Episode 6 Fake Britain

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

Welcome to Fake Britain.

-Get down! Get down!

-Put him 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.

Today on Fake Britain...

Police!

..we're with the National Crime Agency

as they crack down on suspected ID fakers.

Please open up or I'll put the door in.

And we'll discover who's buying fake identities and what happens

if one of them is yours.

Somehow these people think I owe £113,000.

The dark forces selling fake signatures to young Doctor Who fans.

It's just ridiculous really. It was an abuse of trust.

And the fake dental tool being sold to British surgeries.

There is a risk of infection and the patient may lose their tooth.

This is a real British passport.

When you're not using yours,

you'll probably put it away in a drawer and forget all about it.

But while YOU may not be thinking about it,

there are criminals who certainly are because stealing one of these,

even if it means breaking into your home to do it,

is worth their efforts.

It's a gateway to the kind of ID crime which, as a nation,

is now costing us 3.3 billion pounds a year.

Are you convinced you couldn't be a target for the fakers?

It's 5am and we're in Essex with the National Crime Agency.

The newly formed agency has a remit to tackle

serious and organised crime.

Fake Britain has been given exclusive access to the team

charged with cracking down on identity crime.

This morning, the arrest team are acting on intelligence

from the Passport Office.

Their suspect is thought to have applied for passports and

driving licences under multiple different names,

none of which are his own.

Principal officer Lewis Hunt is leading the NCA's drive to

crack down on the identity fakers.

There's been multiple identity abuse, not only just passports

but also driving licences as well.

And we're obviously keen to secure any evidence that we can find there

in relation to identity documents.

This morning's operation is part of the NCA's response to

a disturbing new trend.

Lewis Hunt believes that the demand for fake identities is fuelling a

rise in thefts of identity documents from ordinary members of the public.

We've seen evidence now of people involved in large scale burglaries,

particularly looking for identity documents.

And those genuine documents are then being used by serious criminals

to create the fake identities

which will be used for a range of criminal activity.

Everything from complex identity fraud to

evading travel restrictions.

Terrorists have used them in the past, money launderers,

drug traffickers,

even sex offenders to actually travel outside their actual banning orders.

Back in Essex, the arresting team go in.

Their suspect is about to get an unexpected wake-up call.

KNOCKING ON DOOR

Hello. Police. NCA. Please open up.

KNOCKING ON DOOR

National Crime Agency, please open up or we'll put the door in.

Please, come on.

Hello there.

Come down, National Crime Agency.

Eventually the officers are let in.

We're here to search the premises for identity crime.

Yeah, thank you.

20 minutes later, the suspect is taken away for questioning.

This arrest is part of the National Crime Agency's

crack down on identity crime.

Fake Britain has followed the NCA's efforts

to bring the ID fakers to justice.

We were with NCA officers as they made their first arrest of a

suspected seller of fake identity documents here in the North West.

So far the NCA have arrested dozens of suspects

and seized hundreds of fake ID documents

and through these investigations, the NCA has learnt how criminals

are stealing people's identities and applying for genuine IDs.

Suddenly they've got a genuine document that has been

fraudulently obtained.

Back in Essex and an hour into the search of the house,

the arresting officer senior officer Andy Guy begins to

suspect there may be more than one faker in the house.

A marriage certificate

and evidence of a previous identity under a different name is found.

Let's go.

Just come.

It's enough for them to want to question the woman further

and she's arrested.

OK, then, in you go.

She seemed to be a different person with P45s

and different identification,

different documents with regard to the Inland Revenue, HMRC.

Now, there's a completely different identity.

The search continues for another couple of hours while every

document within the house is examined for evidence of fakery.

Well, in these bags we've got passports,

we've got credit cards, we've got driving licences

and on the phones, we hope to have identity details as well.

The evidence here will be crucial if the team is to secure convictions.

Now, we're going to interview the man and the woman

and hopefully we will have enough information to charge today.

The haul is taken back to base and painstakingly logged.

-There's your fake marriage certificate, I think.

-OK.

Following interviews with the suspects

and a review of the evidence,

principal officer Lewis Hunt decides he has enough to hold both

suspects in custody while the investigations continue.

He's seen some cases where members of the public don't even realise

ID documents, such as passports and driving licence, have been stolen.

It might well be that you put them in,

say for the instance, the drawer where all those documents go and

lo and behold, when you want them for that particular bit of travel,

you suddenly can't find them and

they've been taken actually in the burglary as well.

And his message for all of us is very simple.

Be aware of how important their documents are,

to actually make sure they safeguard those documents because

if they're broken into at home, those documents will be taken from them.

