Episode 14 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 is 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 will be investigating those fraudsters

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

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

Today on Fake Britain:

Trading Standards clamping down on the rogue operators using fake

ATOL memberships to convince travellers to part with thousands.

I was really disgusted that anybody could do that.

The fake LED lights that are shockingly bad.

It's seriously dangerous and potentially life-threatening.

And the tragic story of the young boy

killed by fake almond powder in his curry.

It has absolutely destroyed that family. It really has.

When it comes to holidays, we Brits are big spenders.

We pay an average of around £1,000 per person

to get us out of the nine to five.

That is a lot of money and when we sign up to fly away on our

package trip it makes sense to know our money and holiday are protected.

This sign on your glossy brochure says they are.

It means the company has an Air Travel Operators' Licence, ATOL.

So that's all OK then.

Except this is a fake.

This company did not have a licence

and, as we are about to find out, you may need to take a closer look

at your travel operator the next time you book a holiday.

When David and Marlene Jackson from East Sussex retired, they were

finally able to look forward to planning their holiday in Russia.

I came across this company called Russian Gateway.

Excellent website, very well written, very clear,

good photographs, good description of the ship we would be going on

and a very professional presentation.

It gave the impression that Russian Gateway was a specialist

company and because of that it generated a feeling of trust.

So far so good with the company's website.

But being seasoned travellers,

David and Marlene knew to look for a travel company that would

protect their money should things take a turn for the worse.

The ATOL logo in particular was something which encouraged us

that it was a bona fide company, a bona fide claim,

and that we were covered if there was any cancellation of any kind at all.

ATOL is a protection scheme for air holidays,

managed by the Civil Aviation Authority.

An ATOL tour operator protects you from losing money

or being stranded abroad if the company goes bust.

Convinced that they had found the right company to arrange their

holiday, the Jacksons took the plunge and booked their Russian adventure.

But their plans for the trip abroad were about to be sunk

by a series of forest fires around Moscow.

It was about a week before we were due to go that we were advised not to go.

So we cancelled that trip and we talked about it

and decided to postpone for a year.

David and Marlene's holiday would have to wait.

They had already paid for it and were desperate to go

so decided to leave their money with Alan Steel,

the director of Russian Gateway UK Ltd of Leamington Spa,

not to be confused with any other company of a similar name.

They looked forward to their holiday.

We got in touch with him again. We fixed the dates.

He told us the hotel we would be staying in.

He told us the flights we'd be on.

It seemed that the holiday would be going ahead, so they spent £750

on ballet tickets which they arranged to be sent to their hotel in Moscow.

We then got a message from the ticket agency that we had booked through

to say they'd tried to deliver the tickets to the hotel

but the hotel didn't know anything about us.

That was the first indication that something

was going wrong with the second trip.

With their holiday drawing closer and their hotel having no record of their

booking, David got back in touch with Alan Steel at Russian Gateway.

He was having financial problems with his Russian suppliers

and he was due to see his bank manager the following day.

This was a week before we were due to go on holiday.

To be quite honest, I think it was just unbelievable.

I mean, there are your suitcases that you have started to pack

and you come to a grinding halt.

I was really upset about it, wasn't I?

I think, really, you sort of have sleepless nights.

It was just awful. We just didn't know what was going to happen.

Finally, Russian Gateway admitted to the couple

that they would not be going on their long-awaited trip.

We personally in total had lost just over £3,000.

It's a lot of money. It was for us.

The Jacksons thought their money would be protected.

Surely the ATOL logos they had seen were proof of that.

So David contacted the Civil Aviation Authority,

who manage the ATOL scheme, to see if they could help.

It was at that point we were told that in fact

he was no longer a member and he had not been a member for six years,

which means he had been fraudulently displaying the ATOL logo

throughout that period when he wasn't entitled to do so.

Marlene was horrified that they had been duped

by what was in fact a fake ATOL logo.

When we found out that the ATOL logo

and the claims to be a member of ATOL were fake,

I was really disgusted that anybody could do that.

