Episode 13 Fake Britain

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

Welcome to Fake Britain.

Police! SHOUTING

-Get down! Get down!

-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 us something that isn't real.

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

Today on Fake Britain:

The fake batteries that could give you more power

than you bargained for...

The thought of that occurring on an aircraft

with maybe 400 passengers is horrific.

..the fake cosmetics keeping Trading Standards on their toes

I've been doing this job for 30 years,

and I've never seen this amount of fake cosmetics.

..and courier fraud. On the front line with the real police officers

cracking down on the fake ones.

Hundreds of thousands of pounds of valuables are being handed over

to these fake police officers and fake couriers.

We live our lives surrounded by technology that we take with us

wherever we go. Phones, laptops and cameras, just for starters.

And they all need portable power.

These are lithium batteries,

and increasingly they're the type you'll find in all these devices.

They're packed full of power, usually rechargeable,

and they're not cheap.

But at as you might expect, at the Fake Britain house,

none of these batteries is the real thing.

And as we're about to show you, the consequences of having a fake

lithium battery inside your device could be very serious indeed.

The chances are, you're probably carrying one or more lithium

batteries with you wherever you go, and you'll have more at home.

Every year over three billion lithium batteries are transported

worldwide, and they're big business for an electronics giants

like Canon and Samsung.

The fakers know that. They're cashing in on our insatiable desire

for more portable power.

It's early morning in the north of England.

The scam busters' north-west team, led by officer Wally Din,

are on the trail of a suspect thought to be selling vast

quantities of fake lithium batteries.

We are hoping to find evidence of the sale of counterfeit

Canon camera batteries.

And when it comes to these batteries,

Wally's not just worried about trademark infringement.

The problem with the fake batteries is that they could potentially

overheat and go on fire, so they could cause damage to property,

to somebody's expensive camera, or, in fact, they could cause injury.

The counterfeit and potentially dangerous batteries

need to be taken out of circulation.

The officers arrive at the suspect's address

and quickly get inside.

Hi, we've got a warrant to search the address.

The search begins, and it doesn't take long

for the officers to find what they're looking for.

We've got here what appear to be several boxes

of goods that we're looking for, counterfeit batteries.

-Your phone is being seized as part of this operation.

-Mm-hm.

As will your laptop be.

The suspect is arrested and led away.

He'll be taken to the police station for further questioning.

Wally's pleased with what they've discovered.

We've found six large boxes of what appear to be fake batteries

of the type we're searching for.

With the evidence secured, it's time for Wally to take a closer look.

The retail price of these batteries is about £60 each,

there's two in each.

There are thousands of batteries here,

so substantial monetary value to it all.

The batteries are convincing counterfeits,

even down to the fake hologram.

But in a situation like this,

how can anyone tell the fake from the real thing?

Fortunately, Wally's got some help from a gadget

that Cannon calls the handy viewer.

If you look at the hologram under the handy viewer, you can see

that it shows gold on both sides,

indicating that it's a fake one.

On a genuine one, it shows black on one side

and then gold on the other one.

And that indicates that that is a genuine item.

But Canon isn't the only major electronics company

to have their lithium batteries targeted, and Trading Standards

are concerned the fakers are also cutting corners on safety.

We have here what appears to be a fake Olympus lithium battery,

so the same safety considerations apply, really.

So we've got some Sony CyberShot batteries.

They are fake. They may not be safe.

It's a good day's work for the team.

Today they've protected unwitting British consumers

from buying over 2,000 fake lithium batteries from online shops.

Despite the crackdown,

fake lithium batteries of all kinds are slipping through the net.

They're being sold on the web and they're duping customers.

Roy Wilson from Cheshire has been a keen amateur photographer

for several years.

When he realised that he needed a spare battery for his kit,

he turned to the internet to find a good deal.

It was £50.

If it had been £10 for a Canon battery, well, I'd be a fool.

I would know you can't get a genuine battery for £10.

