Episode 2 Fake Britain

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

Welcome to Fake Britain.

Get down! Get down!

Get 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 -

lorry drivers faking their working hours records...

Hello, it's the police. Can you open it up, please?

The driver had been on duty for some 111 hours, 44 minutes.

..and the devastating effect this illegal tampering

can have on innocent road users.

The dangers are astronomical and, in some ways,

these are ticking time bombs on our roads.

Who can you trust to book your travel?

We hear how a family of 11 fell victim to fake holiday tickets.

I stood there thinking, "It's not happening. It's not happening to me."

This is a tachograph - there's one

in every lorry on Britain's roads,

and it produces a written record like this,

with details of every journey the vehicle takes.

This can be checked to make sure that the driver

isn't driving too fast, or for too long.

The system is designed to make Britain's roads safer.

But what happens if this has been tampered with, making this a fake?

Essex, 1pm.

Police and Vehicle Agency officers

are carrying out a stop-check operation

on lorry drivers, to see if their vehicles and records are legitimate.

Traffic officer PC Alastair Cuthbertson's heading to

a vehicle check site, where officers have stopped a driver

that they suspect has been faking his tachograph chart.

We're en route up to the weighbridge site,

and my colleagues at VOSA, the Vehicle Operator Service Agency,

have stopped a Portuguese-registered vehicle,

and, on checking, they found that his driver's hours are false -

they're fake records.

These fake records can't be checked, or verified,

as showing if he's at rest, is he actually at rest?

And, um, as a result,

we'll have a chat with him and see what we get from that.

The South East of England

is a thoroughfare for truck drivers from overseas,

but all must abide by EU laws when it comes to how many hours

they can drive and when their rest periods should be taken.

It seems one driver's got a total lack of respect for the law.

They've asked me to come up here and help them deal with it,

which is what we're going to do.

Tachographs were introduced in the late '70s,

to cap drivers' working hours, in a bid to make Britain's roads safer.

Lorry drivers can operate up to nine hours a day,

with a maximum of 56 hours a week, or 90 hours a fortnight.

But fraudsters have developed ways to manipulate

the tachograph recording device, to fake the charts - an offence that

can carry a punishment of a £5,000 fine and up to two years in prison.

Habla Ingles? Habla espanol?

Espanol.

Espanol. Me poquito espanol.

OK? Muchos problemas.

-No.

-Si. Si.

The Portuguese driver may be denying faking his tachograph,

but officers back at base have seen photos from police cameras

that show the lorry was moving,

even though his tachograph chart shows it was at rest.

Basically, you're driving your truck - 13:16, you weren't asleep.

Not resting.

OK? Dartford Tunnel - again, we have a photograph of this, of you driving.

Yeah?

INADUDIBLE

You were driving in Epping, and you weren't recording your driving.

Fabricado...

The records are fake. Not the truth. Yeah?

Alastair suspects the Portuguese driver has used

one of the more basic methods to fake his tachograph,

which requires a simple bar magnet.

To enable the records to be faked, you put a magnet on what is

the gearbox sending unit.

It sends the impulses up to the tachograph unit in the cab.

By using a bar magnet,

the driver can put the tachograph unit to sleep,

which will stop his hours from being recorded

and start creating a fake tachograph chart,

which could pocket the driver and his company

more cash by keeping the lorry on the road around the clock.

Hello?

Convinced the driver's adopting this method, Alastair's hoping

the driver's boss will be able to persuade him to come clean.

I don't want to make life difficult,

but I would like him to give me the magnet, yeah? OK?

Why don't you speak to your driver now and explain the situation,

and you tell him what I want, please?

I'd like honesty.

After a quick chat, the driver finally sees sense.

OK. Muchas gracias.

Here we go - this is the magnet that he's used to make his records fake.

He's now surrendered it, on his company's instructions.

It's just a simple block magnet, quite strong,

and that will clamp on and stop the records being correct,

make fake records by using a magnet.

With the magnet safely in custody,

Alastair's stopped this illegal driver in his tracks.

On this occasion, he's going to issue a warning and a fine,

but more prolific fakers have ended up in prison.

