Episode 5 Fake Britain

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

Welcome to Fake Britain.

-Get down! Get down!

-Get on the floor, now!

Put 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.

On today's show,

hunting down the serious criminals behind Britain's fakes.

-You, son, nicked!

-Doesn't look right, does it?

Especially being in a lock-up like this.

The fake high-end nail polish

that's left some customers getting their fingers burnt.

Looking at these photos now makes me feel physically sick.

I feel ashamed that someone in this industry

has caused this damage to a client.

Fake computer hard drives,

that could cost you your data and your money.

Two hefty nuts and bolts... I'd been duped in a big way.

And the flaming truth about fake hairdryers.

If this was someone's house, it could do considerable damage.

All these clothes carry well-known designer labels

and they're all fake.

It's the sort of stuff most of us know is sold on some market stalls

right across the country, but to get these clothes into markets

needs extensive organisation by the criminals.

Especially since the value of the goods often runs into millions.

It's that organisation that's being targeted by Trading Standards and the police,

and Fake Britain went with them on a recent operation.

3:00am. Trading Standards HQ.

Today we're going to do an enforcement exercise.

Everything we've done in the last 12 months has led us to today.

Mark Wilson is heading up an intelligence-led operation.

They're targeting a group they believe are using a legitimate

self storage firm in order to stash fake goods

destined for markets all over the South East.

If people start playing up, kicking off, I want them floored

and I want them out the way, cuffed and gone.

43 officers, including Trading Standards, Scambusters and the police

from nine local authorities are heading to the storage unit.

The aim this morning is to intercept a number of groups of market traders

who have identified an area where they can make quite a bit of profit.

The aim this morning is obviously working with the police here, is to arrest them as they arrive.

-We're in!

-We're in.

Now inside the storage unit, the team gets into position

for the sting operation.

The officers will sit tight for the market traders to arrive.

Before long, the team hears voices

and engines running outside the lock-up.

There's no telling how the traders will react.

They're now poised to strike.

SHOUTING

Police! Police! Get out the car.

All right. You, son, nicked!

-OK?

-All right.

Concerning the supply of counterfeit goods.

What's up now, then?

Right! You were asked to be quiet, weren't you?

The short and sharp tactics used by the police

have paid off, as they apprehend six traders.

Keys and mobile phones are seized, and any vital information

the phones may contain will be extracted and used as evidence.

If the men have been found to have sold fake goods,

it could land these traders up to two years in prison.

With the suspects in handcuffs, it's time for Duncan Lamp

and his team to start the hunt for fakes.

We'll go across all of the containers, looking over the top.

If we find anything, we'll make a note of the number on the door,

and then we'll crop the bolt and have a look properly.

Whatever the link to the men arrested,

officers believe the storage units have been

hired by an organised team, using fake names

and more than likely, paying cash to leave no trace.

But without knowing which ones they're using,

they've got to search all 200 of them.

-Is there a little one of them?

-That's all.

And after an hour or so of searching,

the team think they might've found some fakes.

We're going to bolt-crop this container to see what's in,

lucky dip.

We have sacks.

It's not long before they find what they're looking for.

Hollister, a popular clothing brand.

Take all of this out.

Again, unfortunately, not my size.

It's a big find.

The fake sweaters in this small container alone could be worth around £10,000.

As well as clothing,

the team quickly uncovers an array of other fake gear.

PC Matt Smith has found a stash of fake car key rings.

Hands on, we've got Toyota.

Porsche.

Checking if we've got any other... There's Mazda in here.

Numerous fake, cheaply made key rings with car logos on.

Produced for pence over in the Far East

and sold over here for a nice tidy profit.

From perfumes to electricals, the team are discovering more

and more goods they believe are fake.

Ugg boots.

A faker's favourite for years, being sold on markets all over Britain.

Three-quarters of counterfeit items seized in Britain last year

came from factories in China, where some were made by children

paid as little as £10 a week and working up to 18 hours a day.

Meanwhile, the search is continuing to turn up even more stuff.

Here you've got two watches.

