Episode 10 Fake Britain

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

Welcome to Fake Britain.

Get down! Get down!

-Get on the floor now!

-Put your hands behind your back now!

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

but this is the Fake Britain house and it's filled with fakes.

You may not know it, but your home could be too.

In this series, we'll be investigating

the criminals trying to get their hands on your cash by using fraud,

forgeries and fakery,

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

Today on Fake Britain,

the fake fundraising web pages

stealing from those who need it most...

I would want them to come and meet Elliot

and see what opportunities they were taking away from him.

..fake horse passports making money for criminals

and causing misery for owners...

We thought the worst. We were worried he'd either gone

to an abattoir or been exported out the country.

..and how illegal and dangerous furniture

is sold on our high streets.

This non-compliant furniture risks the lives of people in their homes.

It's very, very dangerous indeed.

We Brits are amongst the most generous nations

when it comes to giving.

A recent survey showed that more than three quarters of us

made a donation to a good cause in a typical month.

So, it's not surprising that people who really need to raise money

turn to the public for help, and one family did just that

to help fund life-changing medical help for their son.

But, they were outraged to discover that their online

money-raising efforts had been hijacked by the fakers.

Six-year-old Elliot Gower suffers from cerebral palsy

and can't walk unaided,

but, recently, his parents, James and Morwenna, have had news which

has given them hope that Elliot's condition could be transformed.

Elliot has been selected by Great Ormond Street

for a life-changing operation to remove the spasticity permanently

in his legs that should enable him to walk, independently is what we hope.

The procedure itself isn't funded, unfortunately,

by the NHS at the moment,

so we need to raise money to have that done, but one of the big aspects

of what we're raising money for is his post-operative physiotherapy.

He will need intensive physiotherapy for about two years after

the surgery in order to make it fully beneficial.

Can you help me go shooting, Dad?

For Elliot, the operation would be life-changing.

He watches other children play

and do all the things that normal children do

and I think he really wants to do that,

and we would do anything to give him that chance to do it.

The family needed to raise just over £60,000,

so they began to investigate what options were out there.

We asked some charities if they would help us,

but you can't be a charity for one person,

you have to be a charity for a group of people,

so Elliot didn't come into that category.

So, we went down different routes of fundraising, like crowdfunding,

which you can do through the internet and social media.

Crowdfunding is primarily used to raised money for business ventures,

but it's become increasing popular for those seeking funding

for good causes.

The success of crowdfunding lies in its simplicity.

If you want to launch a crowdfunded project, you pick your

crowdfunding service, design your page and launch your bid online.

If the public likes your business idea or charitable cause,

they fund you.

Successful projects are usually funded by small

contributions from many people.

There are now over 30 crowdfunding sites based in the UK alone

and they generate over a billion pounds for fundraisers

seeking money for new ventures, gadgets, and charitable causes.

'The Gowers set up their crowdfunding page, called

'Operation Elliot, in just 24 hours.

'They used a reputable crowdfunding website called Fundraise,

'and, shortly after launching their page, they'd raised £1,800.

'But, just a week after the launch,

'the Gowers received an unexpected phone call.'

And in the evening, we were sitting talking about how the day had gone

and some friends rang up and said did we have anybody fundraising

for us in America because they'd come across another site online.

So we checked it out and then we discovered that, actually,

there were four or five different sites using similar names

using the same pictures that we were using on our site,

information about Elliot...none of these were people that we knew.

And we kind of got into a bit of a blind panic on that evening.

The Gowers went online and were horrified to see

eight different crowdfunding sites, some American, some British,

appealing for money for Elliot's operation.

The fakers had carried out a screen scrape,

stealing Elliot's story and images from his own web page

and using them for their own gain.

This is one of the copies.

You can see it's the same information

we used on the crowdfunding site.

They raised 495...

..money that hasn't come to Elliot.

