Episode 20 Fake Britain

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

Welcome to Fake Britain.

Police!

Get down! Get down!

Put your hands behind your back now!

Here at the Fake Britain house, things might look familiar

but don't be taken in because this is a house that's filled with fakes.

In this series, I'll be revealing the counterfeits, copies and cons

that are flooding the market, fooling the public,

making money for the criminals and, maybe even,

putting you in danger.

We'll be investigating those fraudsters who are cashing in

by selling us something that isn't real

and we'll be showing YOU how to avoid falling for a fake.

Today on Fake Britain, the fake herbal slimming pills

containing a banned pharmaceutical...

Go online and buy this stuff, it's like Russian roulette,

you're just taking a chance with your health.

..the dog breeder producing pups with fake pedigrees...

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

This is such clear evidence of fraud.

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

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

micro scooter and these products out there are quite dangerous.

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

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

set on fire. It could blow up.

The weight loss industry in this country is worth billions

and there are all sorts of ways people try to shed the pounds.

Many turn to herbal remedies, natural slimming products.

This is one of them but it's a fake.

Described as only containing botanical ingredients,

you can buy it online but it's unlicensed and shouldn't be sold

here in the UK. That's not all.

It also contains a banned

and potentially dangerous chemical compound.

We're on the way to a raid with Danny Lee-Frost from the MHRA.

The Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency.

It's the group responsible for making sure medicines

and medical devices are safe.

So why the raid?

Well, last month the MHRA carried out a test purchase

of a slimming product being sold online.

The sample was analysed and it was found to contain

a huge dose of a banned drug called sibutramine.

Sibutramine was the active chemical compound

in a so-called wonder slimming pill sold in the UK as Reductil.

However, the drug was proved to raise blood pressure

and could even induce heart attack in some patients.

It was banned in 2010.

Danny's concerned that buyers who believe they're getting

a 100% herbal product are unwittingly getting

the banned drug, sibutramine.

It was withdrawn from the market

because of the increased risk of stroke and unforeseen heart attacks.

That was when people were taking it under medical supervision.

Now if anybody's taking this particular product,

this Lida Daidaihua product,

they're not going to know it's in there,

there's far more active ingredient than there was in the licensed product,

so the risk of unforeseen heart attack

and stroke is much, much, much greater.

On the raid, the MHRA team are looking to close down

this seller fast.

Officers have entered the premises with a warrant

and then they'll be conducting an inspection of the premises,

looking for evidence of the product being there

and any evidence relating to sale, or supply.

So if there's any computers, or laptop or paperwork,

they'll be looking at that

and, if necessary, they'll seize it as evidence.

Within an hour, the officers think they've found

the suspect's hidden supply.

We've got several hundred boxes of the product that we were looking for

in the rear bedroom of the private house.

As we suspected, it's the same stuff that we purchased off them.

It contains the active ingredient, sibutramine.

We're just checking to make sure that there's not any more

stashed anywhere else.

They bring several bags of evidence out of the house.

Several thousand packs.

Tens of thousands of tablets and capsules.

In terms of actually at one single address,

this is pretty substantial.

It turns out there may be even more evidence for the team to see.

The initial inspection of the premises,

and looking at some of the paperwork,

identified that the subject actually rents a lock-up unit.

We don't have a warrant for the lock-up

but we're taking the subject with us

and we're going to ask him to open the lock-up for us.

I wasn't expecting that today.

The lock-up is packed with even more of the fake herbal product.

A lot more. These products appear to have come from China.

As is often the way, the boxes and sachets of pills are sent

separately in the hope of evading detection.

A large box of blistered capsules,

the Lida Daidaihua that we have been looking for all day.

This probably doubles the size of the seizure from this morning.

It's crucial that this shipment doesn't hit the streets.

It's suspected to contain a banned drug in huge uncontrolled doses.

Just to be sure, it goes off to the lab.

There they'll analyse what's inside.

The suspect's contact details are taken

and he will be questioned at a later date once officers have

established more facts about the operation.

For Danny, so far it's a good result.

We've seized a lot of fake and unlicensed medicines.

We've taken those off the market

and prevented those being sold to the unsuspecting general public.

Later, we'll catch up with Danny and find out exactly how much sibutramine was in the fake

supplements and we'll investigate how the fakers selling these pills

have infiltrated the UK's most popular auction websites.