This one is how the watches are coming into the country,

unbranded, no markings on the front and as we turn it over,

no markings on the back.

If stopped in customs, it's just a regular unbranded watch,

which can legally be brought into the UK, no questions asked.

We go to the white one - once it's arrived, has been branded

somewhere in the UK. We've got the Ice markings on the face,

and as we turn it around, again, you've got the markings on the back.

That's how we go from one unbranded cheap watch

to one counterfeit Ice watch.

Heading to a local market disguised as the real McCoy,

these watches can fetch up to £100 each.

Counterfeiting continues to evolve, and products can be imported either

fully manufactured and produced or they can be imported in part.

What we've identified today is that there is a manufacturing

element as well as the distribution element to the operation here.

In total, officers seized just shy of 40,000 fake items

with a street value of £5 million.

They were destined for markets all over the South East.

Where Trading Standards receive intelligence about counterfeiting,

as a priority we will seek to deal with that swiftly,

and we will target those individuals who are profiting from selling counterfeit goods.

One, to protect the consumers, and two, to protect legitimate local businesses.

That's a hard-hitting message to those counterfeiters

and persons seeking to sell counterfeit goods.

Take a look at this, it's a portable hard drive used to store

and transport computer files like documents, music and photos.

It looks good, but it's what's inside that counts.

In this case, very little. It's a fake.

Sidmouth in Devon, home to amateur photographer David Trigger.

He needed a new hard drive to back up his prized pictures,

and looking online, he found what he thought was a bargain.

A two-terabyte, high-speed storage device.

I came across an advertisement saying, "Hitachi Neso, half price."

And I thought, "That's not an absurd deal, but it's a good one."

The drive was priced at £69.95.

David did his research and found that before the half price discount

it was roughly the going rate for a premium hard drive of that size.

So he snapped it up.

When it arrived the following day,

David was delighted with his purchase.

Very nice indeed, very nice.

Weighty, beautifully organised.

There's like, a plastic strip all the way round, and the USB port

very neatly tucked in the corner, and a status light for the drive.

But when David plugged it into his computer

and started trying to back up his photos,

the hard drive kept coming up with an error message.

I started to become very suspicious.

I kept trying different operations, I even went back to reformatting

the drive as it says in the quick start guide.

Wasn't really getting anywhere,

but still didn't understand quite what was going on.

David tried every trick in the book to get the drive to copy his files -

nothing seemed to work.

He phoned Hitachi and spoke to the technical team.

No-one seemed to be able to get to the bottom of the problem.

After wasting hours and hours trying to get the drive working,

David decided to take some drastic action.

I ended up in a position where I was getting very, very frustrated.

I'm getting nowhere with the original supplier, I have no refund,

what do I have to lose?

It's about time I actually knew the truth

and opened this thing up.

But when David prised open the casing,

nothing could prepare him for what he found.

And behold,

there are the contents of the Hitachi Neso drive.

Two hefty nuts and bolts hot-melt glued into place to give it

almost perfect balance, it feels just like the real thing when closed up.

You would never know once that's closed.

Crude, but crafty fakery.

The hard drive was instead just a small USB drive

with less than 4% of the storage advertised.

Nothing more than a cheap fake.

It was the worst fears realised, really.

I'd been duped in a big way.

It's humiliating, and it makes you feel very much violated.

And unfortunately it's not just hard drives that are being targeted by the fakers.

With 75% of households in Britain owning a computer,

the data storage industry is big business.

Electronic retailer Alan Dylan believes the fakers have now

honed in on these things, USB flash drives.

A USB flash drive is just a small, portable data storage device that

can be plugged into any computer or device that has a USB port.

They come in a variety of sizes, all the way from

smallest 32MB all the way up to one or two terabytes.

The more storage space on a drive, the more costly it is to make.

Alan believes fraudsters are making money by selling drives

that advertise more storage space than they actually provide.

We decided to investigate whether some USB sticks

contain as much storage space as they say they do.

So we took to the web to put this to the test.

A couple of clicks later, we purchased a handful of sticks.

