke to the charity and the charity told us that they haven't

done door-to-door collections for a couple of years now

and on that basis, we knew there was something wrong.

They're, we are told, a straight copy of a bag

that the charity used to use.

The fakers have copied every detail of the genuine bags

and printed the fakes in tens of thousands.

Had they got through the port, the bags would then have been

posted through people's letterboxes here in the UK.

The shipment came from Eastern Europe.

Surprisingly, the fraud would have netted the fakers

an absolute fortune.

Our current intelligence suggests that second-hand clothes

fetch somewhere in the order of £700 a tonne.

Based on the 80,000 bags we've got here, I would estimate

that you can get about 10 kilograms of clothes into one of these bags.

When you do the maths, that's about £560,000,

just over half a million pounds worth of fraud.

There's every incentive for fraudsters to get involved

in this market.

That's a massive return for the criminals behind the fraud.

The fakers had also carefully planned

the collections of their bogus bags.

All of the boxes between them cover Monday to Friday,

so our fraudsters have got it well set up

so they can go round five days a week, collecting free clothes

to sell and to keep the money away from the charities that deserve it.

Mark is appalled by the effect this can have on the charities.

It's totally deceitful and very distasteful

and the victim here, obviously,

is the legitimate charity that people thought they were given to.

Steve Cooper is the director of the genuine charity, Cancer Relief UK.

The UK Border Agency, at seven in the morning rang me

to inform me that they'd stopped a vehicle at Dover docks.

We were just completely flabbergasted.

We were dumbfounded that someone could do that to a charity.

We do so much good work to raise the profile of the charity

and this sort of thing can only do harm.

When we tell Steve the fraud could have made the criminals

half a million quid, he's appalled.

We would be able to do a lot of good with that money,

help people run appeals for treatment that may be needed abroad.

Nearer home, we give out cash grants.

The charity has now introduced a new bag system, changed the design

of their collections sacks and all their collectors wear ID badges.

This is the only legal bag for Cancer Relief UK.

If you get a bag any other than this, it is illegal,

so it can be reported to either Trading Standards or the police.

Second World War memorabilia can be tremendously collectable

and highly valuable, particularly if it involves major battles

and the heroes that fought in them.

Take this - this is a Distinguished Flying Cross, or DFC,

and look, it's from the Battle of Britain.

And this is the letter of condolence to the family

of the Airman that won these awards.

Altogether, these should be worth around £3,000.

I say "should" because they're fakes.

It appears that the fakers

have been making a bit of history of their own.

There is a fascination with the battles fought in the skies

during World War II.

They were key to the Allies' success and a source of national pride

but, sickeningly, the market for artefacts

has become a target for fakers.

Graham Adlam is a collector and dealer

of Second World War memorabilia and he specialises in aircraft.

He collects everything from fuel gauges to replica planes.

Owning a piece that was around at the time

sort of takes you back in history, gives you something palpable

that you can own and that you can look at.

Rare items can be sold for thousands of pounds,

so when Graham spotted a highly-prized item -

a joystick of a German fighter from the later part of the Second World War -

he jumped at the chance to buy it.

I first spotted the joystick on an auction site on the Internet.

I was quite excited about it, because it was from a Messerschmitt 163.

There was, I think, less than 200 made.

Graham bid on the item, and won.

I paid just over £1,500 for it,

which, for something as rare as that, I thought was a good price.

The piece arrived and Graham was delighted with his rare find.

When I unwrapped it, it looked excellent to me.

It seemed a very good piece, so I was quite happy with it.

But when Graham posted a picture of the item online

he was immediately contacted by a military expert

stating the item was a fake and pointing out the reasons why.

The most obvious thing immediately is the red tinge

which is showing under the paint, which is red primer.

German grips never had red primer, they were anodised.

These letters, they were painted on by hand, that's quite correct,

but these letters do not correspond to the Me163.

They're a mish-mash taken from other aircraft.

All these buttons are from a variety of different aircraft.

The so-called rare item of World War II memorabilia

is actually valueless.

Graham had lost £1,500.

I'm only a one-man small-business,

and losing that sort of money is a huge blow.

It's absolutely devastating to find out that the thing

was a complete fake and totally worthless.

But the trade in fake Second World War memorabilia doesn't stop there.

During the Battle of Britain, certain squadrons and pilots

became known for their bravery,

and their personal effects are now bought and sold for vast sums.

Ian Wilson's a collector specialising in items from 609 Squadron.

I initially bought this item here on eBay.

I paid a reasonable amount of money for it, in excess of £400.

The silver cigarette case had supposedly been owned

by fighter pilot ace Eugene Tobin and hand engraved with his name.