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

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

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

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

and also crucial information about the likely health of your pup,

except many of the details on this Kennel Club certificate

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

Whether it is a Labrador, a French bulldog, a Great Dane,

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

for every different type of dog.

And puppy breeding can be very profitable with the most

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

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

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

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

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

the perfect pet for her young family.

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

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

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

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

They were wormed. They had four months insurance free.

Everything looked fine.

The picture of the puppies was cute.

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

when we go to view.

I phoned The Kennel Club first before we went around there

to check that she was who she said she was.

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

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

So off we went.

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

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

had been receiving complaints about a breeder called Lisa Walsh.

Gary established that she was renting Greenacres Farm,

a large property near Norwich.

Kennel Club registration documents were taking a long time to be

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

A number of them had died shortly after being purchased.

As a result of the complaints,

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

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

After being offered two puppies by Lisa Walsh,

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

The Kennel Club certificate Gary was shown stated

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

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

Walsh told Trading Standards she had mixed up the mothers

and the pups with another set of a similar age.

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

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

Very unfortunately for Mrs Walsh that night she had a burglary

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

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

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

and granted a licence by the local council.

South Norfolk Council granted Walsh

a breeders' licence in November 2011.

They told us they made several unannounced inspection visits

and nothing untoward was found.

Once Mrs Walsh had this licence from her local authority

she would register her puppies with The Kennel Club

and then she would receive the registration certificates

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

The Kennel Club trusts breeders to fill in their paperwork

honestly but Walsh planned to present buyers with legitimate

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

Around this time, Devam Hendry,

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

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

to have a pedigree.

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

Devam called the number and was told she should

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

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

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

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

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

and therefore it was very, very safe

and the dog would be very, very healthy.

I then thought £400 was fine to pay.

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

which she decided to call Minnie.

She was promised the paperwork would follow immediately,

but it didn't.

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

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

She made some kind of excuse.

It took about six weeks for them to arrive,

which I then sent off to The Kennel Club.

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

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

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

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

As you might expect, this is where the fun stops.

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

Ones like it are on sale to unsuspecting customers now.

So how do you tell the real from the counterfeit?

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

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

at most school gates.

Riding one, well, certainly beats walking to school

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

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

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

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

His older cousin had a scooter

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

Kathryn liked the look of the micro scooter.

It is a well-known brand.

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

on micro scooters and they seemed to be going really safely

around the parks and managing well on them.

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

The search started online.

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

Soon Kathryn found exactly what she was looking for.

They seemed to have all the genuine product on there.

They had stock photos.

They had a description which matched the description from

mini micro scooters and the price seemed comparable.

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

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

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

original wording that a micro scooter's one had.

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

Within the box, the instructions were photocopied.

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

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

Having unwittingly bought a counterfeit scooter,

Kathryn acted quickly.

She replaced the fake with the genuine item.

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

what my consumer rights were having purchased something online.

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

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

and also I wanted my postage costs covered.

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

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

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

Ben Gibson is the company's MD.

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

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

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

but, I think, it is the online sales that

really drive a lot of this fake scooter activity.

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

promotional shots.

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

he take a look at the latest fake website.

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

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

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

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

And every time Ben gets the image removed,

it pops up on another website, a few weeks later.

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

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

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

We have automatic steering mechanisms which see how many

turns one can do over the lifetime of the scooter.

We treat them with heat and light.

Really, everything is tested endlessly.

We've seen the real scooter withstand 20kg.

Can the fake take the strain?

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

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

In the fake, they have no such bars.

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

deck to become sharp and to become hazardous.

These scooters are designed for children up to 20kg.

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

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

The original bends much less.

The quality, therefore, of a deck

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

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

What are the safety issues with the products?

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

They broadly look the same but the feel is different.

Handle grips should be grippy.

These are much less grippy than the original handle grips.

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

and that actually will be very dangerous.

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

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

it sticks to the back wheel causing skidding

and certainly not a progressive stopping motion that we

would like to see on the original scooters.

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

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

build quality of the wheel.

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

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

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

If you combine that with the sub-standard brake,

you've got a recipe for disaster.

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

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

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

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

and actually these products that are out there are quite dangerous

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

Previously we saw Gary Young from Trading Standards

investigating a dog breeder called Lisa Walsh.