But £50, to me, was a reasonable and a fair price.

When the delivery came, something wasn't quite right.

We showed Roy a fake Canon lithium camera battery,

given to us by Trading Standards,

that was identical to the one he bought,

even down to the packaging.

Everything feels cheap and nasty.

So, take the battery out.

And it just feels wrong.

Roy had heard stories about people unwittingly buying fake batteries

from online stores.

He immediately contacted the website where he'd bought the battery.

Not long after, he received a phone call.

Trading Standards tell me, "Could we come and get a statement from you?"

And now I'm thinking, although I can't officially know, I think

that's giving me the red light that, yes, it was a counterfeit battery.

I was annoyed, I was furious. I felt ripped off.

Because I'd spent £50.

As I said, if I'd have spent £5, £10, that's my own stupid fault.

I paid good money.

But it wasn't just being ripped off that worried Roy.

He'd done some research into fake lithium batteries,

and had discovered they can wreak havoc with your kit.

Not only are they ripping you off with money,

they can melt your equipment. They can cause serious damage.

Later, we find out how dangerous fake lithium batteries can be.

Someone could unknowingly buy a fake product, bring it

into their home and be using it, and this sort of reaction could happen.

Dior, Mac - two of the top brands of cosmetics out there.

So you might expect these gift sets to be expensive.

Take a look at the price tag, £600.

But if you paid anything like that for these,

you'd waste your money, cos they're all fake.

The criminals are now upping their game

by moving into this high-end gift set market.

But they're not only a cosmetic con.

These fakes could also be dangerous.

Here on Fake Britain, we have seen how private investigators

have been cracking down on fake cosmetics.

And how innocent online shopper Laura Barry was injured

by the fake foundation she unwittingly put on her skin.

It was really sore, my eyes were watering, my skin went all blotchy

and red and it was going all over my cheeks, down my jaw line here.

But the problem of fake cosmetics hasn't gone away.

Today Mark Rolfe from Kent Trading Standards

is making his way to a secret lock-up somewhere in the UK.

We just had a phone call from our colleagues in the UK Border Force

who tell us they've detained a shipment of what they believe to be

counterfeit cosmetics, so make-up and lipstick and that kind of stuff.

But this is no lock-up. This is a warehouse.

Mark can't quite believe the sheer scale of what's in front of him.

I've been doing this job just over 30 years and I've never seen

this amount of fake cosmetics in the same place at the same time.

This is a really significant haul.

Somewhere between £10 million and £12 million.

I am actually generally wanting to get my way into some of these

to see what's here. You never lose the thrill.

It's time for Mark to take a closer look at exactly what's inside.

That's a Christian Dior.

The first thing is, this outer wrapper is really poor quality.

These are premium brands

so anything to do with this brand would be a good quality.

The wrapper would be good quality, the bag would be good quality,

and it isn't.

But what made me smile is that this has a price on it of £600...

..which is just unbelievable, really.

Mark's spotted more tell-tale signs

that these high-end cosmetics are in fact fake.

This is another set, supposedly with a retail value of £450.

But it appears to have a spelling mistake on the box.

A classic example of a counterfeit product.

They've misspelled the word curls.

Instead of 'curl', it's written 'cun'.

Border Force officer Andy Whybrow led the team

that intercepted this huge shipment.

It was his keen eyed officers who realised

that this make-up wasn't quite right.

Some of the mascaras

and eyeshadows inside the boxes had spelling mistakes,

small mistakes like, 'Made in Farance'

rather than 'Made in France'.

'Made in Camada' rather than Canada.

We didn't expect that,

a spelling mistake to be on a high quality product.

With more digging, Mark uncovers four high end cosmetics brands -

Mac, Chanel, Christian Dior and Bobbi Brown.

It's the first time Fake Britain has seen this volume

of fake make-up under one roof.

And the first time we've seen fakers turning their hands

to high end gift sets,

each of which contains an array of fake cosmetics.