We also heard there might be fake Micro SD cards out there,

used in devices such as mobile phones,

so we bagged one of them, too.

It was time to send them over to computer data recovery expert

Mike Montgomery for a closer look.

First up is the 32GB, which claims to be a Toshiba,

although it wasn't sold to us by them.

Once Mike's removed the chip,

he can stick it into his special machine, and...

It's supposed to be a Toshiba 32GB

TransMemory USB flash stick,

it's actually 8GB.

It's a fake!

Next up, a 64GB gold bar-shaped USB stick.

Let's see what we've got.

It is a fake gold bar - but is it a fake USB?

I don't even need to take the chip off this one

because it's actually marked on there, 8GB.

So, supposedly 64GB - it's a fake.

And after putting two more USB sticks through their paces,

the last one Mike attempts to test is the 32GB Micro SD card.

This one won't even be recognised by the computer.

Well, I suspected this one was a fake, but it doesn't even work.

It's just hanging the computer, trying to read the device.

That in itself is actually worse than a fake, because it just doesn't work.

So, out of the five Mike tested, three USB sticks were fake

and the Micro SD card appeared to be faulty.

It means you could very well be buying drives with less storage

than you're paying for. But there's worse to come -

not only are the fraudsters making themselves a tidy profit

at your expense, most people won't even know they've been ripped off.

So what you've got here is a genuine 16GB USB flash drive

and a fake 16GB USB flash drive.

They don't look any different from each other, just one's coloured

green, one's coloured red, so when we plug the genuine

USB flash drive into the computer it'll read as 16GB.

So, the computer's reported the size of the genuine USB drive correctly.

Now the fake 16GB USB stick.

It does in fact only contain a 1GB chip.

Will the computer pick up on this?

And when we plug the fake USB flash drive, it also comes up

and tells us 16GB, but we actually know it's only 1GB.

So a fake USB flash drive has fooled the computer into thinking

that it's 16GB, so what chance has a consumer got of realising

that they've been duped into buying a fake USB?

The fakers are doing two things.

Making the USB stick fool your computer into thinking it's bigger

than it is, and making you think the stick is storing your files

when it's actually recording over them again and again.

If you put something on there, you want to be able to retrieve

the data, and know that your data is actually going to be on there.

So when you go back to get your dissertation, essay,

music files, you want to know that they haven't been corrupted, lost,

and just like probably the supplier who sold them to you

is going to be gone, they might be gone as well.

But you're only going to realise you've bought a fake

when it's too late and you've lost your data.

But the authorities are determined to unplug the fakes.

In west London, Trading Standards have just busted

a bunch of rogue retailers for selling a variety of fake

electrical goods in high-street shops up and down the South East.

Mohammed Tariq was at the helm.

Amongst the haul, totalling around a million pounds' worth of stock,

there was a stash of fake USB sticks.

If it's a fake, you don't know what memory's on there.

It might not have the memory that it's actually advertising

on there or displaying on the packaging.

Luckily, the journey of these fakes to our homes has now been

short-circuited, but be careful - there's plenty more out there.

For people buying memory cards to store data,

beware of fakes because you may as well not back up at all.

You'll lose your data and your money.

This is an American brand of nail polish, CND Shellac.

Not quite my shade.

But for thousands of women, it's what

they choose to have put on their nails in UK salons.

It's a successful brand, and it's not cheap.

They seem to be the reason some salons have decided they'll make

more money if the Shellac service they're selling is a fake.

CND Shellac is a nail polish treatment, and was created in

the USA by a company called Creative Nail Design,

or CND for short.

Nail technician Natasha Lee says it's a product that's been

a massive hit with her customers.

It was designed and created for women that were paying for manicures

and they weren't getting their money's worth cos they just weren't lasting.

Now, the company says CND Shellac was some five years in development

and went through around 7,000 lab tests before it went to market.

Its ingredients are a closely-guarded trade secret,

but they claim 14 days without chipping.

The genuine treatment costs around £25 per application,

depending on where you go.

So it's roughly twice the price of other nail services.

Now, here's the thing.

To use this product you need to be a qualified NVQ beautician

and approved to use it by the manufacturer

before you can actually buy the stuff, but there are believed to be

dozens of unscrupulous operators out there who are faking it,

advertising they're offering the genuine CND Shellac service,

but in fact giving you a cheaper,

Chinese gel polish instead, without the requisite training,

equipment or application procedures.

And because of these fakes,

customers are ending up out of pocket, and more worryingly,

with damaged nails.

According to Gina Akers of the Hair and Beauty Industry Authority,

it's a growing problem.

There are many, many concerns when you have nail technicians and

salons actually offering services that they are not trained to do.

It's really, really important from a client's point of view

that they're getting safe and good quality nail treatments.

There are around 18,000 nail technicians in Britain

that are approved by the manufacturer to carry out

the service, and this is how it works.

Once the nails are cleaned and prepped, the technician adds

a base coat and a colour coat and then finally a top coat,

curing the nails in the UV lamp for precise timings in between,

and voila! A Shellac service.

Ooh, nice nails.

It's a whole different story when it comes to removal, and that's when you really see the difference

between the professional product and the fakes.

A lesson which university student Sophie Edwards has learnt.

I sourced a salon that was local to me,

that I'd heard from word of mouth off a few people,

that said they were doing the Shellac and I went and tried it.

Actually did have a CND poster at the bottom of their window.

Process seemed to be what I thought was the CND Shellac process.

But after an hour in the salon having her nails Shellaced,

Sophie was left feeling a little disappointed.

I'd seen pictures and heard from people that the finish is

absolutely amazing, and it didn't seem that way

and it felt really bulky on my nails.

There was just a feel to it that didn't seem right.

When Sophie had the product removed,

it turns out her instincts were spot-on.

I didn't have a CND Shellac product and I'd had, in fact,

a fake Shellac product. I felt let down by the salon that I'd been to.

I felt like I was a bit of a mug, actually,

especially the price that I paid for the product and for the procedure.

But Sophie, there's a lot of it about.

The beauty industry is hearing of more and more women

who THOUGHT they were getting the genuine product,

but instead got their fingers burnt - quite literally.

Cathryn Hut thought she was getting the genuine product

when she booked into a local salon.

My first appointment was on the Friday night,

and they applied the base coat to my nails

and then told me that it wasn't sticking to my nails

so then they decided to try and buff the top of my nails

to see if they could get it to stick,

and at one point that actually was a little bit painful, which I think is

one of the things that made me think, "Ooh, this doesn't seem quite right."

Within a few days, the nails started to chip.

One of the main reasons that I went to have a Shellac manicure

was the thought of it not chipping and lasting for at least two weeks,

so I was really, really disappointed actually in that.

A few weeks later it was time to get the polish removed

and then reapplied.

She decided to go to a different salon,

where she was met by nail technician Jenny Smith.

-Hi, honey.

-Hello.

-How you doing?

-Good, thank you.

But she was about to discover she'd fallen for a fake.

So when Cathryn came into the salon, she said that she'd gone to another salon and asked for Shellac

and that's what she thought she had on her nails.

It wasn't Shellac that she had on her nails in any way, shape or form,

it was something completely different.

Yes, Cathryn had had a brush with the fake Shellac.

Jenny tried to soak off the product.

We wrapped it up for the normal ten minutes.

And it didn't budge, it hadn't budged at all.

It just wasn't coming off.

When she did eventually get the fake Shellac off

Jenny took these photographs of the damage to Cathryn's nails.

On this one you can clearly see the big white patch here,

and then the thumb damage,

you can clearly see that these white patches are quite severe.

Looking at these photos now makes me feel physically sick.

I feel ashamed that someone in this industry

has caused this damage to a client's natural nails.

It took around six months for Cathryn's nails to return to normal,

an experience that's expensive and distressing.

It made me feel quite angry,

and had I thought that there was even the smallest chance

it would damage my nails I wouldn't have done it.

Unfortunately, we're seeing this more and more frequently.

There's a lot of people jumping onto the beauty industry bandwagon

lately, thinking that they can come in and make a quick buck

but not doing things the correct way.

Natasha says the fakers are damaging the whole industry.

Good morning... Yes, no problem, when are you looking for?

The people that want and choose to use the fake Shellacs

tend to be people who are wanting to cut corners and cut savings.

With that, it tends to be the people that don't want

to pay for the appropriate training.

They are a blight to the industry

because they do taint the name for technicians

that are spending their time, their energy and their money

making sure that they're doing a good service.

But it's not just the professional beauty market

that's fallen prey to the fakers.

Trading Standards officer Simon Cripwell

has recently seized a stack of what appear to be fake hairdryers

destined for bedroom beauticians everywhere.

This is what we suspect to be a counterfeit GHD product.

"GHD Precious", it's got written on the top.

"Limited Edition gift set".

We've got two products here.

One is a GHD-branded travel hairdryer

and the other is...

..a GHD-branded hair straightener.

We've seen fake GHD straighteners doing the rounds on Fake Britain

before, but the fake hairdryer's a new kid on the block.

The beauty market is absolutely huge

and we are seeing an increasing number of electrical products

and other products related to the beauty market coming onto

market stalls which are selling counterfeit goods.

As well as a manufacturer's logo on the box,

this hairdryer comes complete with a vast array of extras -

its attention to detail amongst the most advanced Simon has ever seen.

These particular products come with very convincing paperwork.

They also come with safety instructions that you would

expect to find on genuine items.

There are no spelling errors, as far as we can see.

But has the same attention to detail gone into the safety side of things?

The brand has confirmed it's a fake, but is it dangerous?

Simon Cripwell's got concerns,

so we take the fake hairdryer to a testing lab,

where testing safety engineer Lee Picton does what he does best -

test.

My initial impressions are, yeah, you know,

it does look the real deal, basically.

The hairdryer itself, it feels like a genuine travel hairdryer,

good weight, sort of feels expensive.

Yes, but looks can be deceiving - so Lee starts with the plug.

So as you can see here, the conductor is soldered.

This can cause the terminal in the plug to heat up.

And that heat could lead to fire or to the plug melting, which is

why soldered wires wouldn't meet British safety standards.

I would deem this to be potentially unsafe in a household environment.

If you were drying your hair and the plug melted,

it could be dangerous,

but there's worse to come as Lee prepares to carry out

an important European-standard test

that all appliances of this type must go through.

Right, so what I'm about to do is place some polythene

over the air inlet, and turn the power on,

and set the hairdryer to

level three, which will be its highest power input.

This test is to simulate what would happen if the back of the hairdryer

was covered up by someone's hair or a towel, for example.

This will be restricting the air flow

into the inlet of the hairdryer.

To meet safety standards, hairdryers on the UK market must have

a vital safety feature called a thermal cut-out.

This will shut down the hairdryer if it overheats, to stop it

from burning the user, or in the worst-case scenario, catching fire.

If it's a genuine product, what should happen any time soon is

the thermal cut-out should operate, cutting the supply to the hairdryer.

But two minutes in, it's still going strong.

The thermal cut-out should have cut out by now.

As you can see, the plastic is melting

so it's definitely a fake product.

With the thermal cut-out not operating,

the hairdryer's caught fire.

It's giving a significant amount of flames,

and if this was someone's house

then it could do considerable damage.

Without this vital safety feature in place,

the fake hairdryer has the potential to cause a fire

and also burn anyone unfortunate enough to use it.

This type of test, it is a bit of a shock,

normally wouldn't expect such a fault to occur.

A genuine product, thermal cut-out would operate, and the test

would have ended without any hazardous situations occurring.

Someone could easily end up buying one of these dangerous hairdryers

and think they're not only the real thing, but perfectly safe.

Lee fears it's only a matter of time before they cause serious damage.

For people who've potentially purchased such products,

it's definitely, definitely worrying.

That's all from Fake Britain, goodbye.