Later, we'll meet one man who knows all too well what can happen

when your ID documents fall into the hands of the fakers.

I'm totally innocent, I've done nothing wrong and, you know,

why would I even contemplate remortgaging my property for

something that I didn't owe?

It's over 50 years old and a national institution, Doctor Who.

Now, there have been 12 Doctors in all and in this anniversary

celebratory book I've got a couple of their signatures.

Not that, that's the Dalek's.

But look, David Tennant and over the page, Matt Smith.

As you might expect in the Fake Britain house though, they're fakes

and we've discovered there is a disturbance

in the world of the Time Lords autograph hunters.

Daniel Moore is 18 years old and a self confessed sci-fi geek.

He's part of a new generation of Doctor Who fans

and a keen collector of memorabilia and autographs.

I'm a big fan of Doctor Who and Star Wars

and lots of other sort of sci-fi series.

I like to meet these people and get autographs.

This is when I met Billie Piper with my partner Sarah.

This is a Doctor Who encyclopaedia, it's one of my proudest possessions.

I've got lots of Doctor Who signatures in here.

This is Christopher Eccleston and here is Matt Smith.

But Daniel's love for all things Doctor Who

was to cause him a big headache.

When he was aged just 15, he came into contact with a man

selling Doctor Who autographs online.

Over the next two years, Daniel purchased around £850 worth

of signed memorabilia from this individual.

I'd bought this book a couple of years ago

when I was 16 years old, I paid £30 for it thereabouts.

I bought it because I wanted a piece of Doctor Who memorabilia.

I liked it, I believe they were genuine.

But little did Daniel know that an investigation

into the seller's activities was already under way.

Caroline Carter, a Trading Standards officer in Norwich,

had received a tip-off about an eBay dealer selling fakes.

We got reports was selling fake autographs on eBay and he was also

providing little certificates with these autographs

and photos of stars that were signed,

saying that they were authentic.

Caroline asked Gary King, an expert witness in autograph cases,

to have a look at what was being sold.

What caught Gary's eye was the number of

undedicated autographs the dealer was selling.

In the world of autographs, undedicated signatures, which

consist of just the celebrity's autograph, are much sought after.

Celebrities will often want to dedicate a signature

because it removes the option of you selling it on eBay,

people don't want a dedicated signature,

undedicated is much more valuable and so that's why they do it.

Sales of undedicated autographs on this scale was certainly

grounds for suspicion but Caroline Carter would need

solid proof of fakery before she could act.

She contacted the BBC team who issue signed photographs

of the Doctor Who stars and told them of her suspicions.

Together they decided to make a test purchase from the seller

so they could establish whether the autographs were genuine.

This envelope actually contained the test purchase that the

BBC Worldwide did and it contained an image of Karen Gillan,

one of the Doctor's assistants in Doctor Who.

Miss Gillan examined this photograph

and said she did not believe it was her autograph.

Caroline's investigation was gathering speed.

Victims were coming forward.

Soon she had a name, Andrew Sullivan.

Caroline applied for a warrant to raid his premises

for suspected illegal activity.

What the arrest team were to discover

staggered everyone involved.

This is just a small amount of stuff that were

seized from Mr Sullivan's house.

The haul they recovered from his house is one of the biggest

ever seen in a case of this type.

There was 76 bags of this sort of size of evidence that we seized.

When you actually look at some of the bags,

they've got thousands and thousands of photographs that,

some were signed, some were preparing to be signed,

some were just literally stored waiting for an order to come through

so it sort of shows the public how much really was going on here.

It was certainly not a small scale operation.

One of the most damning pieces of evidence was found

in Sullivan's makeshift waste paper basket.

This was particularly interesting,

it's a photograph of the celebrity Kerry Katona.

It had been ripped into four separate pieces in the bin

but pieced together, you'll see that it was signed by Jenny Agutter.

Now, this really seemingly proved something was not right

that was going on within the house.

The Trading Standards team believes many of Sullivan's customers

were in their teens when they purchased the fake autographs

and, sadly, Daniel was one of them.

We asked Gary King to take a closer look at the autographs

that were sold to Daniel.

This "Karen" is wrong,

it starts off at one angle and ends up at another.

Well, again, if we look at this "D" in this "David Tennant",

you can just see some very slight hesitations where

he's actually drawn the signature rather than done it at any speed.

Whereas David Tennant would do that quite quickly.

It was definitely an abuse of trust in the sense of ripping people off.

Trading Standards believe Sullivan made

more than £35,000 from his fakery.

Faced with overwhelming evidence in court, Sullivan pleaded guilty.

Andrew, can you give us a comment on the case?

Fake Britain caught up with the faker as he arrived

for sentencing at Norwich Crown Court.

But he wasn't very chatty.

Is there anything you'd say to the victims?

Sullivan arrived at the court hoping to avoid prison but the judge,

citing the scale of his operation,

gave him a 21 month custodial sentence.

What do the Doctors themselves think of this trade

in fake autographs?

We put the question to two former Time Lords at the

Doctor Who 50th anniversary convention.

Well, I didn't know about that. I never thought of that really.

How can you forge my signature?

Well, that's appalling. I mean, it's just appalling, it's theft.

Hello!

It's really sad to prey on fandom

which is people celebrating something.

I guess you can see what draws people into doing these things

but justice has been served in the end, I guess.

You know, he might've made all that money, went on holiday,

you know, did all these things and he's in prison now.

But Daniel's unfortunate run in with an autograph faker

hasn't put off his passion for all things Doctor Who.

Just a few weeks after Sullivan's sentencing, Daniel is back out there

tracking down former Time Lords and, of course, their autographs.

Just met David Tennant so I've just got his autograph,

the real deal, it's made my day.

Fake Britain has been following the National Crime Agency

as they crack down on the ID fakers.

Open up or I'll put the door in. Please, come on.

The authorities suspect this man was using passport details belonging

to an innocent member of the public to create fake identities.

But how do you know when your identity's being faked?

In 2003, Adrian Richards' family home in east London was burgled

and his passport was stolen.

Adrian reported the theft and considered the matter closed

but the burglary was to set off a chain of events of which

Adrian would be completely unaware until seven years later

when a letter arrived.

It arrived on a Saturday morning, registered post,

my 14-year-old son signed for it.

The letter was from Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs

and it stated that Adrian owed the German tax authorities

in excess of £113,000 in unpaid VAT.

It was a real shock, you had to look twice.

We just couldn't understand why it was us.

Never done any work in Germany and somehow these people think

I owe £113,000 in VAT.

Under EU regulations, British tax authorities are duty-bound to

collect unpaid tax owed by British citizens

when specific requests are made by other EU states.

Adrian contacted HMRC to clear up the misunderstanding.

We explained in writing to them and on the phone and still

we didn't get any recognition from HMRC and we just kept getting

these letters from the German tax authorities

requesting to us this huge sum.

But this was no administrative error.

The German tax authorities had evidence proving a company

registered in Adrian's name owed a small fortune in unpaid VAT.

With the demands for payment becoming ever more insistent,

Adrian started to fear for his family's future.

We went from, you know, the belief that it was a simple mistake

and they've got the wrong person to desperation really.

Well, the only way I could raise that sort of money is through

remortgaging my property and I'm totally innocent,

I've done nothing wrong and you know, why would I even contemplate

remortgaging my property for something that I didn't owe?

Then another bombshell arrived, again through the post.

Yeah, we were in the middle of trying to resolve the issues with HMRC

and the German VAT claim

and we received an interim charging order from solicitors

acting on behalf of the telephone regulator trying to recover

a debt of £34,000 for misuse of premium rate telephone numbers.

In this new demand,

the British telephone regulators stated that Adrian was being fined

for breaching codes of practice and he needed to pay a £34,000 fine.

Well, the scam was this premium rate telephone company phone individuals

and with a recorded message saying, "Help! Help!"

The line went dead and then the individual would phone back to say,

"Can I help?" And they got charged an exorbitant amount for doing that.

With this second case,

Adrian was now facing demands for over £150,000.

It couldn't just be a coincidence.

He began to suspect he'd been a victim of a sophisticated scam.

He decided to fight back and reclaim his identity from the faker.

We employed a solicitor and during his investigations

found a copy of this individual's passport.

I couldn't believe the fact that my passport which, MY passport,

had my signature on it, my name, my date of birth,

it didn't have my photograph on it,

it had somebody else's photograph on.

And they'd obviously doctored my passport to use for their benefit.

You just don't believe that somebody else has taken

and doctored your passport in such a way that it can be used and can be

passed in banks and institutions to open accounts and start up companies.

This evidence helped Adrian's solicitor convince the

telephone regulator that it was a case of ID fakery

and the case was dropped.

Meanwhile, Adrian was pulling out all the stops to convince

the HMRC of his innocence.

We went to our MP and explained the situation to him.

We appointed a German solicitor.

Adrian had to use £2,000 of his savings to cover

the cost of the German lawyer but it was money well spent.

Three months later, he got the news that he'd been waiting for.

The HMRC believe it's identity fraud and thank God,

they closed the case which is great news.

Now, while most of us might not look forward to a visit to the dentist,

you'd be even more reluctant if you discovered that medical equipment

being put into your mouth was fake.

Take a look at this.

It's a dental curing light and it's used to set a filling.

The problem is this fake wouldn't help to preserve your teeth

and it could actually destroy them.

You'll find a dental curing light in every dental surgery in the UK.

The product is used by dentists to harden fillings in your teeth.

But Danny Lee-Frost from

the Medicine and Healthcare Regulatory Agency, the MHRA,

is en route to assess a haul of fake dental lights.

This morning, we're on our way to the MHRA evidence store,

we're going to be looking at a consignment

of seized dental curing lights.

These products have come in from China and they've been

the focus of our attention for the last two or three weeks.

This isn't the first time the MHRA has had to act to stop

fake dental equipment coming into the country.

Previously on Fake Britain,

we've seen seizures of fake dental products,

including this incredible range of fake tools from China.

They're so badly made they could break inside a patient's mouth.

The products Danny's come to inspect are part of a huge seizure

at the Port of Felixstowe.

During the course of this investigation,

the MHRA have seized over 400 of these counterfeit devices.

They were all destined to be sold on eBay and Amazon.

It's hard to believe a professional dentist would buy one of these

fake lights but the MHRA knows 256 of them

have been sold to UK addresses, including dental surgeries.

What we have here are two of these dental curing devices.

This one is a complete fake, there's no details of the manufacturer,

which means the CE mark is invalid, that's a fake device.

This one is a counterfeit.

The packaging and the labelling say it's been made by the

Guilin Woodpecker factory in China

which is a legitimate manufacturer of these products.

However, this particular one we understand was made by a factory that

makes products for tattooing.

The dangers with these products are that we do not know where they were

made, we don't know whether they're safe,

whether they will work properly. Any dentist using this to try and

harden off and cure your fillings, it may not work.

That's going to lead to you going back to the dentist in future,

you may have further pain, further problems and further treatment.

Will Palin from the

School of Dentistry at the University of Birmingham

is going to compare the counterfeit product against the genuine light.

He starts by testing the actual wavelength that the light emits.

The power of the electromagnetic waves these lights give off

is measured in nanometres.

This measurement is critical in determining how effectively

the lights will set the filling.

So we've just finished the tests

and the product that was purchased from a reputable company

showed an output at 470 nanometres,

whereas the product that was purchased online

showed a shorter wavelength at 450 nanometres.

Ultimately what that means is that the online product may not

cure the filling material as effectively as the branded product.

A difference of 20 nanometres doesn't sound like much but it could

be crucial in determining whether the filling will set properly.

Dr Palin now tests the light's ability to actually set a filling.

What we're doing here is going to test

the properties of the material that are cured by the light itself.

This material is the white filling material that dentists will use.

The dentist will fill the cavity with this material

and then use the curing light to set the material hard.

Dr Palin tests both lights using the same composite material.

At first look, they look similar in terms of how hard

they have become but if we look at the results,

here we can see the purple line here, that is the sample that has

been cured by the branded light and the red line is the sample that

has been cured by the light that was purchased online.

The way that the line drops, how quickly it drops

and the amount that it drops gives us an indication of how well set

the material is and you can see at the end of the test,

there's a difference of approximately 10%.

Despite the differences in wavelengths, both fillings feel hard

to the touch and Dr Palin believes this is part of the problem.

The dentist is not necessarily going to know

whether the material is cured effectively or not.

So it might be that the patient has to come back a week, two weeks later

and either the material has failed

or there's been some secondary infection and ultimately,

the restoration will have to be replaced.

We also asked Dr Palin to test the temperature that the light emits.

And his findings are a cause for grave concern.

What we found was that the leading brand showed

an increase in temperature of approximately 25 degrees Celsius.

The curing unit that was purchased online surprisingly had a temperature

increase of approximately 50 degrees Celsius which is really quite high.

This is truly shocking.

Under British safety standards,

a dental light cannot emit more than 40 degrees.

The fake light is outputting 50 degrees, 25% above the legal limit.

When exposed to temperatures this high,

the living cells within the tooth are at risk of being destroyed

and that has serious implications for patients.

The implications of such a high temperature rise could mean

that it kills the living part of the tooth

so the cells that are contained within the pulp cavity

and, if that happens, there is a risk that the restoration will fall out

and potentially the patient may lose their tooth.

That's all from Fake Britain. Goodbye.