But it's what could be inside them that worries both Mark and Andy.

What we've got here is a powder blusher mixture with its mirror.

What worries us about this is,

this is designed to be applied straight to the skin.

The people who make these fake products really don't care what they put in them,

so we've no idea if this is going to cause a skin reaction, blistering.

It can have a really nasty effect on people

if it's got dangerous chemicals in it.

But there are two items in these fake gift sets

that are giving Mark particular cause for concern.

First up, the fake mascara.

Some fake mascara products contain paint stripper. I have no idea why.

It's a product clearly that shouldn't be in a gift set of this kind,

a cosmetic that you will put on your skin

and around your eyes in particular.

These products, there is no quality control.

They're just put together cheaply and quickly,

using whatever chemicals come to hand and who knows what danger

they pose to people who would apply them to their skin.

Next under the spotlight is a red lipstick that Mark's uncovered.

More sham than glam,

it could leave you with red lips for all the wrong reasons.

Fake lipsticks, particularly red lipsticks,

to manufacture them as cheaply

as these people need to make the fake products,

they use chemicals to make the red colour which are not safe

and shouldn't be applied to your skin and shouldn't be around your mouth.

Obviously the people who make the real thing are very careful

to make sure what they do is safe but the people who make these fakes

really don't care what impact they have on the users.

Shockingly, when it comes to using fake cosmetics like these,

you might consider yourself lucky to come away with just a rash.

This kind of fakery is one of the most dangerous types

that we come across.

Some of these products we know from experience contain chemicals

which are known to be carcinogenics.

If you're using these fake products over a period of time,

the very worst case scenario is that they could cause cancer.

The investigation continues into just where

this huge haul of fake cosmetics was destined.

Eventually, it will all be destroyed

so it can never reach the homes of any unsuspecting customers.

You get a phone call from the police or from your bank

saying they think you've been targeted by a fraudster.

You can bet you'll be taking that call very seriously. I would.

You'll probably try to cooperate and do whatever you can

to sort it out, to stop criminals getting their hands on your cash.

But as many people have discovered, that worrying call is actually

coming from fake police officers or fake bank staff.

It's become known as the courier fraud and right across the country,

criminals are getting away with millions of pounds of our money.

So, do you really know who you're on the phone to?

Peter Buckthorpe from Crawley in West Sussex was at home one day

when he received a phone call out of the blue.

A gentleman said that he was a police officer

from the Hammersmith Division and that they'd arrested two people.

They had found a book.

My name appeared and my address.

They said they were concerned, they were following it up,

and they wanted to know initially,

did I still have my credit cards with me.

The police officer told Peter that he was at risk of credit card fraud.

He gave him a crime reference number and said he would transfer him

to the bank's fraud department.

I was connected through after a delay

to what was thought to be

the NatWest fraud squad.

So they took the number of my credit card

and my PIN number through a telephone keypad.

They then thanked me very much

and said my cards were now cancelled at that point in time.

Believing that he was now protected against fraud,

Peter was told there would be an investigation.

But as part of the evidence,

they would very much like my credit cards to present at court.

Peter had no qualms about handing them over to the police.

The police officer helpfully arranged for a courier

to collect the cards.

The taxi duly arrived

and the envelope was given to the taxi driver and he went off.

But the friendly police officer on the other end of the phone

was about to make a very strange request.

I was suggested going down to the bank around try and draw £2,000.

And that was the time that triggered suspicion in my mind.

Courier fraudsters sometimes ask their targets to withdraw cash

for safekeeping as they claim their bank accounts have been compromised.

Peter suspected that he was in the process of being conned.

He asked the man on the landline to hold while secretly

calling the police on his mobile.

I explained that I suddenly had a suspicion

that I was in the middle of a scam...

..and the person I was speaking to said,

"I think you're absolutely right."

But of course my current account, my credit cards were totally vulnerable.

Peter tried to stop the taxi before it dropped his cards off

with the fake officials he'd been speaking to, but it was too late.