Shortly after this test purchase,

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

Her Labrador, Alfie, has suffered a horrible accident.

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

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

but he let out this almighty yelp

and I've never heard him do that before.

I thought, "My gosh."

We took him straight down to the vet's

and we were referred to a specialist.

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

and they said his hips were in an awful state.

They said it is severe bilateral hip dysplasia.

His hips weren't even connected.

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

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

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

never be used to breed puppies.

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

Any certificate for a newborn Labrador should contain

information about the medical history of its parents' hips.

This is known as a hip score.

Labradors, like many bigger dogs, can suffer from serious

and painful hip conditions

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

and father, giving an owner an indication

of how healthy your puppy is likely to be.

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

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

Sam cared for Alfie through months of painful treatment

and a long convalescence.

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

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

Unfortunately, it's not going to stop there.

He has to have yearly checkups.

That alone costs £400 or £500.

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

Everything was in order.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

and on the right side my dog, Minnie.

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

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

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

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

She has got some Westie characteristics

but she's not a pedigree Westie.

This is such clear evidence of fraud.

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

stated on her Kennel Club registration document.

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

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

Gary had been inundated with calls from angry pedigree pup buyers

who felt they had been deceived by Lisa Walsh.

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

There he discovered the true scale of her fakery.

The customers would actually arrive here and then they would go

and meet up with Mrs Walsh in the porch area where

they were shown one or two puppies

and the selected adult or so-called mother

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

Whilst over in the barn, further down,

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

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

Disgusting.

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

Yeah, that's puppy farming, that is.

That's basically what a puppy farm is.

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

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

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

and gave him a life that he deserves.

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

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

identities by registering fictional pedigree pups with The Kennel Club.

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

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

she was breeding in the barn.

So the unwitting buyer would see a Kennel Club certificate

stating the puppy was pedigree when it wasn't.

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

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

to pay a premium price for, was fake.

Gary also found evidence of fake vaccination certificates.

The mass of documentation Traded Standards had gathered

proved damning in court.

Walsh initially denied participating in a fraudulent business

but faced with a mountain of evidence,

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

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

She received a six-month sentence for fraud

and was banned from breeding dogs for five years.

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

and Greenacres Farm is now home to a local family.

No puppies have been bred there since Walsh left.

Lisa Walsh was able to fool her customers

because she was licensed as a breeder with the local

authority and was registering her puppies with The Kennel Club.

For Caroline Kisko, secretary at The Kennel Club,

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

She was obviously defrauding people,

not just The Kennel Club but many of the authorities.

We, of course, were registering the dogs,

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

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

We also showed Caroline the photograph of Minnie,

who was sold as a West Highland terrier.

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

that's for certain.

In any case, where somebody is worried that their dog

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

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

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

Although Walsh was registering her puppies with The Kennel Club,

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

assured breeder scheme.

We would much prefer that they actually went to our assured

breeders who are checked by us.

We make sure that way that they can absolutely be

certain of getting a healthy and happy puppy.

The Kennel Club, along with other animal welfare organisations,

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

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

fooling the system again.

Despite being bred and raised in poor conditions, both Alfie

and Minnie are now thriving.

Now he's just a crazy dog.

He's all fixed up.

He had to have both his hips replaced.

Now he's absolutely fantastic, loves life.

He runs, he jumps, he pulls me everywhere.

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

It's amazing what the vets have done for him

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

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

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

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

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

Over 10 million of us have purchased an iPhone,

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

Even an older model can sell for hundreds of pounds.

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

because, despite appearances, they're both fake.

So what's the story behind the counterfeit iPhone

and how can you spot a fake?

This is Shen Xian in southern China,

an industrial powerhouse of a city

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

Over 200,000 are produced every day.

But there's also a flourishing trade in fakery.

We found not just counterfeit iPhones but entire fake

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

We were offered fakes in a number of different stores

and after a little haggling...

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

Peter Richardson is an industry analyst

and a regular visitor to Shen Xian.

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

This is very typical of our fake iPhone packaging.

It looks superficially quite similar to the real thing.

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

you would find on any Apple product.

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

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

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

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

and assembled in the USA.

On the genuine product it even says assembled in China.

That's also a bit of a giveaway.

Surprisingly, Peter believes most Chinese customers buy these phones

knowing their fakes.

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

but not everyone can afford an iPhone.

And they know they're buying a fake,

but it's almost like a bit of fun.

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

which roughly translates as bandit cellphone,

and they happily buy these and replace them fairly frequently,

because they know the quality isn't very good,

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

But what's presented to the Chinese as fake,

is being sold to the British customer as real,

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

for unwanted iPhone upgrades.

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

and iPhones, in particular.

People really want to have one,

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

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

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

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

be careful you're not buying a fake product.

Trading Standards teams across the country

have discovered the fake phones when investigating suspected sellers

of counterfeit goods.

So, how convincing are these Chinese fakes?

How much do you reckon it would be worth new?

£500.

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

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

300 quid?

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

Oh, God, er...

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

apart from it's got a cover on it.

I wouldn't know that was a fake.

I'd say it was a good fake.

We asked Phone Heroes,

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

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

Erm...first off, looking at it,

it comes with a screen protector on it.

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

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

Looking closely at it,

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

Here we have the genuine Apple iPhone 5S

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

It's aluminium.

So, what's going on under the bonnet

of both the real and the fake iPhone?

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

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

where you have speakers and home buttons.

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

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

all onto the back of the screen.

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

Compared with the iPhone,

the various parts of the counterfeit

are crudely thrown together,

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

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

You can tell by the solder quality.

The fake iPhone, the way they have actually soldered it

is poor soldering.

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

that the actual cable is millimetres away.

So that can easily cause a short circuit,

straight from the battery.

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

If there was a short circuit, the battery could potentially

set on fire, it could blow up.

It could do anything, really.

Things like that make it really unsafe,

and clearly it hasn't been tested.

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

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

So how can YOU check to see if your iPhone is a fake?

So we've got two phones here -

fake iPhone, the white one...

and a genuine iPhone 5S.

One of the things that make smartphones so popular

is that you can get apps to help make the phone more useful.

And for Apple users they all come from App Store.

Both products have the icon for the Apple App Store,

but, interestingly, the fake product also has an icon

for the Google Play store

which, really, indicates that this is an Android product,

not an Apple IOS product.

This is interesting.

Lots of smartphones are powered by an operating system

called Android, but iPhones aren't.

Turn on this fake iPhone and you don't see the Apple logo,

you get the word Android.

Android users get their apps through the Google Play store,

not through App Store.

It's one or the other, chalk or cheese,

so does the counterfeit App Store work?

If we go to the app stores on both products,

on the genuine product, you get the normal landing screen

for the Apple App Store,

but what we come to on the fake product

is actually a fake App Store.

Peter will try to download the app Subway Surfers,

a very popular game.

So once we launch Subway Surfers -

interestingly, the description is in Chinese, which...

You probably wouldn't find with the genuine product.

And another giveaway is that the size of the game on the fake product

is 26 megabytes,

while on the genuine game it's over 50 megabytes.

We can try and download the game,

but it doesn't load properly

and actually crashes when we try and play the game.

We try again and again and again.

But the fake App Store crashes every time.

But if you're buying an iPhone outside of the Apple Store

or a licensed reseller,

what should you be looking out for?

Really, it's good to get your hand on a product, use it,

assure yourself that it is genuine before you part with your money.

Earlier, we were with Danny Lee-Frost

as an enforcement team from the MHRA raided the house of a suspect.

He was believed to be selling a slimming drug billed as 100% herbal

but which, in fact, contains a dangerous pharmaceutical.

The haul from the raid has been brought here

to the MHRA's evidence store.

This is where the agency keeps the huge quantities

of illegal and counterfeit drugs they've seized.

Before carrying out the raid, the MHRA made a test purchase,

which confirmed the presence of a banned drug called sibutramine,

but that could've been a one-off.

So Danny had tests run on a number of samples from the seizure.

When it was analysed,

it was found to contain 18 milligrams of sibutramine.

This stuff has got it in there, it's not on the label,

it's not mentioned anywhere on the pack -

in fact, the pack says it's safe and 100% natural.

Here in the UK, sibutramine was sold as a miracle drug called Reductil.

It was banned in 2010.

The 18 milligrams of sibutramine

the MHRA have found in the fake herbal product,

is nearly twice the standard dose

that would've been found in Reductil when it was legally available.

So, anyone taking this product is effectively increasing

the risk of a side-effect.

Like the vast majority of counterfeit drugs here,

they were sold online.

