Episode 11 Fake Britain

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

Welcome to Fake Britain.

Police!

-Get down! Get down!

-On the floor now!

Put your hands behind your back, now.

Here at the Fake Britain house, things might look familiar,

but don't be taken in - because this is a house that's filled with fakes.

In this series I'll be revealing the counterfeits,

copies and cons that are flooding the market, fooling the public,

making money for the criminals and maybe even putting you in danger.

We'll be investigating those fraudsters

who are cashing in by selling something that isn't real,

and we'll be showing you how to avoid falling for a fake.

Today on Fake Britain, we lift the lid on the fake cigarettes

that could burn down your house.

My father said, "There's been a fire at home

"and your mum's dead."

And the nationwide crackdown on the fakers putting our lives in danger.

We've got a huge supply here.

Who can you trust to fit your burglar alarm?

The fake certificates putting livelihoods at risk.

This certificate is fake, everything on it is fake.

And we meet two pioneers of two very British folding bikes,

both of whom are losing out to the fakers.

All these products are fakes.

Here on Fake Britain we've seen a lot of these.

They look like real cigarettes, but they're fake and illegal.

They're often made in filthy conditions,

and anything from rat droppings to mould have been found in them.

But there's a new danger with fake cigarettes,

and, as we're about to find out, just one of these could be deadly.

Cigarette fakers are blazing a trail across the country.

Over 80% of UK-branded cigarettes seized by the HMRC are fake,

and last year over a billion illicit cigarettes were seized.

Fake Britain has investigated fake cigarettes before,

but now there's a shocking new development

meaning fake and illegal cigarettes can kill in more ways

than you might think.

So police and trading standards teams across the country

are cracking down.

Julie Grant from Spalding in Lincolnshire has had personal

experience of the devastating effect of fake cigarettes.

Mum had had a couple of strokes at the age of 50, which had affected

her mobility Dad had to do everything for her.

He would get her ready on a Sunday evening

so that she could sit for an hour while he nipped out for a pint,

his little bit of respite after looking after her all day.

She did enjoy a cigarette, and that's what she'd have been doing.

She'd have been sitting having a soft drink

and a cigarette.

On one of those evenings when Julie's dad had gone out,

Julie was at home with her husband.

All of a sudden,

they received a phone call from the local police station.

Julie and her husband drove straight to the police station.

She'll never forget what happened next.

My father just looked up at me and said, "There's been a fire at home

"and your mum's dead."

Obviously he was in tears, and I gave him a hug. We were both in tears.

But...you're hearing, but you're not quite understanding what's going on.

The fire had torn through June Buffham's lounge.

The devastation was such that the family weren't able

to go to the house that night.

But when Julie finally got there, she was shocked by what she found.

It hit me like a brick.

Mind-blowing.

If you've never experienced a fire,

you cannot comprehend what you're actually seeing.

Absolutely total devastation.

The heat had just melted the television - it wasn't burnt,

just melted, because of the heat.

Complete mess.

With the help of the coroner and the fire services,

Julie was able to piece together what had happened to her mum.

Mum fell asleep, dropped the cigarette into the chair,

where it lay there.

And after laying there for what we've been told since

would only have been a very short period of time,

it would have ignited.

And because my mum was disabled

and was unable to get out of the chair,

there was no escape route for her.

So the fire had totally engulfed my mum.

But the investigation didn't end there,

and it started to focus on the type of cigarette

Julie's mum had been smoking.

The coroner's assistant asked my father the question,

did my mother smoke the brand called Jin Ling?

And my father said that yes,

those were the cigarettes that Mum would have been smoking.

And the coroner said that those would be used as part of the investigation.

It really didn't mean anything to us -

as far as we were concerned, they were just cigarettes.

Jin Ling is an illegal brand, created for the black market

and smuggled across the world.

And it can be dangerous

because of the type of paper used in the cigarettes.

Dave Coss is a fire investigator with Derbyshire Fire and Rescue.

He was the first to examine the scene of the fire

at June Buffham's home,

and he thinks he knows what caused her death.

