Episode 7 Fake Britain

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

Welcome to Fake Britain.

-Get down, get down!

-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,

the fake Facebook profiles making people's lives hell.

They were saying that I was an escort.

Somebody might see me and think, "There's that girl who's an escort,"

which is a horrible feeling to have.

Fake washing powder and the dangers it poses to the public.

It could be having ingredients that could cause cancer.

Families at war,

how one man was nearly swindled out of his inheritance by a fake will.

The pain that has caused, it's just been horrendous.

We Brits love Facebook.

The company says 24 million of us log in every day.

And over half the UK population has an active account.

Look, even Fake Britain's got one.

But what happens when someone creates a fake profile

in your name to try to defraud you and your friends?

Facebook estimates there are over 80 million fake profiles out there.

Many of these are harmless, but a significant number,

maybe as many as 14 million according to Facebook itself,

are being operated by fraudsters.

So, who's being targeted by the Facebook fakers?

One man who knows what it's like to have your Facebook profile faked

is Father Peter Wilson.

He's a priest in a London parish

and he uses Facebook to stay in touch with his flock.

But, one day, he got a phone call he wasn't expecting.

A friend got in touch, and said,

"I think your identity's been stolen

"because you've just approached me asking me for money,

"and I don't think it is you."

I laughed it off, but then more and more friends got in touch,

and it soon emerged that somebody had indeed taken my photograph

and set up an alternative account in my name,

and had approached all my friends asking for money.

They knew it wasn't me

because they know I wouldn't do something like that.

And it turns out that Father Peter is not the only man of the cloth

to be targeted in this way.

I know in the past few days, another priest colleague of mine

has had the same happen.

Before anyone was taken in by the bogus account,

Father Peter managed to alert Facebook

and the fake profile was taken down immediately.

But not every victim of the Facebook fakers gets away so lightly.

Bromley resident Jasmine Jones deactivated her Facebook account

a couple of years ago.

So she was surprised to see a message from Facebook.

I had an e-mail notification to say,

"Your Facebook has been reactivated," which I thought, how strange.

I didn't even know this was possible.

I assumed my Facebook had been deleted

and all the pictures had gone.

Only did I find out that you can just type in your password again

with your e-mail address,

and that same Facebook you had years ago has never been deleted.

Jasmine's old Facebook account had been hacked.

The faker had somehow figured out her password

and now had complete access to her old account.

Jasmine contacted Facebook immediately.

If you actually contact Facebook,

it takes them two or three weeks to completely delete that account.

And, by that time, it was too late.

The person had already taken so much information from my e-mail addresses

and saved so many pictures from my old Facebook,

they'd already started becoming me.

They'd read all my messages, so they saw exactly how I spoke.

Exactly what sort of friends I have, where I'd been out,

they'd also saved videos of my friends and I

when we'd gone on trips, like to Thorpe Park.

So effectively, they'd just sort of taken all my identity

and were waiting to build on it and start a scam and make money from it.

And it didn't take the faker long to go to work.

When I looked online, there were 10 fake Facebooks of me.

They were saying that I was an escort.

And that people could pay this person money

to come and meet up with me.

So I just thought, I went to the police about it and said,

this is getting outrageous. It's defamation of character.

I'm a law graduate, I'm not an escort.

Fake profiles, which used Jasmine's images

but different names, were appearing on Facebook.

The faker was using the profiles to befriend other Facebook users,

flirting with them, and, then, once a relationship had been established,

offering them sex in exchange for money.

Jasmine notified Facebook every time it happened,

but hours after one profile was taken down, another would appear.

The fake profiles that the fraudster had created

continued to have a very real impact on Jasmine's life.

Somebody might see me in the street and think, "There's that girl

"who's an escort," which is just a horrible feeling to have.

And is the person who's pretending to be me,

am I looking them in the eye every day?

Like Jasmine, most victims of Facebook fakery

have no idea who the faker is.

