Episode 20 Fake Britain

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

Welcome to Fake Britain.

Police!

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 dog

breeder producing pups with fake pedigrees...

She's got some Westie characteristics but she's not a pedigree Westie.

This is such clear evidence of fraud.

..the fake scooters putting the skids under Britain's kids...

It's worrying that you think you're buying a genuine

micro scooter and these products out there are quite dangerous.

..and we take a peek under the bonnet of a counterfeit iPhone.

If there was a short-circuit, the battery could potentially

set on fire. It could blow up.

Every year in the UK, we register a quarter of a million dogs with The Kennel Club

and the proud new owner gets one of these, the certificate that

tells us everything we need to know about our pedigree pooch.

It's all here - name, age, breed, parents,

also crucial information about the likely health of your pup,

except many of the details on this Kennel Club certificate

have been faked. Sadly, it's not the only fake out there.

Whether it's a Labrador, a French bulldog, a Great Dane,

a terrier or a Jack Russell, there's an adoring owner out there

for every different type of dog.

And puppy breeding can be very profitable with the most

sought-after breeds changing hands for as much as £3,000.

But most buyers aren't looking for a future Crufts champion.

They've fallen in love with their dog at first sight and just want

to know it's been brought up in good conditions by a responsible breeder.

After doing her research, Sam Brady decided a Labrador would be

the perfect pet for her young family.

Wary of buying a puppy-farmed dog, Sam was determined to

buy from a breeder who registered the puppies with The Kennel Club.

We found one particular advert that was more in our price range,

Kennel Club registered. They were pedigree, they were deflea'd.

They were wormed. They had four months insurance-free.

Everything looked fine.

The picture of the puppies was cute.

We phoned the breeder up and she said documents would be ready

when we go to view.

I phoned The Kennel Club first before we went around there

to check that she was who she said she was.

Everything came back fine, The Kennel Club said never had a problem

with her so it should be fine to go and look at her puppies.

So off we went.

They left with a new family member, an adorable Labrador called Alfie.

Unknown to Sam, Gary Young, an investigator with Norfolk Trading Standards,

had been receiving complaints about a breeder called Lisa Walsh.

Gary established that she was renting Greenacres Farm,

a large property near Norwich.

Kennel Club registration documents were taking a long time to be

sent to the owner. The puppies were being purchased and they were ill.

A number of them had died shortly after being purchased.

As a result of the complaints,

we then made a decision to carry out a test purchase.

Posing as customers, Gary and his team arrived at Greenacres.

After being offered two puppies by Lisa Walsh,

the team then informed her they were, in fact, Trading Standards officers.

The Kennel Club certificate Gary was shown stated

the mother of the puppies was micro-chipped but a quick scan

revealed that the supposed mother of the pups didn't have a chip.

Walsh told Trading Standards she had mixed up the mothers

and the pups with another set of a similar age.

Lisa Walsh's story seemed suspicious but Gary didn't get the chance

to DNA test the pups and establish the true parentage of either litter.

Very unfortunately for Mrs Walsh that night she had a burglary

and it just so happens that the only items that were stolen were

the two black and yellow Labrador mothers and the two litters of pups.

To breed more than five litters a year you need to be inspected

and granted a licence by the local council.

South Norfolk Council granted Walsh

a breeders' licence in November 2011.

They told us they made several unannounced inspection visits

and nothing untoward was found.

Once Mrs Walsh had this licence from her local authority

she would register her puppies with The Kennel Club

and then she would receive the registration certificates

most of her customers would demand before they buy a puppy.

The Kennel Club trusts breeders to fill in their paperwork

honestly but Walsh planned to present buyers with legitimate

Kennel Club certificates which didn't match the puppy for sale.

Around this time, Devam Hendry,

a retired university lecturer, was looking to buy a pedigree dog.

I hadn't made a decision and it wasn't terribly important for me

to have a pedigree.

I opened the paper and there was an advert for West Highland terriers, immediately ready.

Devam called the number and was told she should

come around as soon as possible as the puppies were selling fast.

When we drove up, my impression was that she was a small-time breeder

on a working farm. Barns at the back, house and driveway to the front

and the puppies were in a cage in the front porch.