In November 2011,

the European directive came into force within the EU

that basically said that all cigarettes sold on retail market

within the European Union has to be reduced ignition propensity -

ie, they have to have two fire safety bands within them,

which will reduce the chances of the cigarette continuing to burn

if it's dropped down the side of a settee or a chair.

Studies at the time were showing anything up to about 70%

less likelihood of a cigarette that's got the safety bands catching fire

when compared to a fake or illegal or illicit cigarette,

which has no fire safety features.

Dave shows us how to tell the difference

between a genuine reduced ignition propensity cigarette

and a fake cigarette without the safety bands.

First he examines a genuine Marlboro cigarette,

taken from a pack that we bought from a local shop.

Drawing a line with a marker pen

down the inside of the cigarette paper,

the fire safety bands become clearly visible.

In order for a fire to continue burning, it needs heat,

it needs oxygen and it needs fuel.

And the idea behind the band is that the band is airtight,

so it takes away the air from those three components.

So it only leaves the fuel and the heat,

which eventually means the fire will self-extinguish.

But what about the fakes?

We gave Dave a fake Marlboro cigarette and a Jin Ling cigarette

from packs that were seized by Wolverhampton Trading Standards.

Clearly no fire safety bands within the paper.

If you compare that to the cigarette on the left,

you can clearly see the two breaks in the line -

those are the safety bands.

Therefore you can confirm the two on the right are fake cigarettes

or illegal cigarettes, and the one on the left is a genuine cigarette.

Dave wanted to demonstrate to Fake Britain

why fire safety bands are so important

by carrying out a simple burn test

in which fake and real cigarettes are lit and allowed to burn down.

We're five minutes in on the clock.

As you can see, the genuine Marlboro

with the fire safety band in has extinguished itself.

The moment the smoulder has hit the fire safety band,

the fire safety band has extinguished it.

The fake Marlboro and the Jin Ling

are almost halfway to three quarters burnt through.

Ten minutes in and the fakes have failed miserably.

The fake Marlboro's completely burnt down to the core,

and if we look at the Jin Ling,

again, we're right down to the filter,

and the filter is starting to burn now.

Down the side of a settee, that's ten minutes' worth of sustained smoulder,

which would be sufficient to set fire to the settee.

If you notice, now,

the Jin Ling one's actually starting to burn the filter.

It's not even extinguished when it's hit the filter -

it's carried on burning straight through.

At June Buffham's inquest, the Lincolnshire coroner linked

illegal cigarettes with the house fire that caused her death.

Later, we're out with trading standards

and the police as they discover shocking numbers

of these potentially dangerous fake and illegal cigarettes.

I've just noticed you were quickly trying to rush away with this bag.

These are becoming an increasingly popular sight on our streets.

More and more people are whizzing around on folding bikes.

One minute you're sitting on it, the next,

you're carrying it like a briefcase. Very clever.

This is a Brompton, and this one is a STRiDA,

and both were invented and developed by British designers -

but take a look at these.

Almost identical to the Brompton and the STRiDA,

but both illegal copies.

The fakers' wheeling and dealing is damaging British business,

and putting cyclists at risk.

Britain's gone collapsible crazy.

The folding bikes are now a common sight in our cities,

as commuters pedal their way to and from work.

And the Brompton is a very British success story.

The company now has 230 employees,

who hand-build around 45,000 folding bikes every year.

Bike nut Will Butler-Adams is Brompton's managing director.

Will is mad about genuine Bromptons.

But he's hopping mad about copies,

which have been appearing all over the internet.

The problems began when Andrew Ritchie,

the inventor of the Brompton,

allowed a company in Eastern Asia

to make a licensed copy of the Brompton for distribution.

He gave his baby away and tried to teach somebody how to do it.

They didn't make it themselves - they got this person to make it.

That person got this person to make it,

that person got this person to make it, Chinese whispers.

The net result was a pretty diabolical thing.

So Brompton backpedalled, and the licence for Eastern Asia

to make shoddy Bromptons was not renewed.

That's when the copycats shifted up a gear.

People who had been suppliers thought, "Ooh!

"Maybe we can do it ourselves."

They never understood what they were doing from the outset.

And in the meantime, our bike had moved on - but still they carried on.

And that is a place where we have seen copies coming in illegally.

The illegal Bromptons were imported into several European countries.