The drop had been made.

A fake police officer, a fake bank official...

..another fake police officer had collectively taken,

at that stage,

£1,100 out of my bank account.

Peter gradually realised how an intricate web of fakery had led him

to hand over his money to a courier

who was controlled by the fraudsters.

It is a very elaborate scam.

There was quite a group of them playing their part as if it

was scripted play and, quite frankly, an Oscar-winning performance.

Peter Buckthorpe is considered to be one of the luckier victims

of courier fraud - he finally got his money back from the bank.

But as we found out, other targets haven't fared so well.

Detective Inspector Danny Lawrence leads a task force that deals

with courier fraud involving fake police officers

and fake bank staff and the people who are left in their wake.

One handed over £30,000 in cash having visited the bank

on a number of occasions to retrieve that amount of cash.

When it's not about cash and cards, it's about valuables.

One 89-year-old victim in London lost a £100,000 painting

handed over for safekeeping.

Coming up, we follow DI Lawrence and his team

in a major crackdown on the courier fraudsters.

Police!

Earlier, we followed Wally and his team as they seized a huge haul

of fake lithium camera batteries...

There are thousands of batteries here,

so there's a substantial monetary value to it all.

..and we saw how Roy Wilson lost out to the camera battery fakers.

I was annoyed, I was furious and I felt ripped off.

Fake Britain decided to investigate how easy it is to buy

a fake lithium battery for a phone or laptop computer.

Acting on a tipoff from an insider,

our researcher bought Samsung phone batteries from several phone shops

across London and from several online sellers.

Samsung later confirmed that the batteries were counterfeit.

We also ordered what our source told us was a fake laptop battery.

Armed with counterfeit batteries, we went to world-renowned test house

BRE Global to find out more about the dangers of fakes.

Fire investigator Ciara Holland agreed to show us what happens

when a fake develops a fault.

We began by giving her the fake Canon camera battery.

We are going to place this onto a hot plate

and we're going to force it to overheat.

Ciara is simulating a fault in this fake camera battery.

All lithium batteries become highly unstable

when they heat up during a malfunction,

but fakes are far more likely to short-circuit than the real deal.

Fake lithium batteries have issues with quality control

and with the safety features that were put into them.

Ciara will force the fake into a state known as thermal runaway.

It's when the temperature inside a lithium battery rises

to a critical point and as it hits that critical point,

the battery starts to smoke.

So why would a fake battery explode like this?

It is more likely to happen with the fake battery due to

the fact of the poor quality control,

the lack of safety features that are within these devices.

Next up, it's the counterfeit Samsung phone battery

bought by Fake Britain.

Less than two and a half minutes later, it fails dramatically.

Here we go.

We have obviously forced this reaction today,

but it is similar to the reaction that can occur when these

fake batteries are within devices, either being charged or being in use.

Last but not least, it's time to test the fake laptop battery

that we ordered from the internet.

The internal failure causes a massive explosion.

The shocking results have left Ciara concerned about the effects

of this happening in somebody's home.

Whilst the fake batteries have been forced into a state of failure,

they can heat up and explode without outside intervention.

Someone could unknowingly buy a fake product,

bring it into their home and be using it

and this sort of reaction could happen,

creating what could be quite a serious fire.

So fake lithium batteries could be dangerous in our homes.

What could happen when they're in the air?

Geoff Leach knows a thing or two about dangerous goods

being carried in aeroplanes -

he headed up the Dangerous Goods Office

at the Civil Aviation Authority for over a decade.

We showed Geoff the results of our tests on fake lithium batteries.

Yeah, it's just...

..horrendous.

The thought of that occurring on an aircraft

with maybe 400 passengers is horrific.

A fake lithium battery blowing up on or near an aircraft

isn't just a theoretical scare story.

This laptop battery here was carried on a passenger aircraft

from Hong Kong to London Heathrow Airport.