Clamping down on drivers faking their tachograph records

is now a priority for Essex Police,

after it witnessed one of the worst lorry crashes in recent years.

It involved an exhausted driver,

who'd been behind the wheel for one and a half times the legal limit.

And that was one of the most complex scenes

that I've ever arrived at - four goods vehicles,

six cars. We didn't know how many people were injured at the time.

It's a day Keith Mouthton, from Ilford in East London,

will never be able to forget.

On that Friday, my dad was driving the car,

so I was in the passenger seat.

We was coming off at the Lakeside turnoff, and there was a queue

of traffic getting off of the motorway, onto that junction.

And the only thing I can remember

was being violently shook to one side.

And then I see what I thought was a trailer coming towards me,

and then I blacked out.

From that moment on, I don't really remember

too much about it, to be honest.

The CCTV caught the details of what Anton Maizen,

a driver from Germany, had done behind the wheel.

Investigators found he'd failed to apply his brakes,

as his lorry ploughed into the back of stationary traffic

at a speed of 56 miles per hour.

He'd left Germany the previous day,

and had covered 840 miles over the last 23 hours,

with the previous 15 spent behind the wheel.

Many of us are drivers,

and we can only imagine driving 800 miles in one 24-hour period.

We would know that we were fighting the effects of sleep,

and that we're endangering ourselves and everybody else around us.

My dad was laying on my side, and cos I couldn't move,

he was just laying there - his head was here.

And I tried to talk to him, but nothing was coming back.

And the next thing I remember was going to the air ambulance,

and after that, I don't remember a thing.

One of the moments that I came round,

the first thing I asked is how my dad was.

And that's when they told me.

Keith's father Ronald didn't make it out alive.

It's the little bits and pieces that I really miss, you know,

and they're never going to come back,

and I have to realise that.

I've got very good memories of Dad, and they're the ones I keep.

I miss my dad a lot.

Anton Maizen had used multiple tachograph charts,

so that the authorities wouldn't know

how many hours he'd been driving.

We found one tachograph chart screwed up in his sock.

We found another hidden in the seat of his cab,

and one actually in the tachograph head.

I can only guess that he wanted to cover his tracks,

self-preservation, and hide those fake records.

Keith spent 18 days in hospital with a fractured pelvis,

broken ribs and a punctured lung.

One year on, his health is still suffering.

I'm undergoing counselling for post-traumatic stress disorder,

because I'm finding that actually dealing with the accident itself

and the aftermath of it was very, very difficult.

My wife does her best to cheer me up, but sometimes,

the feelings are overwhelming

and nothing can be done, and I just have to get through it.

Words can't describe what I feel for my wife.

Anton Maizen was sentenced to four and a half years in prison.

For these drivers that are breaking the law

by going over on their tachos, fiddling their tachos,

I'd like to get hold of them and shake them,

just to make sure they understand

where I'm coming from,

as I've been on the receiving end of it.

Making fake records leads to tiredness,

fatigue and this type of crash.

Later, we see the outrageous

number of hours behind the wheel

some tachograph fakers are clocking up.

The areas marked in red

are those areas where the driver had actually driven,

but had used the tachograph interrupter device

to create a fraudulent record.

And we show that not only do their interrupter devices

fake the tachograph records,

they can also transform the lorry into a death trap.

We should be the slowest vehicle on this road.

At this minute in time, we're the fastest vehicle on the road.

Suntan lotion, a good book,

shades,

all very important for a great summer holiday,

but not as important as this -

your ticket to sun, sea and sand.

Unless, that is, it turns out to be like this one - a fake.

As one family of 11 found out,

that means your holiday never gets off the ground.

From Barcelona to the Bahamas,

when it comes to Brits holidaying abroad, we are spoilt for choice.

On almost every High Street in every town in the country,

there'll be someone, somewhere, set up to sell you a holiday.

But not all travel agents are there to send you to paradise.

Some are fakers - they just want to pocket your hard-earned cash.

When Maureen Keay, from Hull, downsized her house,

she decided to spend the extra money on a holiday, but she didn't fancy

just going by herself, she wanted the whole family to come with her -

all 11 of them.