They weren't carrying the Brompton name,

but they all shared its unique design,

which is protected by copyright.

When the Oxford folding bicycle,

which looks identical to the Brompton, appeared in Spain,

Brompton went to court.

They were trying to copy the look,

and make people sort of think

that this was from the same family as the Brompton.

And we won the case.

The Spanish court ruled that the Brompton copy did infringe

their intellectual property rights.

Despite the win,

Will is still concerned that people could be fooled

into thinking they're buying a bike made by Brompton when they're not.

The interesting thing about the Brompton is,

people don't look at a bike and look at the label

and go, "That's a Brompton."

The Brompton's so iconic, you know, you see one whizzing along,

you know, "Oh, there's a Brompton."

Because it's so unique.

That's what people are trying to take,

and that's what they're trying to extract value from

in order to dupe the customer.

Despite Brompton's wins against the fakers,

there are still huge numbers of bogus Bromptons out there

for sale on the internet.

These are fake Bromptons.

No two ways about it.

The fact that there is a bike that's indirectly pretending to be us,

selling off our reputation

and all the time and energy and work that we put in

to delivering that reputation,

by taking care with what we make, is really sad.

And Brompton isn't the only British folding bike

to fall victim to the copycats.

Mark Sanders is the inventor of the distinctive STRiDA folding bike.

It took him years of research to perfect the design.

The unique folding handlebar system

and locking and front joint system are protected by patents.

But that hasn't stopped the fakers.

There's probably about 30 different factories making fakes.

There's, you know, maybe ten times the production

out of the fake factories than there is out of the official factory.

A quick look on the internet reveals a shocking number

of fake STRiDA bikes for sale.

Whoa! Look at all these STRiDAs!

All these products are fakes of the genuine STRiDA bike.

Will Butler-Adams of Brompton and Mark Sanders of STRiDA

take the safety of their folding bikes seriously.

What about the fakes?

Will and Mark decided to get hold of fake versions of their bikes.

God! It feels terrible.

It's all floppy.

The handlebars are loose, the crank's loose,

the whole frame's loose!

I can't actually lift my legs up,

because they're hitting the handlebar.

Here we go. Whoa!

Aah!

Aaaah!

Will decides to carry out an impromptu brake test on his bike.

OK? And I'm going to shove the brakes on...

now!

I mean, that is a joke.

Joking aside, Mark and Will's hands-on experience

with copycat folding bikes has left them with serious safety concerns.

I know the standard that the genuine thing has to pass,

all that stuff is ignored on a fake.

And then I feel really scared for people that buy those products.

Earlier we saw the devastation

that fake cigarettes can leave in their wake.

My father said, "There's been a fire at home

"and your mum's dead."

The fire that killed June Buffham was linked to a Jin Ling cigarette.

Jin Ling is a Russian brand designed purely for smuggling.

In other words, it's a fake and illegal brand -

and it's exploded onto the international market.

Customs officials are calling Jin Ling

the most seized brand in Europe.

The packaging resembles the American brand Camel,

even down to its colouring and typeface,

but instead of a camel on the Jin Ling packet,

there's a mountain goat.

These fake cigarettes are even out there in our shops.

Over several days, Fake Britain followed trading standards

and the police across the country

on the hunt for the potentially deadly Jin Ling cigarettes.

Good boy.

Debra Craner and her team from Wolverhampton Trading Standards

are joining forces with two specialists with a nose for fakery -

tobacco detection dogs Indie and Bradley.

He's got the dream of all jobs.

You have, yeah.

Working with dogs all day, yeah.

Debra and her team know that Jin Ling cigarettes can kill,

so it's a race against time

to get them off the shelves before anyone else is harmed.

Their intelligence has led them to a shop suspected of selling

Jin Lings and other fake tobacco products.

Hi, I'm from trading standards.

Wolverhampton City Council.

We're just here today, we're just doing routine inspections,

and we just want to look at your tobacco and cigarettes.

Time to unleash Indie.

I just want the dogs to check the other side of the till.

Just cos you think that void, there's some...

Just there.

It's not long before she finds something of interest

right behind the counter.

-Oh, yeah.

-No government health warning on them.

Been brought in illegally to the country.