I think it's the pictures that are the hardest thing actually,

reading some of the information they've got, they've copied directly

and got spelling mistakes in, it's not quite right, but seeing

some of our favourite pictures,

like this one here of Elliot down on the beach,

that's really hard to keep seeing that.

We showed some of the fake Operation Elliot sites to

the Fundraising Standards Board,

who regulate charity fundraising in the UK.

Chief Executive Alistair McLean says what happened to Elliot

is rare, but still a matter for concern.

Crowdfunding's a new

and very exciting platform for charities to raise funds,

but, like all things, where there's opportunity like that,

there's always a propensity for some fraud.

If you are suspicious, do some research, see if they're members

of the United Kingdom Crowdfunding Association.

If it's a charity, it may well be a member of

the Fundraising Standards Board.

Check to look for the Give With Confidence tick logo.

The Gowers have managed to get some, but not all

of the crowdfunding sites hosting the fake Operation Elliot appeals

taken down, but the damage has already been done.

Hundreds of pounds of donation meant for Elliot's surgery have

already been diverted into the accounts of the fakers.

Elliot's parents have since moved Operation Elliot

to the JustGiving website, but they, understandably,

remain angry about what's happened.

I think if we did find the people who had been doing this,

I would want them to come

and meet Elliot and see what opportunities

they were taking away from him, because I think if you met him and

saw what a lovely little boy he is, what good fun he is, what good spirit

he's got, that would really shame you for having done something like this.

This is a horse passport.

Every horse, pony and donkey in the UK has to have one.

They were introduced in 2004 to prevent the sale of

stolen horses, but this one is a fake.

It was obtained fraudulently to beat the system

and make money for the fakers, and we have evidence that

plenty of other people are doing the same thing.

Alexis Jacobson is a horse fanatic. She's ridden from an early age,

and has enjoyed many happy years riding her own beloved horse, Oscar.

But, as he got older and medical conditions arose,

she decided he shouldn't be ridden so much.

Oscar was an elderly horse at the time, he was 18,

he had been diagnosed with a back problem,

which meant it wasn't ideal for him to be ridden often.

We thought he might be in some discomfort.

We decided that we would put him out on loan as a companion only.

He would accompany another horse in a field,

maybe be very lightly ridden, but no more.

Alexis found a woman willing to take Oscar on loan from her

and she agreed to this, but some weeks after saying goodbye

to him, she wanted to see how he was settling in.

When she rang up the lady, however, she got no response,

despite persistent calls.

Terrified something might have happened to Oscar,

Alexis contacted Horsewatch, an equine crime prevention network.

Alarmingly, they'd had numerous complaints from other owners

about the same woman doing the same thing to them,

taking horses on loan and then losing contact.

We thought the worst, so we were worried he'd either gone to

an abattoir or been exported out of the country.

Alexis decided she'd do anything to find Oscar.

I trawled through the internet looking at horses that had

been advertised online.

I posted on horse forums, we had articles in horse magazines...

After four full years of searching, Alexis had a breakthrough.

I had posted his photo on a horse group in Facebook,

and someone got in touch with me to say that she recognised him

and that she knew where he was.

And when Alexis collected him,

she discovered why she'd not been able to find Oscar for four years.

At some point after she'd loaned him out,

he'd been sold on using a fake horse passport.

Oscar originally had an Irish horse passport.

He was imported from Ireland as an Irish sports horse.

All the information in this passport is totally accurate.

When Oscar was taken on loan, he was then issued with a new passport.

This is a pet ID passport. As you can see, it's got "Sid."

The fakers had applied for a new passport,

but faked Oscar's vital statistics.

Not only had they altered his name, but also his breed,

height and his age.

This meant it would be almost impossible to trace him

and, crucially, he could be sold as a younger, fitter horse

for more money.

OSCAR SNORTS

He then was ten years younger than he actually was,

and, obviously, much more appealing to prospective buyers.

Alexis discovered what had happened to Oscar

over the four years he'd been missing.