You see all these symbols appearing all over the place

and you take it for granted that if they display them they are entitled to display them.

We both thought that the ATOL logo was genuine.

We had no reason to think otherwise.

Russian Gateway's fakery had ruined David and Marlene's holiday plans.

It was initially extreme disappointment that it was cancelled

followed by hope that we would be able to go eventually

followed by anger when we couldn't.

The Jacksons weren't the only ones to be duped by Russian Gateway.

Eleanor Lake from Warwickshire Trading Standards had received

dozens of phone calls from disgruntled holiday-makers

who had been misled by the travel company.

It was large-scale fraud.

We were aware of around 31 consumers who were affected as a result

of this and they had lost in the region of £140,000.

Many of the holiday-makers thought they had been doing the right

thing by specifically looking for assurances

that their money would be protected should the worst happen.

Consumers have said they were particularly looking

out for an ATOL logo as a form of protection for them.

All British firms selling flight packages are legally required

to hold an ATOL licence and show the logo.

This would be a fake use of the logo.

He didn't have permission to produce it

and consumers would be misled into believing

they were getting some sort of protection when they were not.

As Eleanor dug deeper it became clear that Russian Gateway

offered its customers absolutely no protection.

What Mr Steel had done was told people their money would be

kept secure until they came back from their holiday, but he had lied.

He had made these false statements that that money was protected.

And nothing could prepare Eleanor for the reality of what Mr Steel

was actually doing with his customers' money.

When we obtained the bank account details for Mr Steel,

you could actually see that he was using his business

account for his personal expenses.

You could see his shopping was coming out of that account,

so various personal groceries were coming on there.

So there was no evidence that money had gone in from a consumer and

then that same amount of money had gone into some sort of trust account.

The business was spiralling out of control

and all of Russian Gateway's customers were at risk.

The very thing that the package travel regulations are there

to protect against is if a company goes bust and that is the very

thing that happened in this case, is that the company went into liquidation

and all of that money that consumers had entrusted,

around £140,000 worth of consumer money, disappeared overnight.

Fortunately, the holiday-makers who lost out

to Russian Gateway's ATOL and ABTA fakery

eventually managed to get their money back

as a result of the case brought by Warwickshire Trading Standards.

Alan Steel had to sell his luxury home to pay his prosecution costs.

He was ordered to pay over £130,000 in compensation to 31 victims.

And he was sent to prison.

Mr Steel was given a two- and-a-half-year custodial sentence,

which reflects the scale of the fraud.

The judge said that the actions that Mr Steel had done

had undermined confidence in the travel industry.

Eleanor has some advice for anyone out there who might be planning a holiday.

Consumers can go on to the Civil Aviation Authority website and check

an ATOL for themselves to find out whether a company is ATOL-protected.

Coming up, we are out with Trading Standards as they crack down

on the tour operators putting holiday-makers at risk.

They would be handing over £4,000 or £5,000 a package.

They are not protected.

We are a nation of curry lovers with over 20 million of us

tucking into something like this every month.

And this is almond powder, used in loads of different curries.

But we have discovered that some almond powder out there is fake.

So it's not just almonds that will be in your curry.

It could be something that has proved fatal for some allergy sufferers.

Previously on Fake Britain we have come across all kinds of food fakery,

from fake lamb to fake fish.

But now there is a new and potentially deadly kind of fakery

out there involving the almond powder used to thicken and flavour curries.

In some cases, almond powder is being adulterated with peanuts.

Trading Standards are finding fake almond powder in restaurants across the country.

And that could be a problem for the half a million people

in the UK who have a peanut allergy.

Detective Chief Inspector Michael Fraser knows all too well

the very real dangers of fake almond powder.

He investigated the case of 12-year-old Connor Donaldson.

Connor was diagnosed as having a nut allergy.

That particular day, the family decided

they were going to have a takeaway curry from the local takeaway.

Because of Connor's peanut allergy, his mum asked the restaurant

to confirm that his prawn balti would not contain any peanuts.

They confirmed there were no peanuts in the dish.

Just moments after his first few mouthfuls,

Connor was unable to breathe.