Quite possibly the cigarettes are counterfeit,

but it will be confirmed.

So far they haven't uncovered any of the Jin Lings.

But just around the corner,

it's not long before Indie sniffs out something else.

Oh...

And there we go.

Well done, Indie, well done.

Good girl. Good girl.

Concealed within these bin bags,

an array of fake Golden Virginia and fake Amber Leaf.

It's great to see the dogs working and in action.

Hundreds of fake cigarettes have been seized already,

but still no sign of the potentially deadly Jin Lings.

But there's still the basement to check,

and Indie the detection dog doesn't need to be asked twice.

Good girl! Good girl.

Indie's very interested in this sofa.

Oh, yeah. We've got a huge supply here.

Finally they've found what they're looking for.

This sofa is concealing thousands of Jin Ling cigarettes -

the very same fake brand linked to the death of June Buffham.

This is just a huge supply.

Debra's shocked by what they've found - and where they've found it.

It's the first time I've come across, inside the sofa -

but these unscrupulous traders,

they're always trying to keep one step ahead.

They're always thinking of, you know,

"Where will trading standards not look?"

And that's the advantage today, particularly, of having the dogs.

The fake cigarettes are counted,

bagged, tagged and taken away for analysis.

In total they seize well over 5,000 Jin Ling cigarettes.

With no time to lose, Debra and the team race to the next shop

suspected of selling Jin Ling cigarettes.

This time, the officers will have to keep a low profile.

This area has a few shops where they have got lookouts.

And previous operations that we've carried out,

we've been aware that people are looking out

and making those quick calls warning people to get rid of stock.

It appears as if the lookouts are earning their keep,

as Debra meets a man who's in a hurry to leave.

I just noticed you were quickly trying to rush away with this bag,

-so I'm just going to put this bag here, because...

-Yeah, yeah.

Oh, yeah. I'm going to take a look in this bag, OK?

Cos I can already see you've got some cigarettes in here.

He was just about to leg it, so I've just had to stop him from legging it.

-Right.

-With a bag.

He's got hundreds of Jin Lings

and other fake cigarettes in his rucksack.

And with thousands of pounds in cash found behind the counter,

clearly business is booming.

Goodness me.

So, yeah...

Certainly the Golden Virginia is confirmed by the brand holder,

that is counterfeit.

There's a strong possibility, therefore, that the others will be.

Over in Lincolnshire,

trading standards officer Dan Brown is hoping

that detection dog Bradley's keen sense of smell

will smoke out some of the fake cigarettes flooding the county.

We've got the Jin Ling brand of cigarette

that fail the ignition propensity testing.

They do not self-extinguish,

so they'll keep on burning all the way down.

With over 25,000 fake cigarettes seized between them,

it's a great result

for Wolverhampton and Lincolnshire Trading Standards.

Later, we see the shocking results of our fake cigarette burn test.

Anyone within that room would be unconscious or dead now.

When you've worked hard for your home

and everything that's in it,

you might want to protect it with a burglar alarm.

Your insurance company will probably ask you to get it fitted

by someone who's accredited by an official security approval body.

If you get burgled, this certificate is a seal of approval,

meaning that your insurer should pay out.

But THIS certificate is a fake,

and it's not worth the paper it's written on.

Do you know who's fitting your burglar alarm?

Having your home burgled can take a great deal of getting over,

but in Britain it's a reality for one person every 40 seconds.

There are over a million victims of burglary or attempted burglary

across the country every year.

Lorraine White knows how it feels.

When I was burgled, my bedroom had been completely ransacked,

my jewellery had been taken, other property had been taken.

You feel very vulnerable, very insecure.

I needed a burglar alarm to help with the security in relation to that.

Lorraine's insurance company said her burglar alarm

would need to be fitted by a company

approved by one of the two main security approval bodies.

Either NACOSS NSI, the National Security Inspectorate,

or SSAIB, Security Systems and Alarms Inspections Board.

You should be able to trust security companies

with either of these stamps of approval.

It means they've vetted their employees.

And going with an approved company means you're much more likely

to get an insurance payout if you get burgled.

Lorraine searched the web and found burglar alarm fitter Nick Parker.