Ian was initially happy with it, until he compared it

with another cigarette case he'd bought from the same source -

allegedly a First World War piece

engraved with the name of Lieutenant Cox.

Looking at both items together, Ian realised the engravings

seemed too regular to be done by hand, and suspected foul play.

It looks to me as though these have been computer engraved.

I know that's possible.

The engraving is too clean, it's too accurate,

the engraving's shallow -

I'm more or less convinced these haven't been engraved at the time.

Ian thinks the pieces are from the period, but the names

of pilots Tobin and Cox have been engraved more recently by fakers,

thereby transforming the cases into valuable artefacts.

It's a common trick fraudsters are known to employ

to increase the value of the item.

Really, when it comes to any item of militaria,

if you put a name on an item, it automatically boosts the value of it.

This is a Battle of Britain period flying helmet.

It's actually dated 1940, and that's probably worth around about £600.

You put a Battle of Britain ace name on that

and you could add a zero to it.

To test his theory, Ian's decided to take the two pieces along

to master engraver David Melvin in Newcastle.

He'll be looking to see whether the two items are engraved

by hand or by machine.

This is an example of machine engraving,

which has been done on a computer, a very modern computer.

The height of the letters is very regular,

the spacing is very regular.

This piece is a hand engraved brass plate.

It has a brightness of cut.

Ian arrives, and it's time to examine the suspect pieces.

Can I simply ask your thoughts on that?

That looks like a straightforward machine engraved, could be computer.

-Really?

-Fairly modern.

-Typical of today's kind of work.

-Is it? Right.

-Certainly not hand engraved, definitely not.

-Not 1940?

-No, definitely not.

-OK.

It's too regular, it's very shallow, it's extremely even.

You can tell by this pattern around the cigarette case itself, it's genuine.

Just this bit in here isn't the engraving.

Next, Ian shows David the item supposedly from the First World War.

I would say that's definitely modern.

There's no way that could be 1916, simply by the type of cut.

Again, it's not hand engraved.

David doesn't think the piece is even from the period.

I've just spotted a maker's mark which is typical

of what they were making right up until certainly the 1960s,

-and it's called Harman Brothers.

-Right.

It's got "Har Bros" on there,

so I think even the piece is outside 1916.

It's official - both items of war memorabilia are fakes.

The engraved names have been added later to boost their value

and pass them off as rare artefacts from the world wars.

In reality, the pieces are worth just a few pounds.

Obviously disappointed, but not surprised.

I think David's basically confirmed my thoughts,

and just added a lot more meat to the bone.

Andy Saunders is one of the world's top aviation history experts,

specialising in the Battle of Britain.

He's come here to the RAF Museum at Hendon to compare some

legitimate documents with some astonishing fakes.

This is a log book that every pilot in the RAF

has to fill in for every flight that he carries out.

And they're very collectible and desirable items,

particularly for pilots who flew in the Battle of Britain.

But once you start to look at this a little more carefully,

then it all begins to fall apart.

The first thing that we notice on the front here is the pilot's name.

We've got E Campbell, Pilot Officer.

Now, a quick check of the RAF list for 1940,

there is no Pilot Officer, E Campbell.

The book is incredibly detailed,

but on closer inspection it's littered with factual inaccuracies.

And we've got here Tiger Moth K6146.

Well, in actual fact, K61146 was not a Tiger Moth,

it was an aircraft called Gloster Gladiator.

He talks about the engine here

and he talks about it being the starboard engine.

Well, a Tiger Moth was a single engine bi-plane.

The log book is a complete fake.

Every single entry in it has been entered by a forger,

including elaborately made stamps and fake signatures.

But why has the faker gone to all this trouble?

So now we've got him joining 601 Squadron in June, 1940.

Now, 601 Squadron was an extremely famous squadron

during the Battle of Britain.

And this log book was sold on the basis that the pilot's name

doesn't appear on the roll of Battle of Britain pilots.

He's clearly been missed off.

Here is an unknown pilot from the Battle of Britain.

The forger's created what looks like the log book

of a lost fighter ace from one of the most famous battles of all time.

None of these patrols

and battles that he talks about actually took place.

So complete and utter fantasy.

If this book was real, it would be worth a fortune.

And that's why the forger's gone to such lengths to create it.

If this pilot was an unknown pilot from the Battle of Britain,

someone who'd been left off the Battle of Britain monument,

then, yes, this would be an exceptionally valuable document,

both historically and financially.

The unfortunate person who bought this at a militaria fair

thought they'd stumbled on the Holy Grail,

that the history books were going to be rewritten,

a new pilot would be added

to the list of known Battle of Britain pilots.

But, in actual fact, it's a fake.

What can you say?

These things are out there, you know.

I consider myself to be an intelligent collector and trader

but I was done by them.

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

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd