Episode 4 Fake Britain

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

Welcome to Fake Britain.

Police!

-Get down!

-Get down on the floor now!

-Put your hands behind your back now!

Here, at the Fake Britain house,

we'll reveal the fakes that are flooding the market,

conning people like you and me

and making money for the criminals.

We'll investigate the fraudsters

who are selling us something that isn't real

and could be dangerous.

And we'll help YOU avoid falling for a fake.

Today on Fake Britain...

The tradesmen faking logos to rip off homeowners...

My father-in-law was actually showered by all of the foam

that had just been left in the loft space.

Tiles were loose, and if there was any high wind, all of those

would have been ripped off the roof.

The fake bailiffs threatening small businesses...

I couldn't believe somebody could scam me out of just under £4,000.

And the fake breathalysers that could cost you your licence

or even your life.

This is telling me I'm alcohol free.

Anybody who relies on this is really playing with fire.

There are around 100,000 county court judgements for debt

issued against British companies every year.

Some of these result in a visit by bailiffs or enforcement agents

to recover the debt.

So, if you get a call from someone who sounds official saying

that the business you work at, or even own, owes money,

you're going to sit up and take notice. It's a serious matter.

But what if that phone call ISN'T everything it seems?

This is Little Bunnies nursery in King's Lynn, Norfolk.

Just after starting her shift, manager Becky received a phone call.

-PHONE RINGS

-Good morning, Little Bunnies...

The man on the phone said he was from a firm of bailiffs

and that the bailiffs were on their way to seize

goods from the nursery to settle an unpaid debt.

I was actually quite nervous when they phoned.

They were very aggressive in the way that they were talking,

very convincing that they were actual real bailiffs

that just wanted to come and take all the equipment from the nursery.

Becky was confused about the so-called debt owed by the business.

More than that, she was worried about the impact on the dozen or so

children currently in the nursery.

So, she acted quickly.

As soon as I hung up the phone I followed our security procedures.

I got all the children from the front of the nursery into the back where it's quite secure.

I stood at the front of the building with the telephone, ready in case they were going to come.

Becky then phoned her boss, the nursery's owner, Donna Jarvis.

When Donna arrived, she immediately phoned the man - who was calling

himself a bailiff - to query the debt, of which she had no knowledge.

The man told her she owed £550 to an IT company for work on software,

plus a £250 bailiff fee.

She insisted she knew nothing about the debt but he refused to listen.

He says, "Sorry, love, we hear this all the time."

He had the paperwork rustling in the background.

He had a case reference number.

My words to him actually were,

"There's women and children in my nursery, a lot of children."

His actual words were, "I don't care how many kids are in the building,

"we're coming through the door."

At that point I said, "Ridiculous, I'm phoning the police."

He informed me, "No need, we'll be turning up with the police."

The man told Donna the only way to stop the bailiffs

would be to settle the debt.

He gave her an 0845 number to call in order to pay up.

The chap answered,

"Hello, Northampton County Court. This is the payment line."

I instantly went in very passionately and angrily saying,

"I've just had bailiffs on the phone stating that I've got this debt."

"Excuse me, madam, I need to stop you. Please can I take your reference number?"

Pretended to type it into a computer, you could hear the keys.

"Yep, Little Bunnies Day Nursery. You owe this amount of money."

He repeated the same dates off when it went to court.

He was so good. He had an answer for every single thing I threw at him.

Little Bunnies nursery wasn't the only business to receive

a phone call from men demanding money.

Jenny Tofts' hair salon in Cambridgeshire had a similar call

out of the blue from someone claiming to work on behalf of the courts.

He said he was calling from Croydon County Court

and that he was dealing with the judgment that had been made

against my business, as I'd not turned up to the court case.

I then obviously said, "What court case? I know nothing about this."

I'm like, "God, I've never had anything like that in my life."

I couldn't believe it.

She had no idea what they were talking about.

The man claimed Jenny owed nearly £2,000 in court fees

and an unpaid debt for online advertising.

They threatened that the bailiffs would arrive shortly

unless she paid the debt.

I questioned it and said,

"Surely I don't have to make that payment now?"

He said, "Yes, I'm afraid you do because the judge's ruled,

"you now have a county court judgment against your business

"and if you don't make that payment, they will come to your salon

"and they will take goods to that value."

What Jenny didn't know was if she'd had a real debt,

REAL bailiffs would have needed to give her seven days' written warning

before being able to take any enforcement action.

By now, Jenny was seriously worried about her business.

I didn't want someone coming in here with a salon full of clients,

and I panicked because I thought, "What's that going to do

"to my business, my reputation and everything else?"

In King's Lynn, nursery owner, Donna,

was also feeling the pressure as she spoke to a man who said

he was a clerk on the Northampton Court payment line.

I was almost convinced,

I was almost convinced and I almost paid the debt.

But Donna decided, finally, to pass the phone to her partner,

who happened to be an ex-police officer,

a fact that Donna made clear to the man on the phone.

And it was only at that point that the young lad slipped with his nice,

polite, "I'm a county court...county clerk" on the payment line.

He went, "Oh, great."

And then the line went dead.