There was myself, my daughter,

her partner, my granddaughter,

my grandson and their two partners,

my great-grandchildren,

and my other grandson.

How generous, and a lovely treat for the family.

With a little help from her eldest daughter Debbie,

Maureen took to the web,

and it wasn't long before she found something worth writing home about -

a five-star resort in Antalya, in Turkey.

And before you ask, no, it's not a fake.

It made me feel really, really good I was really looking forward to it.

To think we was all going to go together.

Cos we've never been together before and I thought it'd be really exciting,

we'd be able to let our hair down and everything like that.

Really looking forward to it.

Now, we've looked at the dangers of booking through fake online travel agents before,

but this wasn't going to be a problem for Maureen

as she knew who she wanted to book through -

a High Street travel agent called Ellen Harrison,

who was based in Hull.

Maureen had booked through her before and was impressed.

Yeah, why not? She's got you

loads of deals previously, and really good deals, as well,

for your holidays, and you've always enjoyed them.

Always been nice hotels.

Good flights as well, which was quite important, the flight times, with having the children.

She said, "Oh, yeah, I'll book it."

And she came back with a price straightaway.

Within two hours, she came back with a price for us all.

And I said, "Grab it with both hands."

Maureen paid £6,800 all-in,

and to top it all,

Ellen Harrison agreed to book the flights, the hotel,

and the transfers, so they could enjoy a fuss-free family holiday.

We was just over the moon. Really, really over the moon.

I was so excited to think I was going to surprise the kids with this

fantastic holiday we were all going to have.

The family printed the vouchers for their hotel, transfers,

and their all-important E-tickets.

They were now set to jet.

But when they arrived at the airport check-in desk the following morning,

events took an unexpected turn. They were told that

the flight booking number on the E-tickets didn't exist.

It looked like they'd just fallen for a fake.

They took one look at the paperwork and said,

"That's not one of our flights."

And with that, it was the most sinking,

heart-wrenching feeling you can imagine.

I went into a shock mode, I just couldn't speak.

I just stood there thinking, "It's not happening.

"It's not happening to me. It's not happening to my family."

Think of the worst moment in your life and that is what it was like.

Once the dust had settled,

Debbie took the paperwork relating to the holiday booking,

which she now suspected was fake,

to Detective Constable Steve Bromby at Humberside Police.

On the surface, it all appeared to be legitimate.

It looks like a genuine booking.

It's got a booking reference number,

it's got the destination of where they're travelling to and from.

So, for example, this is from Manchester Airport.

It gives the departure and return dates.

It gives the lead name and all the people who are travelling.

Looking at that, looks a genuine documentation.

But as Steve Bromby dug a little deeper

and contacted Flightline, the company Ellen Harrison

was claiming she'd booked the flights through,

it became clear the tickets weren't what they seemed.

When they had a look at that from their information they were

saying that the booking reference number should be unique and it isn't.

The reference number relates, again, to another holiday.

And on their system they never use capitals,

but on this form, capitals are used.

The font, in relation to the outward and inward, is incorrect,

and there's information here relating to pricing

which is completely missing off this

but, on the genuine booking, would be in there.

The tour operator, when they came back to me,

clearly said that this documentation was fake.

To them, it's clear that fraud has taken place.

So, the flight details Ellen Harrison had given the family

were as fake as a spray tan.

And it was about to get a whole lot worse, as Steve discovered

the hotel voucher and transfer vouchers were also fakes.

Manchester Airport - all sat on their cases

with their hands on their faces,

Thinking, I can't let these bairns not go on holiday.

They've booked time off work and they'd saved their money up.

and I just said to Debbie, "I'm going to book another holiday."

So Maureen booked another trip to Turkey

and they flew out that day,

but the new holiday cost Maureen a further £8,000.

Coupled with the cost of the fake holiday,

she was just shy of £15,000 out of pocket.

Personally, I didn't enjoy the holiday.

My children did, but I did not.

Cos it played on my mind the 12 days we was away.

I just thought, "How could she do that to me?"

I've done no wrong to her.