But what happens when you discover that the person

who's hacked your Facebook account is someone you know?

Later, we'll meet a young woman still coming to terms

with having her Facebook profile faked by someone she trusted.

Getting our whites whiter is big business.

Millions of packs of washing powder are sold every year in the UK,

and you can bet when there's big money on offer,

the fakers want to get involved.

We've seen a lot of counterfeits in the Fake Britain house.

But are you prepared to take the challenge?

Can you tell which one of these is fake, and which one is real?

Well, as our story shows, the packs may look very similar,

but what's inside can be very different.

Today, we're with Mark Rolfe from Kent Trading Standards.

He's just found out that the authorities have seized

a suspicious shipment of washing powder at the port of Dover.

We're on our way to the docks.

We've had a call from our colleagues in the Borders Agency

who tell us that they've got a lorry load

of what they think is fake washing powder.

So we're going to go down to the port, see what they've got,

and if they're right, as they usually are, it's fair to say,

then we'll take possession of it and deal with it from there.

And Mark needs to act quickly.

It's really important for us to get to the docks as soon as we can,

to assess what's there, what's going on and to take the right action

and get hold of the product.

And stop it going any further into the consumer chain.

It's a massive haul. The largest seen in the UK for four years.

There's 33 pallets here, which is just over 2,500 packets.

Or 21 tonnes of fake washing powder.

We estimate that will be worth about £50,000.

Mark goes to work.

He's looking for telltale signs that the powder is fake.

And the smell of the product is a useful indicator of fakery.

I was having a sniff, because our experience is that quite often

these fake washing powders contain chlorides, which is kind of bleach.

Often, you can smell that when you open the box.

This one certainly doesn't smell like a premium brand washing powder.

So, what's in fake washing powder?

And does using it pose a risk for you and your family?

Ian Niven is a chemist. He's spent the last 30 years

formulating and testing washing powders

for major detergent brands.

He believes fake washing powder

poses a number of serious health risks to the public.

When you buy a fake product,

do you really think that somebody who's cheating the consumer in

that sort of way is going to be that bothered what goes into his product?

So, you could, at the worst,

be having ingredients that could cause cancer.

You can certainly have ingredients that would cause irritation.

Because the formulation will be very carefully specified.

So, babies, for instance, with sensitive skin,

you could have real problems using a fake product.

And what will a fake product like this do to your clothes?

You'll get clothes going yellow, perhaps,

because it doesn't remove the fats.

You could have clothes losing their colour and fading,

because the bleach is too aggressive.

Or maybe it won't remove the stains at all

because there's no beach in there.

We asked Ian to compare the fake and the real products.

My first impression is that this looks a very good product.

You can see all the granules in there,

and they're not clumped together at all.

If we move to the other product, you can see lots of lumps.

And all that powder stuck to the sides of the box,

it's not the sign of a quality product.

A quality detergent product

will never stick to the insides of the pack.

So if you bring one home and find it stuck like that,

it may be you've got a fake.

So, what is actually in this box of fake washing powder

and could it be harmful to you and me?

We asked Dr Daniel Driscoll at Surrey University to analyse

the fake powder and find out exactly what it consists of.

These fake washing powders consist mostly of a compound called

sodium carbonate, which you can buy in a supermarket,

usually labelled as soda crystals.

And there's also some cheap fragrance thrown in

to try and make it at least smell of something.

And then it's all mixed together and put in a cheap cardboard box.

The washing powder manufactured by the big brands is closely regulated.

And hundreds of tests are carried out

before the product hits the shelves.

One key test is for pH, which measures acidity.

We asked Dr Driscoll to test the pH of the fake product

and the real thing.

No washing powder sold in the UK will have a pH of over 11.

The real product measured 10.7,

well within safe levels for a product like washing powder.

What about the fake?

And we see the fake sample has a pH of 11.5.

It's a shocking finding.

The fake powder is as corrosive as some household bleaches

-or oven cleaners.

-The fake washing powder has a high pH.