He went through a horse dealer, then was sold to a riding school,

so was being ridden in a riding school for a year...

it was just really heartbreaking.

To get a horse passport,

your application must be signed off by a vet, but it's difficult

for them to be sure of the age or provenance of a horse.

It's not helped by the fact there are 75 different issuing bodies

for the passports, with different standards and no central register.

Roly Owers is from the charity World Horse Welfare.

He thinks the UK horse passport system is a mess.

We know that through a survey we ran last year where 20% of

horse owners said they had passports with irregularities in them.

We know that one passport issuing organisation

issued 7,000 passports after they were closed down

and, with at least 75 issuing organisations in the UK with

very, very different standards

and no central register or database, it's a complete fraudster's paradise.

Alexis, however, is just pleased to have Oscar back safe and sound.

He's really well-rested, relaxed,

and can live out the rest of his retirement days really happily.

Pet ID Equine, the company that issued the passport,

told us they were issued when...

They said...

They said they've echoed Roly Owers' call...

We thought that dangerous flammable furniture was

a thing of the past, thanks to tough British safety standards.

But it turns out we were wrong, because Fake Britain's found out

that top retailers have been selling illegal and dangerous furniture.

Are you sitting comfortably?

In a special Fake Britain programme shown previously,

we were alerted to serious concerns about the fire safety

of some furniture on sale in the UK.

Trading Standards alerted us to a case in West Yorkshire where an

independent retailer was prosecuted for selling unsafe furniture.

Maria Houston purchased two dream sofas from a branch

of the independent retailer in Bradford.

These two couches were absolutely stunning.

I just couldn't believe my eyes when I saw the price as well.

But when the sofas arrived, Maria was unhappy with the quality

and the service she'd received, so she contacted Trading Standards.

Officers in West Yorkshire began examining

the type of sofa she'd bought.

They had no idea what they were just about to find out.

We decided that we had real concerns about the safety,

so we visited the premises,

and we seized a sofa.

We submitted it to our testing service here,

who carried out the testing on the furniture.

To see if sofa foam complies with the UK fire safety regulations,

the law says it must be tested like this.

A small wooden crib is ignited and, if the sofa is safe,

it shouldn't catch fire.

But when Trading Standards tested the sofa they'd seized,

they made a shocking discovery.

It failed the test and it didn't just fail it a little bit,

it failed it very badly.

What you can see is that, having lit the crib,

it's already flaming away and what should happen is the crib

should go out, but this is untreated foam, so...

it's away.

After just two minutes, the fire had escalated dramatically.

That would be out of control in a house.

It had what the test house described as accelerating ignition,

which, to you and me, would mean a fireball.

Had it been in a house near some curtains, it would have been

a massive ignition source and it would have burnt the house down.

Maria's sofas were never tested, but she's worried they may be unsafe.

We showed her the test footage.

It's unbelievable.

God!

If my grandkids were here and we had a fire,

you just think the worst, don't you?

I'm gutted.

The consequences could be real danger

for anybody, not just me and my grandkids, or my nieces and nephews.

Anybody.

The independent retailer she'd bought them from

had five shops in Yorkshire.

They were successfully prosecuted and fined.

Both Maria's sofas, and those purchased by Trading Standards,

carried fire resistant labels claiming that

they met the UK regulations.

With at least the tested sofa, we know this claim was fake...

..and it wasn't the only one.

We caught up with Northampton Trading Standards prosecuting

a furniture distributor for also selling unsafe furniture.

They tested one of UK Sofa Distribution Ltd's sofas

and the tests found that the foam filling didn't meet

the fire safety standards.

Northampton Trading Standards say non-compliant furniture is

a big problem for them.

So, over the last three years, we found quite a high failure rate

of the furniture that we have sampled and had tested.

Um, it's in...about 50% or above,

we've found have not complied with the relevant legislation.

UK Sofa Distribution Ltd were fined £4,000 plus £5,500 costs

for contravening the Consumer Protection Act.

The company's accountant Brian Pound told us it can be hard for

suppliers to police products coming in from abroad.

It's not as easy as it looks to comply in this industry.

Just because it comes in with a label that says that it's fit,

doesn't mean it's fit.

In the last two months alone,

we've turned away probably one and a half lorry worth

of furniture which we've looked at and said,

"Well, actually, we don't think that's up to the standard

"that we need to comply to."

It should be inconceivable that any sofa sold in Britain today

could fail the legal tests, because, in the 1970s and '80s,

after a series of deadly fires,

laws were passed to help protect us from dangerous furniture.

SIRENS WAIL

In May 1979,

a fire broke out in Woolworths in the centre of Manchester.

Fire crews arrived to find smoke billowing

from the six-storey building.

Can everybody here move away from the building? Urgent!

Bob Graham was one of the senior fire officers who

responded on that day.

What first struck me on arrival is the intensity of the fire,

and the amount of smoke that was coming out of the building.

It was tremendous

and there were approximately 500 people in the building

at the time the fire started...

so you can imagine the confusion.

The situation turned to horror as people were

trapped behind bars in an office at the rear of the building.

They were trapped and the fire was spreading across the floor,

they couldn't open the door onto the remainder of the fire floor, cos

they would have been killed instantly by the heat that was in there.

The urgent thing there was to get the bars off the window

and to get the people out,

and the crews did that very efficiently.

The firemen went inside to reassure the people that they were

going to be safe and, gradually, they were brought down to the ground.

Elsewhere in the building, ten people lost their lives

and 47 were injured.

The coroner at the inquest said anyone who was on the second floor

three minutes after the fire started was unlikely to escape.

That's how fast the fire grew.

Investigating the incident, Bob Graham soon discovered that

furniture was at the heart of the disaster.

He became a leading figure in the campaign for

tougher fire safety regulations

and was awarded an MBE for his work.

We reconstructed what was in Woolworths, set fire to it,

and monitored the effects.

And that showed us that

the furniture was the main contributor to this fire.

The Woolworths fire took ten lives.

There were another 700 at that time dying in their own homes

throughout the UK.

Campaigners persuaded the government to change the law,

and now manufacturers are obliged to make furniture using

fire resistant foam and materials in order to protect us.

'Chief fire officer Paul Fuller from Bedfordshire Fire and Rescue Service

'is the president of the Chief Fire Officers' Association'

and an expert in fire prevention.

In 35 years in the Fire Service, I've seen the devastation

caused by fires of all sorts and it is never a good thing.

It is worsened if the materials that are inside rooms

burn more readily, such as non-compliant furniture.

Paul knows just how dangerous a fire involving this furniture can be.

The catastrophic effects are demonstrated by this

living room fire test carried out before

the regulations came into force.

Very, very quickly, the room in which that furniture is

involved will become completely uninhabitable.

You can't breathe, you can't see, it's too hot,

you can't find your way around and you're choking to death.

Non-compliant furniture risks the lives of people in their homes.

It's very, very dangerous indeed.

Many children dream of mastering a musical instrument like the piano

and their dedicated parents can spend up to £50 an hour

on piano lessons week in, week out for years.

Even though it's Largo, which is slow,

you need it just a fraction quicker.

To help their child achieve their musical ambitions

and go from sounding like this...

SHE PLAYS TUNELESSLY

..to this.

PIANO MELODY PLAYS

All that effort for an official certificate that says,

"You're now pitch perfect."

But what if that certificate was a fake

and not even worth the paper it was printed on?

Among the hills of Lisburn in Northern Ireland,

a seemingly perfect piano teacher was putting

local budding musicians through their paces.

Claire Thompson was a music graduate,

she was a qualified teacher, she was a very highly regarded teacher,

and she'd worked in a local music college

here for some years before beginning to teach privately.

So, for all intents and purposes,

she was a highly regarded person in the community.

But Claire Thompson was not all she seemed.