She made quite a thing about the fact she was a registered breeder

and therefore it was very, very safe

and the dog would be very, very healthy.

I then thought £400 was fine to pay.

Devam left Greenacres convinced she'd purchased a West Highland terrier,

which she decided to call Minnie.

She was promised the paperwork would follow immediately,

but it didn't.

I had to phone up a couple of weeks later and said,

"Well, I still haven't got your breeder details."

She made some kind of excuse.

It took about six weeks for them to arrive,

which I then sent off to The Kennel Club.

Later, we'll discover the truth behind Minnie's pedigree

and what was really going on in the property rented by Lisa Walsh.

Mini scooters have been a huge hit with kids and with their parents.

It's estimated over a million have been sold in the UK.

But, as you might expect, this is where the fun stops.

You see, this one is real but this one is fake.

Ones like it are on sale to unsuspecting customers now.

So how do you tell the real from the counterfeit?

And if your child is riding one of these, are they safe?

You'll find a proud owner of one of these mini scooters

at most school gates.

Riding one, well, certainly beats walking to school

and there's one for everyone. They come in all shapes and sizes.

When Kathryn's son, Drew, turned three, she decided the time

had come to get him the scooter he'd spent the last year asking for.

He'd had money for Christmas and he'd like a scooter.

His older cousin had a scooter

and so we decided that we'd use that money and buy him one.

Kathryn liked the look of the micro scooter.

It is a well-known brand.

I'd seen a lot of young children, about the same age as my son,

on micro scooters and they seemed to be going really safely

around the parks and managing well on them.

They seemed like a toy that you could have good fun with.

The search started online.

I looked at a few different websites and compared the prices.

Soon Kathryn found exactly what she was looking for.

They seemed to have all the genuine product on there.

They had stock photos.

They had a description which matched the description from

mini micro scooters and the price seemed comparable.

She completed the purchase and a few days later the scooter arrived.

Initially, it looked fine but then a detail caught her eye.

Then I noticed the sticker on the T-bar didn't have the

original wording that a micro scooter's one had.

But it was the state of the instructions that really worried Kathryn.

Within the box, the instructions were photocopied.

They had blocked out the micro scooter's logo and, at this point,

I started to think it might not be the genuine thing.

Having unwittingly bought a counterfeit scooter,

Kathryn acted quickly.

She replaced the fake with the genuine item.

When I realised I'd bought a fake scooter, I found out

what my consumer rights were having purchased something online.

I e-mailed the company I'd bought it from to explain that

I would be returning that scooter and I expected a full refund

and also I wanted my postage costs covered.

I then went out to John Lewis and found exactly the same scooter

and it was on offer, so we got it a little bit cheaper.

Unknown to Kathryn, the fakers have been targeting micro scooters for some time.

Ben Gibson is the company's MD.

I think we really came across a fake micro scooter about six or seven years ago.

Much of the company's battle with the fakers is fought online.

Luckily, a lot of the retailers are much more vigilant nowadays

but, I think, it is the online sales that

really drive a lot of this fake scooter activity.

Recently, Ben had drafted in his son to model for some

promotional shots.

Several weeks later, he got a shock when a colleague suggested

he take a look at the latest fake website.

Here I am looking at the web, seeing if there are any copies

of our products and I come across a company selling mini micro fake.

When you click on their advertising, what is very disturbing,

they're using pictures of my own son to advertise their products.

And every time Ben gets the image removed,

it pops up on another website a few weeks later.

These scooters go through a range of stress tests in order to make

sure they can withstand everything that's going to be thrown at them.

We've got 20kg weights just pounding the decks.

We have automatic steering mechanisms which see how many

turns one can do over the lifetime of the scooter.

We treat them with heat and light.

Really, everything is tested endlessly.

We've seen the real scooter withstand 20kg.

Can the fake take the strain?

The original has strengthening bars down the side of its deck.

This protects the deck from impact and stops the deck breaking.

In the fake, they have no such bars.

This will break and I would fully expect these edges to the

deck to become sharp and to become hazardous.

These scooters are designed for children up to 20kg.