This could be a problem if you have wet hands

and touch the powder, as it could start causing skin irritation

or possibly even minor burns.

And, given how corrosive this product is,

Dr Driscoll is also concerned about the risks

the fake washing powder poses to young children.

If a child were to swallow this fake washing powder,

there's every chance it could do some real damage.

There is unlikely to be any safety controls as there would be

presumably with the genuine powders,

such as other compounds included to minimise the damage.

This fake washing powder is very unlikely

to have such things in place.

Making sure that YOU make decisions

about what happens to everything you own when you die,

and not have someone else doing it, isn't that difficult.

You just write one of these, a will.

It's an important legal document, but even a will can be faked.

And when it is, like this one, it can devastate the families involved.

Stephen Crisp recently lost his grandfather, Bob.

A man who helped to bring him up.

He was a good grandfather.

And I went to live with them, my grandad and my nan,

when I was younger.

Bob had owned a house and had over £10,000 in savings.

Several months before his death, he wrote his will,

dividing his estate between his grandson Stephen and Stephen's aunt.

Bob took the further precaution of providing each of them with a copy

of his will, and asked them both not to disclose the contents to anyone.

Bob was close to Stephen,

but had had a difficult relationship with his own son,

Nigel, Stephen's father.

Just before he died, Bob asked Stephen to look after his affairs.

My grandfather, a few weeks before he passed away,

gave me all his bank account details and everything for me to look after.

Immediately after Bob's death, Stephen's father, Nigel,

began insisting there was no need to invite anyone to the funeral.

Which Stephen found strange.

Soon after the funeral,

Stephen needed to access his grandfather's account

to cover maintenance bills on his grandfather's house.

But he was in for a nasty surprise.

When I went down to the bank,

and I see the lady, and said to her,

"I'm trying to get some money out of my grandfather's account."

Took all his details.

And she was like, "Yeah, I'm afraid that account has been closed."

I asked, "How could that have been closed?"

And she said, "Well, somebody has come down here,

"they have used a death certificate and a will."

Bob's bank account had been emptied.

His life savings, over £10,000, gone.

When Stephen asked why the bank had paid out the money,

he was told that someone claiming to be both the executor

and beneficiary and possessing a will confirming those facts

had withdrawn the money and closed the account.

Stephen was furious.

He immediately applied to have

his grandfather's estate placed in probate.

This put the process on pause,

and dispersal of his grandfather's estate

would have to be reviewed by a legal authority.

But Stephen was in for a further shock.

I was driving past one day,

and I noticed two "For Sale" boards outside my grandfather's house.

So I rang up one of the estate agents, who I know very well,

and he said that, "Your father's put it on."

I said, "He can't, it's in probate."

And that was when I decided then that, you know, enough's enough.

Seeing that his father was only weeks away

from selling the property, valued at £135,000,

Stephen contacted the police.

His case was dealt with by DC Jill Lacey.

I went and met Stephen myself,

spent quite a lengthy time talking to him

and other members of the family.

After which it became fairly apparent that indeed,

a fraud had taken place,

and there ensued the criminal investigation.

DC Lacey conducted a search of Nigel and Jenny Crisp's house.

She recovered what she suspected was the fake will.

The case would hinge on being able to prove the will Stephen had

was real, and the one recovered from his parents' house was fake.

This is a copy of the will that was written by the offender.

These documents can be downloaded from the internet for a small fee,

they can purchased in supermarkets.

All that's needed is for the document to be witnessed,

taken along to a financial institution,

as was in this case, and the money is accessed and it's gone.

Conveniently, the two witnesses who'd signed the fake will

were both dead.

If DC Lacey was to prove the will was indeed a fake,

she'd need conclusive evidence.

She decided to have a handwriting expert examine the will.

Handwriting samples were taken from both suspects

and those samples, along with the suspected fake will,

were sent to be analysed.

These are some handwriting specimens written by one of the suspects,

they were written for the police.

