Episode 9 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 fireworks and the fakery that left one man

blinded and scarred for life.

I shouted, I screamed. It was awful.

It was far, far worse than I'd imagined it would be.

The fake car accessories flooding the market.

We follow Trading Standards as they investigate...

..and the fake charity collectors, who help themselves

to the money given to the public by a good cause.

They just pleaded ignorance saying, "We emptied the charity tins

"and took what we thought was our fair share."

Firework displays aren't just for Bonfire Night any more.

Weddings, birthdays, all sorts of celebrations are marked

by professional displays

put on by people who we expect to know what they're doing and keep

us all safe because it goes without saying, fireworks can be dangerous.

You'd also expect them to have the correct insurance.

This is a certificate of public liability,

but this crucial document turned out to be a fake.

When things went wrong, the results were tragic.

When we visit a fireworks display, we expect a few things.

Bright lights, big bangs, and above all, we expect to be safe.

That's why to put on a professional show, the company doing the

display has to prove to a firework supplier that it's competent.

The main way of doing that is to have a public liability

insurance document.

Faking a document like this would potentially put us all in danger.

Surely such a thing would be unthinkable?

Chris Hignell from Bristol certainly thought so when he came

into contact with professional pyrotechnician Jason Edgecombe.

Now, Chris is a businessman and fireworks were his hobby.

He'd only ever used the ones available to all of us

over the shop counter.

But when they met,

Edgecombe invited Chris to help out at one of his professional displays.

Chris jumped at the chance.

I had this huge enthusiasm for firework displays as many

people do, and he invited me along to assist, to watch from very

close quarters how a professional firework display is fired.

Chris says he thought Edgecombe was a professional.

He'd seen this public liability insurance document

and was reassured.

I saw the document and had no reason to doubt it.

And when he got to the display,

Edgecombe made Chris an even more exciting offer.

I never expected to be offered the chance to actually ignite

one of the fireworks, erm, but that was offered to me,

and I accepted it because of my enthusiasm for doing so.

I understood that he was a professional who was fully

insured, and fully trained.

I wasn't given any training at all.

I was simply told when he says "now", to light the fuse,

and that is exactly what I did.

Chris wasn't used to professional fireworks.

He'd only used ones before that any of us could buy, like these.

Edgecombe's were professional grade, and unbeknown to Chris,

this meant there was no delay on the fuses.

As soon as I lit the fuse, I felt an incredible pain in my face.

It knocked me to my knees.

Even in the dark, I knew blood was pouring from my face,

and I was soon aware that my hair was on fire.

I collapsed to the ground and used the dew off of the grass

on my hands to try and put the flames out on my head.

One of the other people that was there shouted, "Man down!"

Unfortunately, Mr Edgecombe chose to ignore the man down

and carried on with the display for a further seven minutes.

Chris was drifting in and out of consciousness.

Meanwhile, Wendy received a call at work.

I knew he'd gone to help somebody with some fireworks

and I just knew straightaway that something awful had happened.

I said to my colleagues I had to go. I dropped everything.

I drove to where the accident had happened.

I just stopped my car, got out, ran over to where Chris was.

The paramedics were dealing with him. You can't describe it.

You really can't describe what you're seeing

because you couldn't even distinguish a face.

Awful. Absolutely awful.

When it's somebody you love, to see them like that -

it's very difficult.

Chris was rushed to Frenchay Hospital in Bristol.

For the first 24 hours,

I'm led to believe by the doctors, my life was in the balance.

This was a life-threatening injury.

Absolutely devastating

because you think that the person you love is never going to be

the same again, and you just cannot imagine how life is going to be.

You've had a life together, you've done lots of things

and all of a sudden, one split second

and you feel it's all been taken away from you.

And you feel nothing will ever be the same again.

Chris's face was badly burnt.

He was blinded in one eye

and surgeons were fighting to save the other.

The photos from the time are too distressing to show.

These were taken some months after his first operation.

While Chris was lying in hospital,

Edgecombe should have contacted either the local council or

health and safety officials to report his accident.

But Robin Wood at Trading Standards in Bath says he was illusive.

We heard about it three days later via a member of the family

and when we tried to follow it up,

we contacted Mr Edgecombe by telephone, by letter,

by e-mail, we contacted him for several weeks

and he didn't return the calls at all.

Eventually, some three months later, we had to go to the lengths

of getting him arrested in order to get him to answer our questions.

It turned out there was a reason why Edgecombe hadn't gone to the

authorities. He was a faker.

Trading Standards say Edgecombe had faked insurance to get

hold of the professional grade fireworks that injured Chris,

and that Edgecombe would never have got those fireworks without it.

The supplier needs to satisfy themselves that that person

is a professional, so they do need to see something like

a liability certificate to prove that that's the case.

He'd also shown the same fake public liability document to get

access to the venue where Chris was injured.

We'd heard from the organisers that they'd seen the document.

That reassured them obviously that he was competent.

I don't think they would have allowed Mr Edgecombe to carry

out the display without the public liability insurance.

But why had Edgecombe faked his insurance?

We know he'd been turned down for insurance the previous year

by all three of the companies that supply this

type of insurance so he ended up falsifying the insurance to

make it look as though he did have the competency to carry it out.

This is the forged public liability document that Edgecombe used.

The insurance company is genuine, but he faked the details on it.

It was issued to a company in the north for a different date

the year previously,

so what Mr Edgecombe did was that he got hold of that document,

he managed to change the typeface

and make it show that he himself had public liability

insurance by putting his own company details on it.

Finding out that Edgecombe didn't have insurance was a bitter

blow for Chris and Wendy.

Absolutely awful. When I first heard, I just went cold.

If he hadn't have had the false insurance,

he would never have got the fireworks.

None of this would have ever, ever happened

and our lives would be as they were before.

The couple say they're still coming to terms with the devastation

wrought by both the accident and the fake insurance document.

There have been some difficult times.

Nobody had told me how badly I looked.

They had covered up all the mirrors in all the bathrooms on the ward

so that I couldn't see myself, and towards the end of my stay,

when I was able to go to the bathroom on my own,

unfortunately somebody had removed the paper from the mirror

and before I could do anything about it,

I saw my reflection in the mirror in the bathroom.

And there was just a scream from the bathroom

and I knew that he'd looked in the mirror.

I shouted, I screamed. It was awful.

It was far, far worse than I'd imagined it would be.

For him to suddenly see what had actually happened,

that was the worst bit, I think, really.

Absolutely terrible.

I honestly thought my life as I knew it was gone.

Chris has had 24 operations to remove over 300 blast fragments,

and he's blind in his left eye.

Despite being only too aware of the injuries that Chris has

suffered, AND having been found guilty in court,

Edgecombe didn't stop his activities.

While awaiting sentencing,

Edgecombe decided to put on another fireworks display.

Mr Edgecombe promised the court that he was no longer conducting

fireworks displays, that he was only going to act as an employee.

But before he was due to be sentenced,

he was found to be actually carrying out a display in Bridport in Dorset,

in-between injuring Mr Hignell and when he was due to be sentenced.

It shows his complete disregard for me, my wife,

and the court system, that he went and did another large firework

display despite being told by a judge not to.

Jason Edgecombe was convicted of fraud and health and safety

offences, and ordered to pay Chris £5,000, but to this day,

hasn't paid him a penny.

Edgecombe was eventually sentenced to 36 weeks in prison.

There's nothing legally to stop Edgecombe from carrying out

firework displays, and Fake Britain has discovered that

since the accident, he's set up another fireworks company,

FireMaster Fireworks.

He's also been making some interesting claims on his website.

He says he's never injured a member of his team,

and that no member of the public has been harmed.

He also claims that they've never needed to use emergency

first aid.

While this might be true for his current company,

it's certainly not true for the owner.