You'll see that the fake mini micro scooter bends very

significantly as I put a small amount of weight onto it.

The original bends much less.

The quality, therefore, of a deck

is already showing that this scooter is not fit for purpose.

So the build quality clearly differs but these are kids' toys.

What are the safety issues with the products?

Another important aspect of the mini micro are the handle grips.

They broadly look the same but the feel is different.

Handle grips should be grippy.

These are much less grippy than the original handle grips.

It's an outdoor toy, you add a bit of rain to that

and that actually will be very dangerous.

For Ben, the most alarming part of the fake is the brake.

Interesting, the brake looks the same but if you push it down,

it sticks to the back wheel causing skidding

and certainly not a progressive stopping motion that we

would like to see on the original scooters.

That will cause this scooter to skid and the child to be endangered.

And the issue of the brake is made all the worse by the poor

build quality of the wheel.

If you get the original mini micro, I can easily push,

with my little finger, this wheel and that'll move smoothly on itself.

The fake, if I push it gently, you have got a wheel that is sticking.

If you combine that with the sub-standard brake,

you've got a recipe for disaster.

Back in Worcester, Drew is now the happy owner of a genuine micro scooter.

And, looking back, his mum Kathryn is relieved her close call

with the counterfeiters didn't end with a serious accident.

It's worrying that you think you're buying a genuine micro scooter

and actually these products that are out there are quite dangerous

and, potentially, your child could have a serious accident on one of these.

Previously, we saw Gary Young from Trading Standards

investigating a dog breeder called Lisa Walsh.

Shortly after this test purchase,

Gary received a call from one of Walsh's customers, Sam Brady.

Her Labrador, Alfie, has suffered a horrible accident.

One day we were playing with him, chucked a ball up in the air

and he jumped and I don't know if he landed funny, or something,

but he let out this almighty yelp

and I've never heard him do that before.

I thought, "My gosh."

We took him straight down to the vet's

and we were referred to a specialist.

They X-rayed him again and they showed me his X-rays

and they said his hips were in an awful state.

They said it is severe bilateral hip dysplasia.

His hips weren't even connected.

It was amazing how he could actually even stand up, let alone walk.

The vet said it was probably one of the worst cases he'd seen in his 30 years' practice.

A case this serious is rare because a Labrador with poor hips would

never be used to breed puppies.

After the accident, Sam looked back at The Kennel Club's registration that Walsh provided.

Any certificate for a newborn Labrador should contain

information about the medical history of its parents' hips.

This is known as a hip score.

Labradors, like many bigger dogs, can suffer from serious

and painful hip conditions

so a certificate will state the hip score of the puppy's mother

and father, giving an owner an indication

of how healthy your puppy is likely to be.

The breeder had told Sam that both of Alfie's parents had good

hip scores but the certificate showed the mum's score was missing.

Sam cared for Alfie through months of painful treatment

and a long convalescence.

There'll be veterinary costs for the rest of Alfie's life.

Total cost so far has been £20,000 on our insurance.

Unfortunately, it's not going to stop there.

He has to have yearly checkups.

That alone costs £400 or £500.

Meanwhile, Devam's paperwork from The Kennel Club had arrived.

Everything was in order.

The certificates confirmed that Minnie was a pedigree West Highland terrier.

The only problem was, she didn't look like one.

People would stop in the street and say, "What is she?"

So when I had a checkup at the vet's, I said to him,

"By the way, what do you think Minnie is because she's on the record at the vet's as a Westie?"

And he said, "Well, she's not, is she?"

It's absolutely obvious with these photographs side-by-side.

On the left-hand side is a typical West Highland terrier puppy

and on the right side my dog, Minnie.

My dog's ears look completely different from the Westie's.

Her ears point down. They're soft, they're floppy,

whereas a Westie's ears are very, very prominently pointed.

And, her tail, she's got a very bushy, prominent tail.

She has got some Westie characteristics

but she's not a pedigree Westie.

This is such clear evidence of fraud.

Clearly, Minnie's real parents weren't the mother and father

stated on her Kennel Club registration document.

I think they're all forged documents. They're worthless.

But Devam and Sam weren't alone in being duped.