He had gone into anaphylactic shock, a severe allergic reaction.

Connor was rushed by ambulance to hospital and emergency staff

did all they could to help him, but it was too late.

Connor had died.

It is absolutely devastating for any family to lose a young child

within your family, within your community.

But it has absolutely destroyed that family.

It really has.

From that moment on, it was DCI Fraser's job to find out

why and how Connor had died.

Traces of peanut were actually found within his body.

Subsequent investigations at the local takeaway found

that they didn't have peanuts within that takeaway,

within any of their recipes whatsoever.

While peanuts were not used as an ingredient in the recipes,

the restaurant had used almond paste.

But shockingly, almonds weren't the only nut present in the paste.

Subsequent investigations revealed the actual almond paste

and the almond powders within the restaurant had actually been

adulterated by up to 50% peanut content.

Connor's death has been caused because almonds have been

adulterated somewhere in the food chain by peanuts.

But it wasn't going to be easy to find out where or when

the almond powder had been faked.

There is absolutely no suggestion whatsoever

that the adulteration of that almond with those peanuts

took place within that particular takeaway.

You then have to start looking back in the food supply chain

and there were so many different areas of where that

adulteration could occur, that it's almost impossible to actually

identify where that adulteration has taken place.

We wanted to find out why anyone would want to fake almond powder

by using ground peanuts.

So we visited award-winning chef Cyrus Todiwala

at his Indian restaurant.

I am not surprised that almond powder will get adulterated

because almond powder is expensive.

As you know, almonds are expensive compared to other certain

cheaper nuts, maybe peanuts for example.

Very good-quality almond powder could be up to £20 a kilo

and a cheap almond powder could be between £7, £8, £9 and £10 a kilo.

If you ask for cheaper-quality almond powder from a manufacturer,

they could put peanuts inside, for example,

they could put something else inside, for example.

The owner of the restaurant may not necessarily know

and they could quite innocently be cooking with that product

and giving the person who can actually suffer from an anaphylactic shock, for instance,

a product that he should never have had.

It's enough to make any restaurateur stop and think.

Knowing what he does about the dangers faced by diners with peanut allergies,

Cyrus pays forensic attention to what is inside his almond powder.

It is very, very essential that you buy something that

you are sure of the history of it, where it originated,

where it was produced, and we always demand that everything is supported

by a lab test report or a report from the manufacturer on allergens.

The certificate that comes with Cyrus' almond powder is issued by a

lab that is used by the wholesaler to test the contents of raw ingredients.

This test is an assurance that customers with peanut allergies

can eat the almond powder in their meals without ending up in hospital.

It has no peanuts and products thereof,

so all of this put together gives you a completely clear message

that this product is what you want to use.

Corinne Lowe from the Trading Standards Institute believes

that somewhere out there right now, either deliberately or otherwise,

restaurants could be using ground peanuts

instead of ground almonds in their meals.

Trading Standards are testing meals

and finding, unfortunately, in some cases, up to 40% of those

meals can contain peanut when they have been described as peanut-free.

Not only is it a criminal offence to misdescribe food, you are also

risking people's lives by bulking out almond powder with peanut.

Trading Standards across the country continue to investigate cases

of suspected fake almond powder.

Earlier, we saw how David and Marlene Jackson from East Sussex lost over

£3,000 trying to book their dream holiday through a company

with a fake ATOL membership.

Up to literally two days before we were due to go,

we were being told there was still a possibility we would go.

But Russian Gateway isn't the only travel company out there

faking its ATOL logos and putting holiday-makers at risk.

Today, Mohammed Tariq from Birmingham Trading Standards is travelling down

south to join forces with Trading Standards from a London borough.

They have received information that suspect travel businesses are

using fake ATOL logos to dupe British Muslims planning their Hajj trips.

Hajj is a religious pilgrimage to Mecca in Saudi Arabia.

We are coming up to the Hajj season in a couple of weeks' time

so you're going to get a lot of travel agents popping up

trying to make a quick buck.