And they contain several lines of the text

that is present within the will.

It was clear to the analyst that Nigel Crisp's handwriting

and the handwriting used in the suspect fake will

were remarkably similar.

It wasn't particularly sophisticated,

it was simply a document that was written out

in more or less the person's normal handwriting.

It wasn't particularly disguised,

it was maybe a little bit carefully written,

but I've seen many documents

that are much more disguised than this one.

The handwriting proved to be Nigel's, Stephen's father.

This gave DC Lacey the conclusive piece of evidence she needed.

Nigel and Jenny Crisp maintained their innocence

throughout the investigation, but, once the case came to court,

they admitted their guilt.

Nigel admitted the offence of making a false instrument,

while Jenny admitted to using a false instrument with intent.

Both received suspended sentences,

and have been ordered to repay Stephen Crisp and his aunt £16,000.

Criminal cases which set members of a single family

against each other are particularly difficult

for both the family members involved

and the police officers investigating.

The pain that it's caused, it's just been horrendous.

You're asking people to provide information

to an investigation against a father, a mother,

any other relative, and it's really quite difficult.

But I think there's always going to have to be a good reason

for doing that, and I feel in this case there was.

Over the last few years, an increasing number of fake wills

have been used to steal inheritances.

Nigel and Jenny Crisp used a will template

downloaded from the internet to create their fake will.

So, has the availability of do-it-yourself wills

made making a fake one all too easy?

And what can you do to protect your will?

Richard Roberts is one of the UK's leading experts on wills

and he currently chairs the Law Society's wills committee.

Fake wills are certainly on the increase.

Part of that is down to the fact that it's now easier to create

a fake will, primarily because you can use the internet to create

a will and, therefore, unscrupulous relatives are using that as a means.

And Richard has some advice for anyone planning to make a will.

In Stephen's case, I think

the real key point there was that the will was made by a solicitor.

Now, of course, as a lawyer,

I'm bound to say that it's the right thing to have a solicitor

make your will, but, in this case, it really was helpful

because that solicitor had a valid will with a proper signature on.

It was therefore very much easier for the police to uncover

that sort of fraud.

Six months after seeing his parents' fakery exposed, Stephen has been

able to sell his grandfather's house and he's moving on with his life.

But repairing family ties is going to take some time.

My mother, she will come over and see me still.

Even after what she has done,

I still try my hardest to keep a relationship with her.

And for Stephen's oldest son, Thomas, who used to visit

his grandparents, the family discord has been unsettling.

We just have to try and work through it as a family with him

and, you know, help him get over it and also, you know,

to help Stephen as well cos he's got no contact with his dad any more.

Stephen still muses on what his grandfather would make

of the sequence of events that followed his death.

I know he wouldn't be surprised of what has happened.

He did warn us, before he passed away, that we need to

watch Nigel, as he knew what he was capable of.

Earlier, we met Jasmine Jones.

Her Facebook profile had been hacked

and pictures of her were being used on fake Facebook profiles.

Some of these profiles were stating that Jasmine was an escort.

Somebody might see me in the street and think,

"Oh, yeah, there's that girl who's an escort," which is

just a horrible feeling to have, and is the person who's pretending

to be me, am I looking them in the eye every day?

Jasmine is still trying to find out who created these fake

Facebook accounts.

But what's it like when someone close to you fakes your profile?

There we go.

Abbie Brown is a single mum from Burnley.

She's always loved using Facebook.

I talk to my friends on it every day, socialise through it,

-contact my family through it.

-But, last year,

something strange happened to Abbie's Facebook profile.

One day, I went to go on it and I couldn't get on it,

so I reported it and left it as that.

Abbie didn't hear back from Facebook,

so she decided to open a new account.

Shortly afterwards, one of her closest friends

since childhood asked a favour - could Abbie take

delivery of some parcels she'd ordered from catalogue companies?

She told me they were for her

partner at the time for Christmas, so I took them in.

Being a friend, didn't want him to see them,

and then I took them down to her.