Whatever Edgecombe's up to now,

Chris still has to deal with the aftermath of his actions.

I honestly thought that, physically,

that I would look dreadful for the rest of my life.

I never imagined that the skills of the surgeons around me

would get me to where I am today.

Basically, we have to try and just carry on with our life, try

and put it behind us, which is very difficult, and try and carry on -

not let that affect our life if we can.

Jason Edgecombe told us that whilst he regretted what happened...

He said he believed at the time that Mr Hignell was more competent

with category four fireworks than it later emerged,

and claims that Mr Hignell completed a competency questionnaire.

He says he continued with

his display after Chris's injury

because he thought

this was safer, and says

he doesn't believe it continued

for as long as seven minutes.

Mr Edgecombe puts his failure to inform the correct

authorities of the accident down to naivety.

He said the only reason he'd conducted a further fireworks

display after promising the court he wouldn't was

because he couldn't find anyone else to oversee the show.

Me Edgecombe says he stands by the claims

made on the FireMaster Fireworks

website, saying

they refer only to THIS company,

and not to his previous one.

Lose a badge like this from

your car and you'll probably try

and replace it.

There are plenty of shops and

online traders only too happy to sell you one.

Some are quite expensive, others just a few pounds,

but sell enough of them, and you've got yourself a lucrative business,

which is why car accessories like this are now a target

for the fakers. We've been on the road with Trading Standards teams

cracking down on the problem.

Britain's Trading Standards departments have the

job of policing the internet to try and identify

and then weed out the fakes that are being sold there.

This morning, a team in the Midlands are meeting up to plan

their latest operation.

Today, they're on the trail of a trader

they suspect to be selling fake car accessories.

Right, what we've got, we've got an internet based retailer.

They're selling vehicle

merchandise and accessories.

They've got a high turnover,

suspected counterfeit stock in the last three and a half, four years.

We've had information that they're

selling car steering wheel badges,

logos such as Jaguar.

None of these are actually authorised for use

so they're all breaching trademarks legislation.

These products are poor quality copies.

The team have already made a test purchase of a car badge which

they've had confirmed as fake.

They not only believe the accessories are in breach

of copyright, but that people are paying good money for them,

believing them to be real, actually getting a substandard product.

They even suspect some of the goods might be dangerous.

We've recently had some information from BMW that

if someone buys a replacement but fake symbol

to go in the middle of the steering wheel where the airbag cover is,

when the airbag goes off,

that's not attached properly.

The danger is this symbol will actually be projected

towards the driver at 220mph so it could be a real safety risk.

We've checked the test purchases.

They're confirmed as counterfeit, so if it's got a brand,

a logo or trademarks, we're seizing it.

The team make their way to the trading

estate from which the seller is operating.

Other officers have arrived before them and entered the unit.

The business owner is on site

and Trading Standards explain what's going on.

Leave us to do what we've got to do.

If you've got any problems, you come to me.

The unit is enormous,

and the team face a daunting task, checking every box for fakes.

It looks like the team will have a search on their hands to see

if there are any fake goods amongst the legitimate ones.

But helpfully, the owner points them

towards another area of the unit that's nearly all car accessories,

and Rob Edmunds finds products similar to their test purchase

which triggered the whole investigation.

They soon turn up hundreds of branded car badges,

exactly what they were looking for.

You've got every type of motor vehicle badge you can think of.

Every brand, Alfa Romeo down to Vauxhall.

There's so many different brands. There's a lot of stuff in there.

The majority of that room will be seized.

My guess would be the vast majority,

if not all, of the motor branded parts that we seize will

actually turn out to be counterfeit,

but we'll have to run that past the brand owners first.

The suspect goods are coming thick and fast now.

As well as the car badges, there are spare wheel guards.

Not all have car marks on them, but any that do will be leaving

with Trading Standards for further investigation.

And they find what they believe might be evidence that

someone is making their own fakes to order from scratch.

-These are being stuck on here.