I just couldn't comprehend how somebody could do that

to somebody who they know.

But the actual detail on it...

By looking at it, you would never realise how fake it was.

As for Ellen Harrison, DC Steve Bromby had all the evidence

he needed to prove she'd faked the tickets.

She was given 120 hours' community service

and ordered to pay Maureen compensation.

It's not the fact that it's the money,

it's the fact that she ruined the holiday.

A holiday that we all was really looking forward to.

And that is the hurting part about it.

Earlier, we saw Essex Police catch a driver

who'd been faking his tachograph records.

This is the magnet that he's used

to make his records fake.

But it's not just happening in Essex.

The Police Service of Northern Ireland's Superintendent David Moore

is also waging war against the fakers, a battle he intends to win.

In Northern Ireland, we have detected 50 vehicles being driven

unlawfully in this manner in the last five years.

We have active investigations running against seven haulage companies.

And this is much more than about road safety,

it's also about the fitness of these companies to operate,

the fitness of the directors to run companies,

it's about a level playing field in the commercial sector.

But I want to bring it back to road safety.

These people don't belong on our roads.

Steven Spratt, Operations Manager at the Driver Enforcement Agency,

Northern Ireland's equivalent of VOSA, can spot a faker a mile off.

And after being the driving force behind recent prosecutions

against drivers faking their records,

he now knows all the tricks that they can use.

Here's an example of an array of interrupter devices.

In some instances, we have hard wiring -

a simple relay device that operated through a toggle switch,

it may have been a fog light switch, reversing light switch, whatever.

And the effect of that was simply to switch off the signal

going to the tachograph itself.

These simple switches blend into the dashboard, and can create

fake charts by cutting the signal to the lorry's tachograph recorder.

But some fake-makers are even more sophisticated.

This one uses RF technology, where it's a radio signal.

Typically, that would send a signal to your garage door.

It sends a signal to this receiver device.

The device itself will be hidden

somewhere inside the vehicle's construction

and will operate as a simple remote switch itself,

but very, very effective.

And very, very clever.

Stick it in your pocket and it looks just like the key to the yard,

so if the driver's stopped, they're less likely to get rumbled.

But the DVA's been fighting back,

and has already prosecuted two firms for sing these devices -

Dewart Transport Limited and Arnold Transport,

where both the drivers and the firms' owners

received suspended prison sentences.

In these cases, once they'd discovered

the tachograph faking equipment in the lorries,

Steven and his team had to prove that

they'd actually been used by drivers out on the road.

What we were able to do, in this particular case,

was to acquire GPS tracker records, to determine a minute-by-minute

movement of the actual vehicle itself.

In this case, a separate GPS tracker had been installed

in the lorry by the haulage company.

It's the same technology found in your average sat nav,

and gave the team a true record

of where and when the lorry had been driven.

When the team compared it to the suspected fake tachograph charts,

they got a bit of a shock.

In this particular case, there was 50% more driving done

than what was actually shown on the tachograph record.

The areas marked on the chart in red

are those areas where the driver had actually driven,

but had used the tachograph interrupter device

to create a fraudulent record.

And the inspectors would have seen this chart, as opposed to this chart.

Not only is this highly illegal, but also very unsafe,

as the drivers were using the fake charts to cover up the fact

they were working over twice the legal limit for driver hours.

During another similar investigation,

the driver had been on duty for some 111 hours, 44 minutes,

over a five-day period,

where he had only taken a maximum rest period of five hours.

If my maths is correct,

that means he was driving an average of just over 22 hours a day.

Studies have shown that almost 20% of accidents

on Britain's roads are related to tiredness,

and 40% of those involve commercial vehicles.

No question about the extent of fatigue and sleep deprivation.

And it's more shocking when you find out it's a fairly familiar story.

We met a lorry driver who was convicted of faking

his tachograph chart.

For his protection,

we've obscured his identity.

At his haulage firm,

it was company policy to use

an electronic tachograph interrupter device.

The boss come over and just says to you on the quiet,

"If you run out of time, this is what you do

"so that you can get your load finished."

He says, "It's no big deal, everybody's doing it."