When I called Nick Parker on the telephone,

I specifically mentioned that I needed him to be qualified,

needed him to be approved.

He stated that he was, and that is a service he could provide for me,

so I agreed to let him come along and give me a quote inside my property.

Lorraine went with the quote.

Nick Parker fitted the alarm and gave her everything she needed

to satisfy her home insurance company.

This was the certificate that I got sent from Nick Parker.

As you can see, it says "SSAIB", which is exactly what I needed

to comply with the insurance company regulations.

I sent that to my insurance company, they accepted it,

and that's what gave me my house insurance cover.

Lorraine was finally starting to feel secure in her own home.

But all that was about to change.

I received a telephone call from trading standards

claiming that Nick Parker was actually a fraud.

Nick Parker told me he was NACOSS and SSAIB registered.

Trading standards informed me that he wasn't.

He'd actually lied about that.

I now know that this certificate is fake.

Everything on it is fake.

The logo, the signature from the "chief executive" -

Lorraine had unwittingly misled her insurance company

about the new alarm being approved.

I was paying him to provide me with a service

in relation to a burglar alarm,

that effectively was a waste of money,

because my insurance company wouldn't have paid out.

Had it have happened to me a second time,

and not being covered by my house insurance,

and losing absolutely everything again,

I don't know how I would have coped with that.

Shockingly, Nick Parker's fakery

didn't stop at his claims of being SSAIB accredited -

as Mark Rolfe from Kent Trading Standards discovered,

he was also lying

about being accredited to the highest NACOSS Gold standard.

As far as he was concerned,

Parker's fakery constituted a huge breach of trust.

For people to find out that actually their burglar alarm engineer

has committed fraud to get the business from them

actually undermines their confidence in the security industry.

Finally, sentencing day arrived for Nick Parker -

and Mark Rolfe was there for the result.

Nick Parker's been sentenced to 12 months imprisonment,

suspended for two years,

to a night-time curfew, so he can't leave his home between 7pm and 7am,

and to a £5,000 costs order.

It's exactly the right kind of sentence for the kind of fakery

and fraudulent behaviour that he was involved in.

We tried to catch up with Mr Parker...

Just wondering if you've got anything to say to the victims.

..but he wasn't in a talkative mood.

Earlier we followed trading standards officers

seizing thousands of fake cigarettes across the country.

They uncovered a haul of Jin Lings -

the very same brand that caused the death of June Buffham.

Lincolnshire Fire and Recue were so concerned

about the risks surrounding fake cigarettes falling onto sofas

that they decided to run a demonstration to raise awareness.

Fire safety manager Karl Turrill agreed to let Fake Britain film it.

They'll use an ageing sofa,

produced before the introduction of fire safety legislation.

It's the sort of thing you might find in many homes

across the country.

This is one of the fake cigarettes we've got here.

We're going to place it on the side of the sofa.

As you can see, the cigarette has taken.

The fake cigarette smoulders away,

and just a few minutes later, the flames take hold.

Already it's starting to produce quite a lot of smoke.

That smoke is toxic.

As things heat up,

Karl uses his thermal imaging camera to measure the temperature.

That's up past 400 degrees there, now.

I can zoom in there -

437 degrees. It's an acrid, burning smell.

All it takes is one or two breaths of this and most people will pass out.

It's not long before the fire is raging out of control,

and the Fake Britain camera crew is pulled back for their own safety.

The amount of smoke that's being generated now

is just much too dangerous for us to be near.

You can see the vast amount of smoke that's being produced,

just from one little sofa.

All of this started from the one fake cigarette.

As the temperature inside this makeshift sitting room

hits 540 degrees,

it's hot enough to reduce the television

into a bubbling mass of molten plastic.

Karl's under no illusions as to the consequences

of an inferno like this.

Smoke - thick, black, acrid smoke.

Anyone within that room would be unconscious or dead now.

This fire is a perfect demonstration of what illegal cigarettes,

fake cigarettes can do.

The fire reached temperatures of well over 700 degrees.

And it's basically torn through that entire room in minutes.

Anyone in there, sadly, would not have made it.

Cigarettes in general are terrible.

But fake cigarettes are even worse.

That's all from Fake Britain.

Goodbye.