-They are, they are.

This is what we found in a drawer

in one of the offices,

and it's a drawer full of printed labels for a wide

variety of brands such as Suzuki, Freelander, Discovery, er,

all the major car brands. And what we think he's doing is,

this is what he's putting onto his wheel covers

so the fact that we've got a large amount of blank wheel

covers in the storage shows us how he's actually making them

to people's orders,

so he's just sticking these on when they need them, so the whole cabinet

unit with these brand labels in, will be seized and taken away.

As well as the accessories themselves,

Rob turns up what he believes could be crucial documentary evidence.

While we've been in the office,

obviously we've been looking for potential suppliers

and we've found all the documentation that we believe relates to the

products that we're seizing.

So it's going to be important to establish where

it's coming from, how long he's been purchasing it,

and the quantities as well that are involved.

He's just said, "You're taking thousands of pounds worth of goods."

I said, "Well, we're taking items we believe infringe

"the Trade Marks Act, or that there are safety concerns over."

The find is still growing.

The team believe all these items are being offered on sale to the

public as the real thing.

These are Jaguar hood ornaments.

Soon, the team's own van isn't big enough.

A larger vehicle arrives. But even that might be too small.

Whatever trade is going on in this facility,

the turnover is significant.

And it doesn't take too long to fill the second van.

The team get a third lorry and it takes

so long to load that by the time they're finished, it's getting dark.

Now it's time to take the whole load off to an undisclosed storage

area, and with that, it's job done.

Are we going to get it all in, do you reckon?

A successful day for the team who've taken a huge amount of suspect

gear off the market and out of harm's way.

They'll continue to investigate what they've found.

So, everything is locked away securely

and the next step is to complete our investigation

and bring a prosecution that we're pleased that we've got such

a large quantity of fake goods off the marketplace.

COINS RATTLE

The reaction of many people to seeing

one of these on the street is very simple. You give.

We are a very generous nation when it comes to charity,

and millions of pounds are collected every year for good causes in

charity boxes but, as Fake Britain has discovered,

this can be a target for the fakers.

There can be few crimes more heartless than

stealing from a charity, but we've seen before on Fake Britain how

people still take advantage, even stealing clothes from charity bins.

But this is not the only way that charitable donations are being

intercepted by fakers...

..as Don Young discovered.

He was out one night for a drink in his local with a friend.

As they were chatting, a woman entered the pub,

saying she was collecting for the Marie Curie Cancer Care charity.

Something about the way she was rattling her tin worried Don.

Her whole attitude didn't seem to match up with what

I would expect a charity collector to be like.

She didn't come up to the table and say, "Oh, good evening,

"gentlemen, sorry to interrupt your conversation, but I'm

"collecting on behalf of the Marie Curie Cancer Care Charity and..."

Nothing like that at all.

It was just a very quick mumble, pointed the tin, and then as soon as

she'd done the business, she was off like a rabbit.

And Don's suspicions grew when, a few weeks later, he ran

into the same collectors again in another pub in the same area.

This time, he rang Marie Curie to check their credentials.

I asked them

if they had any collectors operating in that area in pubs.

They said no, but they were aware of a scam going on and told me

that the police were in the process of gathering evidence.

Hampshire police were indeed investigating.

Detective constable Julio Pitso had been assigned to the case.

He'd been hearing complaints from other members of the public

about a group claiming to be collecting for Marie Curie.

One of the complainants had actually worked for Marie Curie Cancer Care.

She was aware as an employee that there was no designated

fundraising activity in the area at the time,

and she was also aware that this person was collecting in a manner

that is not designated to be a proper

method of collection by Marie Curie Cancer Care,

or any other charity for that matter,

and that is primarily shaking tins in people's faces.

She rang the phone number on the ID badge of the woman collecting.

It rang the phone of this man, Gordon Coe.

But when police spoke to Marie Curie about him,

he was known to the charity as a legitimate collector.