Shortly after landing at Heathrow, the packaging in which it was

contained was in the mail sort facility and it caught fire.

There were four-foot-high flames in the facility.

A few hours before, this battery was in the hold of

the passenger aircraft with maybe 350, 400 passengers on board.

The fake batteries have the potential to cause a very

serious fire as we've seen from these videos

and really, really should be avoided.

Earlier, we saw how Peter Buckthorpe from West Sussex

became a target of courier fraudsters,

losing over £1,000 to fake police officers and fake bank staff.

What was going through one's mind was my current account,

my credit cards were totally vulnerable.

The police are taking courier fraud extremely seriously.

It's daybreak in North London.

A major police operation is under way to arrest a gang

of suspected courier fraudsters.

Detective Inspector Danny Lawrence aims to prevent any more

innocent members of the public from being conned

out of thousands of pounds.

These are effectively fake police officers phoning innocent victims

and gaining their trust and getting them to hand over their cash

and their cards and their valuables.

The courier fraudsters have been convincing people to hand over

credit cards and PIN numbers.

Posing as police officers and bank staff,

the fakers are making a killing.

This runs into millions of pounds.

It is organised crime on a significant scale.

There's a number of teams we've dismantled and disrupted already

and a number of teams that we'll continue to target.

Today, over 80 officers will be targeting multiple addresses

across the country.

The unit arriving at this address will need to secure

the area as quickly as possible.

The officers are trying to take the suspects by surprise.

Police!

SHOUTING

-Stay where you are! Move, move!

-Police, hands where I can see them.

Anyone else upstairs?

Get off! Get off!

It's all right, it's all right.

Is anyone else in the room?

It looks like it's been a wake-up call for this suspect.

We've got a warrant to search the address, OK?

I'm just going to take some details first

and then we'll explain what's going on, OK?

As the search gets under way at this address,

another team of police officers is at a second premises nearby.

I'm outside the door.

Quickly, otherwise it's going in.

But whoever is inside doesn't seem to be in a hurry.

You ain't got very long to show your face,

otherwise it's going to get put in.

Quick as you can. That's it, just open the door, then.

-Morning, police. We've got a warrant. Hello, fella.

-Hello.

We've got a search warrant at this address and in a minute,

one of the officers is going to tell you something you might not like.

One of the suspected courier fraudsters is handcuffed

and read his rights.

You're under arrest for conspiracy to commit fraud.

You don't have to say anything, but it might harm your defence

if you don't listen when questioned

something you later rely on in court.

Two of the suspects are arrested

and taken into police custody for further questioning.

It's time for the officers to begin a search for evidence

that could link the men to courier fraud.

Anything they find is bagged, tagged and taken away for analysis,

including this computer, which could contain vital information.

The four suspected courier fraudsters arrested here

all later pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit fraud

by false representation.

The investigation is ongoing, but it's just one of many in a fraud

that has spread right across the country.

Courier fraud has become an epidemic.

People are losing tens of thousands of pounds.

Hundreds of thousands of pounds of valuables are being handed over

to these fake police officers and fake couriers for what

they perceive to be safe keeping or assisting in an investigation.

This CCTV footage shows the teenage courier fraudsters

using one of their victims' credit cards.

First they make a test purchase of £50 to make sure the card works.

When it does, they embark on a spending spree, racking up

a bill of £2,500 on designer clothing in just 20 minutes.

Six members of this gang were charged with conspiracy

to commit fraud and sentenced to a total of four years

and nine months for their crimes.

DI Lawrence wants to get the word out to stop other

members of the public from falling for courier fraud.

Should anyone call you and ask for your bank cards, to go

to the bank to withdraw cash or ask for your PIN number over the phone,

I'm 100% certain that they are likely to be fake police officers

or fake banking officials.

My message is if somebody does call you

and ask you to do that, is to hang up the phone,

use an alternative phone and contact 101 and phone the police.

That's all from Fake Britain. Goodbye.