Gary had been inundated with calls from angry pedigree pup buyers

who felt they had been deceived by Lisa Walsh.

Soon he'd been granted a warrant to search Walsh's entire property.

There he discovered the true scale of her fakery.

The customers would actually arrive here and then they would go

and meet up with Mrs Walsh in the porch area where

they were shown one or two puppies

and the selected adult or so-called mother

and that would be their impression of the house and the sale.

Whilst over in the barn, further down,

there was anything between 20 to 30 puppies being kept in cages together.

We showed some of the footage from that raid to Sam.

Disgusting.

To know that that was there while we were there makes me feel sick.

Yeah, that's puppy farming, that is.

That's basically what a puppy farm is.

If I had known, I would never have even set foot in that place.

I wanted a Kennel Club pedigree dog but that's not what I got.

I kind of try to look at it as we rescued him from that place

and gave him a life that he deserves.

With evidence gathered over the course of a three-year investigation,

Gary was able to prove that Walsh had been creating fake pedigree pup

identities by registering fictional pedigree pups with The Kennel Club.

When the documentation arrived from the Kennel Club for the fictional puppies,

Walsh would assign that paperwork to one of the non-pedigree puppies

she was breeding in the barn.

So the unwitting buyer would see a Kennel Club certificate

stating the puppy was pedigree when it wasn't.

And, in some cases, they also had serious health issues.

So the pedigree status, that many of Walsh's customers were happy

to pay a premium price for, was fake.

Gary also found evidence of fake vaccination certificates.

The mass of documentation Traded Standards had gathered

proved damning in court.

Walsh initially denied participating in a fraudulent business

but faced with a mountain of evidence,

she changed her plea to guilty on the third day of the trial.

In total, Walsh duped her customers out of £170,000.

She received a six-month sentence for fraud

and was banned from breeding dogs for five years.

The last puppy left the barn before Walsh was sent to prison

and Greenacres Farm is now home to a local family.

No puppies have been bred there since Walsh left.

Lisa Walsh was able to fool her customers

because she was licensed as a breeder with the local

authority and was registering her puppies with The Kennel Club.

For Caroline Kisko, secretary at The Kennel Club,

Walsh's actions have violated the trust it extends to breeders.

She was obviously defrauding people,

not just The Kennel Club but many of the authorities.

We, of course, were registering the dogs,

based on the fact that she did have a local authority licence, which

we have to rely on in order to know that somebody is a proper breeder.

We also showed Caroline the photograph of Minnie,

who was sold as a West Highland terrier.

Well, it's certainly not a Westie. It could be any number of other breeds but it's not a Westie,

that's for certain.

In any case, where somebody is worried that their dog

is not the breed that it's said to be, we will always follow up

and we will send out an expert in the breed to go and check and,

if it's not the breed that it's said to be, we will deregister the dog.

Although Walsh was registering her puppies with The Kennel Club,

she wasn't signed up to the organisation's more stringent

assured breeder scheme.

We would much prefer that they actually went to our assured

breeders who are checked by us.

We make sure that way that they can absolutely be

certain of getting a healthy and happy puppy.

The Kennel Club, along with other animal welfare organisations,

is pressing for the introduction of compulsory dog micro-chipping.

The hope is the smarter technology can stop a faker like Walsh

fooling the system again.

Despite being bred and raised in poor conditions, both Alfie

and Minnie are now thriving.

Now he's just a crazy dog.

He's all fixed up.

He had to have both his hips replaced.

Now he's absolutely fantastic, loves life.

He runs, he jumps, he pulls me everywhere.

He loves swimming in the sea. He's just full of life.

It's amazing what the vets have done for him

and given him a second chance at life. Yes, it's all good now.

Minnie is wonderful, there's no way I'd change her.

Another time, I would probably go to a rescue centre.

They look after dogs very, very well and actually check out

the people who are buying dogs, which Mrs Walsh did not at all.

Over ten million of us have purchased an iPhone,

making this the most popular mobile phone ever sold in the UK.

Even an older model can sell for hundreds of pounds.

Yet, you'd be smart not to part with your cash for one of these

because, despite appearances, they're both fake.