We don't tend to see it in retail outlets.

There's a lot more due diligence in those types of marketplaces.

A retailer will do a lot more checks on their supplier

before they buy this stuff,

but you go online - all you know about the seller is

he's got a glossy website.

So when you go online and buy this stuff, it's like Russian roulette,

you're just taking a chance with your health.

Sibutramine was proscribed medicine,

and, as such, no GP would have issued it to any patient

suffering from a cardiovascular condition.

Of course, the fakers don't care who they sell to.

Moira Cosgrove is an experienced nutritionist.

She understands why people order products and take on those risks.

If someone is embarrassed about their weight

and wants to try and do something

without discussing it with anybody else,

this offers the ideal opportunity

for them to purchase a product like this.

The risk is that they may be buying something unwittingly that,

because of their medical history,

could actually be dangerous for them.

Danny's seen a rise in slimming pills masquerading as herbal products.

We're seeing more of the types of products that are marketed as natural

where the sibutramine is hidden.

The fake herbal product the MHRA seize

was sold through the seller's own website,

but are versions of the product being sold on eBay -

the UK's most popular auction website?

We test-purchase two products from two different UK-based eBay sellers.

Both products were sold as 100% herbal.

Our packages arrived over the course of the following week.

Professor Simon Gibbons heads up UCL's School of Pharmacy.

He's an internationally recognised specialist

in the study of herbal medicines.

He wasn't surprised to learn that the fakers are fraudulently

claiming their slimming pills are 100% herbal.

We see adulteration with herbal medicinal products

in many different areas -

not only in slimming aids, but also anti-inflammatory drugs, for example.

There are many, many examples of products

which are being marketed predominantly as a single herb

or a mixture of herbs

and they actually contain pharmaceutical compounds.

We asked Professor Gibbons and his team

to establish if either of the products we purchased

contained sibutramine.

Both of them contained quite large concentrations of that compound present -

approximately 40 to 50 milligrams of sibutramine.

So our batch of the fake herbal drug contains even more sibutramine

than the pills seized by the MHRA.

The side-effects from sibutramine are well-known,

including increased heart rate and blood pressure in some patients,

and a greater risk of heart attack and stroke

in those with cardiovascular disease.

That's why it was banned.

What's less well understood is the psychological impact

sibutramine can have when taken in extreme doses.

Compounds like sibutramine in high dose

can release a large amount of serotonin

which will affect mood,

it can make people low, can make people depressed.

It needs proper supervision, you cannot have these sorts of compounds

in these preparations without some sort of control.

Maria Konski lost her best friend 10 years ago.

Her name was Lydia Landans

and she committed suicide weeks after buying a pack

of the fake supplement.

Maria's friend had no previous history of mental illness

and tests of the remains of the product confirmed

the presence of sibutramine.

Maria knew Lydia better than anyone.

Friends since childhood, they moved to London 10 years ago,

but shortly before her tragic death,

friends and family noticed a sudden change in Lydia's behaviour.

She had a bit of paranoia.

She said things like, "There's something dark behind me."

After her death, Maria set out to discover

how common these side-effects are.

The more I looked on forums,

the more confirmation I was getting.

There was a woman who said that she did experience suicidal thoughts

and she nearly committed suicide,

but, luckily, she managed to stop.

Frustrated by the ongoing trade in sibutramine-laced products,

Maria went online to warn others of the dangers.

Her efforts generated a mixed response.

There are people who are interested who would ask questions.

The sellers would usually remove the video immediately,

ban my account and I'd have to create a new one.

These products aren't just sold on the internet,

they're marketed there, and this aggressive marketing

is a cause for concern for nutritionist Moyra Cosgrove.

There's no doubt that the reviews of a product

like this are very powerful.

Whether they're genuine or not, of course, is another matter entirely.

But this will have an effect on people's buying behaviour,

and lead them to make the purchase.

Maria plans to continue posting

whenever she sees anyone pushing the fake product.

I don't want anything like that to happen to anyone else,

and the worst thing is that someone

can be going through the same thing

and their family wouldn't even know what was going on.

The details of the seller of the fake herbal drug we purchased

have been passed to eBay,

while the seller of the drug raided by the MHRA has received a caution,

and his product with a street value of over £50,000

has been destroyed.

That's all from Fake Britain. Goodbye.