He had applied to Marie Curie Cancer Care in December

of 2008 to become a fundraiser for them.

Marie Curie Cancer Care attended his home address and vetted him

in line with their policies.

But two years after registering with the charity,

Coe had only banked £75 with them.

With suspicions starting to fall on him,

the charity looked back through its records.

They found Coe had attended one of their previous fundraising

events and he hadn't been there alone.

He brought two members of the public with him which he

introduced as friends.

One of those was Pauline Hunt and the other was Susan Christians.

The descriptions that concerned members of the public had

given the police matched Susan Christians and Pauline Hunt.

A week later, Don Young was out again with a friend

when he saw the same woman collecting in a third pub.

I thought she had a bit of a cheek trying her

luck in a number of different places. She was fairly easily recognisable.

She had obviously an accomplice in a car.

This time, Don decided to get the police involved.

He was sharp enough to be able to take

the registration of the vehicle and he passed that onto the police.

Ben Chapman was the man driving the car.

When police checked his movements later on,

a pattern started to emerge.

We could plot the movements of the vehicle to tie in with

the collections at various pubs in the Caterham and Woldingham areas.

Police decided to take action of their own.

They arrested the collectors

and executed warrants on their properties.

What they found during their search staggered them.

We found a number of different charity tins, in total,

around about 15 to 20, all branded as Marie Curie Cancer Care.

Coe had taken the boxes given to him and copied them,

faking the charities' branding.

But that wasn't all he faked.

We found false documentation and false identification on lanyards.

Finally, police knew the full extent of what Gordon Coe had been up to.

He'd recruited a gang of his own collectors using the fake IDs

and collection tins to open the purses of unsuspecting pub-goers

across the south-east of England.

In total, the fake collectors gang turned people's generosity

into a criminal profit of over £34,000.

It became clear to us that this was certainly an organised syndicate.

What they would do is identify an area, then search

the area for various pubs and go and collect at those pubs.

They'd do various routes of an evening which would

tie in with our witness accounts saying that

they left at four, five o'clock in the afternoon and were

back by sort of one, sometimes as late as two o'clock in the morning.

Police say they were spending that money,

money that should've gone to cancer patients, on expensive

holidays abroad to places like the Dominican Republic, and Greece,

despite the fact that most of them didn't have jobs.

Police interviews confirmed the gang's involvement further.

This is a recording of Susan Christians cracking under pressure.

"So, this is a right little organised crime syndicate,

"isn't it, really?"

Susan, it's not my job to judge what you've done,

it's just my job to investigate what's happened.

But the guilt didn't last long,

and the police had a fight on their hands.

ALL the gang claimed they were innocent, in court.

They just pleaded ignorance, saying,

"We went to collect because Gordon Coe asked us to and on that basis,

"when we came back, we emptied the charity tins and took what we

"thought was our fair share."

The jury took a different view.

It was blatantly obvious that it wasn't within

the scope of a reasonable person to collect on behalf of a charity

and take what you think are your legitimate earnings without so much

as an invoice, without so much as a receipt,

without so much as an audit trail.

Coe was sentenced to four years in jail.

The rest of the gang all received prison sentences.

Marie Curie Cancer Care is far from the only charity

affected by fake collectors.

Charities as diverse as Cancer Relief UK, Cerebral Palsy Care

for children, and the Yorkshire Air Ambulance have all been hit

by fake collectors.

But Sophie Kinsman, head of fundraising

at Marie Curie Cancer Care, says cases like this are still rare.

All charities have security procedures in place to ensure

the safety of the public's donations.

No voluntary fundraiser would be offended if you asked them

for proof of their identity

and for a number to call where you could check their credentials.

If you're at all unsure, please check with the charity or go

to their website for further information.

If you're approached in a public house,

or similar environment that doesn't have a designated event,

shaking tins in people's faces, asking for money,

is against the codes of practice.

So, that should be one of the biggest clues.

Charity collecting is just not done in this way.

That's all from Fake Britain. Goodbye.