So what's the story behind the counterfeit iPhone

and how can you spot a fake?

This is Shen Xian in southern China,

an industrial powerhouse of a city

and this is where your iPhone, if you've got one, was manufactured.

Over 200,000 are produced every day.

But there's also a flourishing trade in fakery.

We found not just counterfeit iPhones but entire fake

stores copying the logo and look of Apple who manufacture the iPhone.

We were offered fakes in a number of different stores

and after a little haggling...

..we paid the equivalent of just £50 for our counterfeit iPhone.

Peter Richardson is an industry analyst

and a regular visitor to Shen Xian.

We asked him to take a look at a Chinese counterfeit.

This is very typical of our fake iPhone packaging.

It looks superficially quite similar to the real thing.

On the back, you've got the standard legal text

you would find on any Apple product.

A couple of the giveaways, though, it says 64GB memory.

It won't be. It's, at best, 8GB.

No faker is going to put 64GB's worth of memory in one of these things.

The other thing is it says it's designed by Apple in California

and assembled in the USA.

On the genuine product it even says assembled in China.

That's also a bit of a giveaway.

Surprisingly, Peter believes most Chinese customers buy these phones

knowing their fakes.

The Chinese like to be seen with something that's premium,

but not everyone can afford an iPhone.

And they know they're buying a fake,

but it's almost like a bit of fun.

There's a term for it in Chinese - shanzhai ji -

which roughly translates as bandit cellphone,

and they happily buy these and replace them fairly frequently,

because they know the quality isn't very good,

but they don't pay very much for them, so they don't really care.

But what's presented to the Chinese as fake,

is being sold to the British customer as real,

and many of these sales are taking place in the booming market

for unwanted iPhone upgrades.

There's a rich market for second-hand mobile phones,

and iPhones, in particular.

People really want to have one,

and if you can't afford the brand-new product,

there's plenty of second-hand products out there on the market.

But that's the potential area where a fake could be slipped in.

So, if you're using an auction site to buy a product,

be careful you're not buying a fake product.

Trading Standards teams across the country

have discovered the fake phones when investigating suspected sellers

of counterfeit goods.

So, how convincing are these Chinese fakes?

How much do you reckon it would be worth new?

£500.

I would've thought if you were buying it from the Apple shop,

it would've been sort of £250, something like that.

300 quid?

What would you say if I told you it was a fake?

Oh, God, er...

I wouldn't believe you. It feels exactly like mine does in my pocket now,

apart from it's got a cover on it.

I wouldn't know that was a fake.

I'd say it was a good fake.

We asked Phone Heroes,

a London-based iPhone repair specialist to take a closer look.

All right, so let's have a look at the fake iPhone.

Erm...first off, looking at it,

it comes with a screen protector on it.

Genuine Apple iPhones don't come with screen protectors on them.

From a glance, it doesn't look too bad.

Looking closely at it,

you can actually feel that it's made out of plastic.

Here we have the genuine Apple iPhone 5S

and you can feel that the back of it is cold.

It's aluminium.

So, what's going on under the bonnet

of both the real and the fake iPhone?

Here you can see when you open the genuine Apple iPhone 5S

that the screen is a completely separate unit from a phone,

where you have speakers and home buttons.

Where the fake one... is the phone itself.

They've literally bodged on the battery, the motherboard, the speakers,

all onto the back of the screen.

And it's a completely different build to the original one.

Compared with the iPhone,

the various parts of the counterfeit

are crudely thrown together,

and components are typical of those found in much cheaper models.

But that's not all - this fake is dangerous.

You can tell by the solder quality.

The fake iPhone, the way they have actually soldered it

is poor soldering.

You can see here, you have your positives so close to your negatives,

that the actual cable is millimetres away.

So that can easily cause a short circuit,

straight from the battery.

There's nothing in there to break that circuit, if those two connect.

If there was a short circuit, the battery could potentially

set on fire, it could blow up.

It could do anything, really.

Things like that make it really unsafe,

and clearly it hasn't been tested.

Because if it had been tested, that wouldn't make it out of the factory.

It's clearly just been pumped out as a fake mobile.

That's all from Fake Britain. Goodbye.