Reputable travel companies pay a large fee,

meet financial tests and put up a bond to be part of the ATOL scheme

and have permission to display the logo.

But some dodgy operators don't want to pay to be a member, meaning

they are selling unprotected holidays to unsuspecting holiday-makers.

And Trading Standards are duty-bound to stop them.

They have arrived at the first suspect travel business.

Is the owner about, please?

Is there anybody else on the premises?

The man doesn't seem to be involved,

so the officers head to the back of the shop to find the owner.

-Are you the owner or the manager?

-No. He's...

-He's outside.

-Yes.

-He told me you were.

-No.

-What? The gentleman that is sitting there?

He's the owner?

It looks like the man they spoke to earlier was involved.

He's run off.

And he is clearly in the mood for a bit of exercise.

-He is running, running, running.

-Oh, yes, I can see him.

Obviously, he has got something to hide and he has just run off.

The officers will try and catch up with him on another day.

But for now, it's time to take a look at why he might have run off.

Tariq doesn't have to go inside the shop

to find some potentially incriminating evidence.

The ATOL logo you can see there is fake, basically,

because they are not licensed by the Civil Aviation Authority.

Inside, the officers manage to get one of the owners on the phone.

Obviously, you have got a fake ATOL logo out there.

You are giving the indication to members of the public that you are ATOL-protected.

You are not ATOL-protected, so why have you put a sign up there?

Tariq knows the fake ATOL logos displayed by this business

could spell bad news for prospective travellers.

Rogue traders don't want to pay for that licence

and they are bypassing that by claiming to be - falsely - ATOL-protected.

It is not cheap going on Hajj.

We're talking about £4,000 or £5,000 a package.

Often, pilgrims will save this. This is life savings.

What would happen is if the company goes bust

and the trader goes down, the consumer is not protected.

Tariq will be making further inquiries about this company,

but there are others out there duping consumers with fake ATOL logos.

So the officers head to another suspect business around the corner.

Tariq explains to the owner why they are there.

What we're looking at is traders passing themselves off

as being ATOL licensed and they are not.

As the search gets under way, Tariq immediately finds a suspect

advertisement that could dupe unsuspecting holiday-makers.

Look how sophisticated that looks.

Anyone looking at that would think they are dealing with a proper,

legitimate company who is ATOL-protected.

But there are other fake ATOL logos at this business.

Dozens in the customer waiting area.

You have got documentation down here and that has got the ATOL logo there as well. That's fake.

And outside the shop, it's the same story.

If I can just show you, when a customer is coming in, it says "ATOL Protected".

That's misleading because you are not associated with ATOL.

The owner's records leave a lot to be desired and there is real

concern about what he's been doing with his customers' money.

Money has been taken off consumers and what this gentleman does is put

some money into his account, which is totally against CAA regulations.

The money should go straight into an ATOL-protected account

or an ATOL holder account, so the money is protected then.

Obviously, if it goes into his account

then where is the money being protected?

The officers have enough evidence to caution and question the man.

It's a criminal offence to say ATOL-protected when you are not ATOL-protected.

You do not have to say anything but it may harm your defence

if you do not mention when questioned something which you later rely on in court.

What we're going to do is, we are going to seize any

documentation, leaflets, banners that are displaying this fake logo.

This company is about to lose all its glossy advertising.

It's fake and it's also evidence, so it has got to be seized.

This is a result for Birmingham Trading Standards,

with companies under investigation for using fake ATOL logos

that could leave holiday-makers unprotected.

Remember, if you are about to book a holiday

you can check if your travel provider is genuinely ATOL-protected

by logging on to the Civil Aviation Authority's website.

This is a light-emitting diode or LED bulb.

It's new lighting technology that gives out more light

for the amount of power it consumes than conventional bulbs.

It's also supposed to last longer and be safer

because it's cool to the touch.

This LED bulb does all that.

But this one doesn't.

It has a fake safety mark on it and it's on sale online now.

As we are about to find out, plug this or any of these fake LED

bulbs in and you might get more than you bargained for.

Retired electronics engineer Derek Hawthorn from Hampshire

wanted to update the lighting in his house.