Our anonymous driver claims he started using it

due to pressure from his boss

to get the deliveries done.

But slowly and surely, he was sucked into

the fraudulent world of the faker.

You're stressing and you're worrying about it,

and if you dwell on it, you get to the stage

where you're near physically sick.

End of the day, you have to learn to live with what you're doing.

It gets to be a way of life.

You just accept it and get on with it.

Faking it became the norm,

and drivers learned how to exist on barely any sleep.

You could pick lottery numbers, so you could,

as to just how many hours...

You're legally allowed to do nine or ten hours driving a day, depending.

There's drivers could do 20-plus.

I've heard of drivers going out on a Sunday

and not getting to bed till midweek - Tuesday or Wednesday.

You just grab 20/30 minutes, a wee power nap sort of thing.

You're driving, windows down, cups of coffee - usual story.

But it's not a story, it's the reality.

And it's not only the drivers

putting the lives of innocent motorists at risk,

it's the lorries themselves.

Once fitted, the tachograph faking device

can turn the lorry into a lethal machine,

as built-in safety systems are disabled,

along with the lorry's speed limiter.

PC Mike Rennie's taking out a lorry from a previous investigation

that's rigged with a tachograph interrupting device,

to see just how dangerous it can be.

145, we're about to head off. Could you reset your trip?

This is a risky operation.

Three police vehicles are travelling in convoy with the lorry,

to make sure they're safe at all times.

It's just giving us a safer environment to work in.

It's to act as a safety barrier for any other road users.

Mike activates the tachograph faker which is hidden in the lorry,

and immediately, the speedometer is disabled.

The test is now on.

You can actually physically feel yourself

being thrown into the back of the seat.

Almost instantly,

there's an issue with one of the lorry's most vital safety systems.

If you look at the dashboard in front of me,

the top right-hand corner, there's a brake warning light came on.

That is showing that there is a possible problem with the ABS.

ABS is the lorry's anti-lock braking system.

Failure can cause the wheels to lock when the brakes are applied,

causing the lorry to skid. Not good.

With the device fitted,

all the lorry's safety systems are in meltdown.

But that's not the only danger here.

More worryingly, the lorry's speed limiter has also been disabled,

meaning it can now travel at speeds well above

the legal restriction of 56 miles per hour.

The traffic car behind us has now told us

we're travelling at 80 miles per hour.

85.

You don't get the concept of the speed we're travelling at.

The ramifications if anything happened in front of us

would be severe, trying to stop such a heavy vehicle at this speed,

hence the reason we have the closure in place.

It's lucky, as the lorry's stopping distance

is now double what it should be.

We're overtaking everything on this road, which should not be the case.

We should be the slowest vehicle on this road.

At this minute in time, we're the fastest vehicle on the road.

Look how quick we are catching up with that car.

That should not be happening.

The dangers of travelling at this speed

don't even bear thinking about,

and as the surrounding police cars pave a safe route for the lorry,

Mike is in for quite a shock.

95 miles an hour - I'm going to ease back.

We've just peaked at 100 miles an hour...

..and truth be told, that came as quite a surprise,

because there was no concept of

having travelled at that sort of a speed.

This vehicle is being test driven in a controlled environment,

by an advanced police driver.

But clearly, the speed has taken its toll.

The lorry's hit a problem.

-We've an engine malfunction there, Mark.

-Yeah.

-It's all right?

What's the temperatures like?

The battery light's came on.

Temperature's down.

Excess speed, tired drivers, and major mechanical faults,

it's no wonder that Superintendant Moore is working hard

to drive these fakers off the road.

I don't want to get over-dramatic here,

but imagine a comparison made with the commercial aircraft industry.

A 40-ton vehicle being controlled by someone who is exhausted,

where all the safety systems, designed though experience

and learning over many years, have simply been disabled.

And in a way, it's even more dangerous,

because these things aren't operating high in the sky,

they're operating feet away from primary schools,

inches away from other road users in much smaller vehicles.

The dangers are astronomical, and in some ways,

these are ticking time bombs on our roads.

That's all from Fake Britain. Goodbye.