She would end up betraying her young students and their parents,

like this mum, who was looking for the best musical education

for her daughter.

My daughter was showing great talent in music

and we decided that we'd send her to lessons.

She was getting the results up to grade 4 and getting great marks.

After nearly two years of being taught by Claire Thompson,

the big day finally arrived for the young pianist...

her grade 5 piano exam, which was to take place in a local church hall.

So far, so good, but it was what happened after the piano exam

that made the student's mum suspicious.

I said, "How did it go?"

And she says, "It was really good, actually."

She said that the examiner was able to tell her that she'd passed

and that they all went out for lunch afterwards, had a great chat

and it was all very nice.

And I kind of just thought,

"Well, that was really a little bit strange." Any of the exams

that they'd had before, it was very formal, very serious,

and, you know, they would never had been told the result on the day.

As it turns out, she wasn't the only parent who was concerned.

The Police Service of Northern Ireland was starting to

receive phone calls from a number of parents

suspicious about their children's music exams.

'They felt that there was something wrong with the exams.

'Some of the families hadn't received certificates'

and they had made enquiries with the examining

boards to see where the certificates were and what the hold up was.

And, when they made those enquiries, it became clear that the children

were not registered with the examining body, nor was the teacher.

Realising they could be dealing with a serious fraudster,

the police began to spread the word amongst local concerned parents.

I phoned the next day the London College of Music

and to be told, "Yes, unfortunately, your daughter doesn't have

"grade 5 piano," and that she wasn't registered.

'So, all of a sudden, a bomb had kind of dropped.'

After all the hard work, she didn't have anything to show for it.

The London College of Music is the largest specialist music

and performing arts institution in the UK.

It's part of the University of West London, which was,

until recently, known as Thames Valley University.

The college is one of a small number of official examining bodies

authorised to award graded exams in music.

Claire Thompson's students thought they'd be getting

official certificates from the London College of Music,

but for those few students who did eventually

get their certificates, something wasn't right.

The London College of Music was actually very helpful to us

during the whole process.

They came to Northern Ireland, they looked at the certificates,

and they were very quickly able to say that the certificates

we had in our possession were fake.

With fake certificates now in their possession, the police had

all the evidence they needed to search Claire Thompson's house.

During that search, the computer was seized,

a music diary was seized, some personal documentation,

and certificates in various states of preparation.

Amongst the documents seized were a fake London College of Music

scoring chart and the fake certificates themselves.

The middle document is the most important document

for the investigation, because it is the fake music certificate

that was passed to the families by Claire Thompson.

As you can see, it's a fairly professional and impressive looking document.

The police had enough hard evidence to bring

Claire Thompson in for questioning.

Claire Thompson's demeanour generally was calm and collected

as she denied any dishonesty whatsoever.

Claire Thompson had even duped the examiners of the tests,

telling one of them that they were doing a mock exam

under strict exam conditions,

while the students thought they were doing the real thing.

Thompson was brazen enough to fake the tests in a church hall

that turned out to be just opposite the police station where

Inspector Johnston was working.

In court, Thompson eventually pleaded guilty

to 14 counts of fraud by false representation

and two further counts of using a false instrument.

She was given a two-year probation order.

But although she was brought to justice, this is

a story of fakery that's ended on a sad note for one of her victims.

My daughter stopped playing piano two years ago

and has never touched the keyboard there since...

and that is sad.

You'll get bigger frauds, you'll get more complex frauds,

you'll get victims, you know,

probably even more vulnerable victims,

old people or disabled people, but this impacted on the children

and that's what left a bad taste in my mouth about this investigation.

Whilst music exam fraud is rare, it is happening elsewhere.

Fake Britain's uncovered other cases across the country, including

that of a fake examiner, which is currently under investigation.

Before your child takes their music exam, you can check

with the awarding body to make sure the examiner is registered

and the exam itself is genuine.

That's all from Fake Britain. Goodbye.