But the parcels kept on arriving and Abbie started to grow suspicious.

Then, one time, her actual partner picked them up from my house,

but she told me they were for him, which I thought was a bit strange.

That's when I started clicking on that something weren't right.

And Abbie's suspicions grew following a visit

from a very angry stranger.

I answered it, "Hiya, you all right?" And then she were like,

"No, have you got my money?" "What?" "Have you got my money?

"You know I were turning up to your door."

And I went, "No, I don't."

She went, "Well, it's you on Facebook."

The woman was insistent that she'd purchased goods from Abbie

through Facebook. In fact, Abbie's old Facebook profile,

which she assumed had been deleted,

was being used by her friend to advertise products for sale.

These included clothes, shoes and perfumes.

Anyone buying these products would, of course,

think that Abbie was the seller, so when goods weren't delivered,

customers, like the one who'd just paid Abbie a visit,

believed that she'd cheated them.

It was after this visit that Abbie put two and two together

and realised that her friend was, in fact, the Facebook faker.

And there was more bad news in the post for Abbie.

The faker hadn't simply used a fake Facebook profile

to advertise the goods.

She'd also purchased those goods by setting up catalogue accounts

in Abbie's name.

I had just been getting letters saying I owed,

like, £300 here and £70 here.

Especially before Christmas, it's not nice, and I thought,

"It's going to affect my credit", which it has gone on to my credit.

And I need to get to get that lifted.

Abbie believes part of the reason the faker targeted her

is because they knew each other so well.

Now I know that she'd got into my Facebook, used my password,

cos she knew me that well, she guessed my password.

She knew everything because I'd talk to her on a daily basis, so

she knew what I were doing that day and she could put it on Facebook.

Understandably, Abbie's still coming to terms with what happened.

I trusted her with all my heart

and I feel like she had a bit of a kick out of doing it, in a sick way.

Abbie reported the fraud, only to discover that there was already

an ongoing police investigation into her former friend's activities.

Two other targets of the faker had come forward.

When these two cases came to court,

the faker pleaded guilty to two charges of false representation.

Sadly, Abbie's case wasn't reported in time to be

included in the prosecution.

However, she did, at least, have the satisfaction of seeing her

former friend fined and sentenced to 200 hours community service.

Meanwhile, Abbie's still waiting to find out

what happened to her old account.

I don't actually know if it was them that took the Facebook account down

or she deactivated it, cos they've never contacted me through it.

They've never actually e-mailed me, saying,

"We have took the Facebook down.

"We've seen it's been hacked." They never contacted me through anything.

Abbie's experience reveals the lengths a determined

Facebook faker will go to in order to get their hands on a fake

Facebook account. So, what can you do to protect your profile?

Professor Dave Harte lectures on social media

at Birmingham City University.

And Professor Harte has some advice to help you stay safe online

when using social media like Facebook.

There are a few things you can do to think about what you're doing on

Facebook, and the extent to which it makes you a target for fraudsters.

The first of it is, what kind of information

are you letting Facebook know about you?

Have you told it where you live?

How many of your interests are on there?

How often do you talk about the detail of your family life

and your relatives?

If you're telling Facebook and your followers what your dog's

name is, then maybe your dog's name shouldn't be your password.

Be mindful of the security settings on Facebook, because, actually,

you have a degree of control there, which perhaps you don't realise.

You can actually stop your profile being public whatsoever.

Just your updates and information about you,

just goes to those friends you have chosen.

Not friends of friends, just friends.

Facebook told us that while they couldn't comment on individual

cases, they had actioned reports into the cases we featured.

They stressed Facebook was a safe

and secure place with extra security features,

comprehensive tools for reporting fraud and a team of safety experts.

They said they encourage people not to share their password with others

and to protect their accounts using two-factor authentication.

They added that if you think your account's been compromised, visit

facebook.com/hacked to secure it as quickly as possible.

That's all from Fake Britain. Goodbye.