In a light-bulb moment, he decided to replace the old

light bulbs on his cooker with new LED bulbs.

I thought it was just a matter of picking the right

size of lamp from an auction website, making sure

the wattage was about right and plugging it in

and forgetting about it.

Derek went ahead and ordered his LED bulbs on the internet.

The package arrived.

The lamps looked to be of reasonable quality

and I thought, "This is plug and play, fit and forget."

So Derek did fit and forget about his new LED bulbs.

That is, until a few days later.

I moved my hand first of all just underneath

and I could feel quite a lot of heat coming out.

And then I moved my hand up and across the underneath

of the cooker hood and received an electric shock.

The jolt left Derek shaken, but luckily nothing more than that.

As an electronic engineer, Derek knows a thing or two about wiring.

As far as he was concerned,

getting an electric shock from an LED bulb could mean only one thing.

If I buy a lamp from a certified manufacturer,

I don't expect to get any kind of an electric shock.

The product purported to have met standards, but in fact was

probably a fake because it didn't meet those standards.

Derek had brushed against the top of a lamp similar to this one.

He thinks he had a lucky escape

as the electric shock he received wasn't very powerful.

But not everybody could be as fortunate.

What would happen if my wife was cleaning underneath the cooker hood

and she used a damp cloth and she would get a much more severe shock?

If a component in the lamp were to fail,

then the consequences could have been death.

The fake LED bulb that we showed Derek was bought online.

Disturbingly, it's just one of thousands of fake LED bulbs out there.

Since a European Union ban on older-style filament bulbs

was phased in, demand for LED lamps has rapidly increased,

as has the production of the fakes.

We wanted to find out just how dangerous the fakes can be.

So we went to leading test house Intertek

to meet electrical safety expert Steve Curtler.

How can you tell the difference

between a genuine and a fake LED bulb?

We can see on the genuine that there is a cover over the LED lamp

and the LED array itself and any connections, which means

I can't put my finger onto anything that might have dangerous voltages.

Steve ordered an LED bulb on the internet,

identical to the one that shocked Derek Hawthorn.

At first glance, he is concerned.

You can actually unscrew the lamp itself

and get access to live parts, hazardous parts.

No lamp should be able to be taken apart purely by unscrewing it.

Easy access to dangerous wiring can mean only one thing for the CE

and other safety markings on this.

We have got a problem here that has the potential to kill somebody.

There is no way that genuine manufacturers would produce

or manufacture anything that could come apart as easy as that.

There is no doubt that the safety marks that have been applied

onto this lamp are indeed false, fake.

With the testing, Steve hopes to put his finger on the problem.

Well, not his finger exactly.

We are going to be using a laboratory test finger

to simulate someone actually touching the outside of the lamp.

The artificial finger will be connected to a lamp

that represents the human body.

If that's to light up then we know that there is a voltage

and a current there and then we want to see how dangerous

that voltage and current is.

First, Steve will test a genuine LED lamp.

OK then, Mike, when you're ready.

So we're touching the lamp wherever we can with the test finger.

The lamp is not coming on, we're not getting any dangerous voltages.

We're getting no voltages at all, in fact.

The genuine LED lamp has passed the test with flying colours.

Now, what about the LED lamp that Steve bought from an online store?

To pass the safety test,

the voltage on the surface of this LED bulb, which somebody could

feasibly touch, must not exceed 60 volts and a current of two milliamps.

It's an immediate result for the fake LED bulb.

We have got way over the 60-volt limit. 178 volts.

It's failed spectacularly.

This isn't just slightly over the voltage limits, this is way over.

About three times the amount.

So that is extremely hazardous.

And the same for the current. 91 milliamps.

So that is extremely dangerous.

You could easily get a fatal electric shock from this scenario.

Steve has all the information he needs

to pass final judgment on this fake.

Clearly, the bulb has never been tested before.

It is marked up with all the safety marks to say it has been.

So those marks are fake, the lamp is fake.

It is seriously dangerous and potentially life-threatening.

That's all from Fake Britain. Goodbye.