And then I re-phoned the 0845 number to get a mobile answer machine.

And then I realised it was definitely a con.

Donna had a lucky escape. She didn't pay the fake bailiff.

But in Cambridgeshire, salon owner, Jenny,

had been feeling the pressure and the man who said the bailiffs were coming

to get their money and disrupt her business

was doing everything to prove he was genuine.

He got me to go online to these websites and type in reference numbers

that he gave me, which then brought up all their information.

I suppose I ended up believing what he was saying

because he had an answer, almost for everything, really.

Thinking that she must somehow be in the wrong

and fearing the disruption to her business, Jenny finally caved in.

She paid nearly £2,000 into an account number given to her

by the man on the phone.

But later he phoned back claiming the money hadn't gone through and

threatened the bailiffs again if she didn't make the payment once more.

I panicked again

and made that second payment.

When Jenny checked with her bank,

she was told both payments had in fact gone through.

She'd lost thousands of pounds to fake bailiffs.

I couldn't believe that somebody could...

..scam me out of just under £4,000 of my salon's money

in the space of an afternoon.

It's a huge sum of money for a business like Jenny's to lose.

I'd got wages to pay, I'd got tax bills to pay.

You go home every night feeling sick to your stomach

and worrying about how you're going to pay for everything, and how

your business is going to survive now this has happened to you.

Jenny phoned Action Fraud,

the UK's national fraud and internet crime reporting centre.

They referred her case on to the National Fraud Intelligence Bureau,

a specialised unit within City of London Police

that's been set up to tackle fraud.

Chief Inspector Matt Bradford is the head of the unit

and he's identified a trend where fake bailiffs are cynically

targeting particular types of business.

Fraudsters seem to be targeting those softer

and more vulnerable targets.

We've had nurseries, schools, doctors, plumbers, you name it.

Anyone can be vulnerable to this.

And while Jenny lost around £4,000, other victims of the fake bailiffs

might consider her to be one of the lucky ones.

In one instance, lost nearly £20,000.

That's a huge amount of money,

especially if we're talking about small businesses.

That's a lot of turnover, a lot of hard work and it's just lost.

After two months of painstaking negotiations with her bank,

Jenny finally got her money back.

She's still coming to terms with just how sophisticated the fakers were.

I was amazed at the length this faker went to,

to get the information that he did.

Not only did he have information about me,

he'd researched my business to make it believable, to make me believe.

Whilst Donna had a narrow miss with the fakers,

their actions have left her seething.

It makes me extremely angry that somebody gets up in the morning,

looks in the mirror and decides that they're going to spend

their working day threatening children and women.

And the fact that these fake bailiffs are out there,

taking this money, is disgusting.

Matt has some good advice for members of the public who get a call

out of the blue from anyone demanding money.

You need to make sure that you know who you're talking to.

That means putting the phone down,

doing your own independent research, phoning them back on a number

that YOU'VE identified, not the number they've given you.

Protect yourself and that's just by buying yourself some time

and doing your research.

Around 7,000 road accidents and 300 deaths each year in the UK

are caused by drink-driving.

This home breathalyser could help.

It should tell you whether you're over the limit

when you get behind the wheel.

And if you're planning to drive in France, and 17 million of us

will visit the country this year,

then you'll need one in your vehicle because it's now the law.

That means a lot of these things are going to be sold

but, hopefully, not too many like this one.

It's a fake.

It's nightfall and we're out on the roads with officers

from Dorset Police's traffic unit.

They're on their way to a collision involving a young female driver

who lost control and crashed into a parked car.

Do you want to sort this out, while I go speak to the driver?

She's not been seriously injured, there's doctors on scene. I'll just go and see her.

Anyone involved in a road accident has to be breathalysed

using one of these Home Office approved police breathalysers.

Right. Fill your lungs with as much air as you can and keep blowing

until I tell you to stop.

Keep going, keep going, keep going, keep going. Well done. Thank you.

-You're zero. All right?

-Yeah.

Thank you very much for that.

While alcohol wasn't to blame for this accident, nearly 300 deaths

on British roads each year are caused by drink-driving.

The police rely on genuine approved breathalysers that give

accurate readings to make the roads safer.

Unfortunately, sir, you've failed the test, so I arrest you.

These help them to make over 40,000 drink-driving convictions ever year.

Members of the public can now buy their own breathalyser.

But Fake Britain has discovered that some machines, falsely claiming to

be approved by the police, are being sold online

for as little as a fiver.

Dorset Trading Standards have been investigating these products.

We've got concerns on these breathalysers

where there are any links to the police or any claim

that they are a professional item when quite clearly they're not.

Trading Standards' main concern about these fake breathalysers

is that they could give false readings.

Fake Britain wanted to see if these cheaper online products

matched the performance of the real thing.

So, we bought several allegedly police approved breathalysers

and took them to Lion Laboratories, a world leader in breath alcohol

testing equipment, whose products are approved by the Home Office.

Dr Paul Williams is a forensic alcohol expert.

Plainly, these are all low-cost instruments

and they use a very inferior type of detection technology

for the actual alcohol analysis.

Dr Williams decided to test the fake police breathalysers

with the equipment HE USES to test

his genuine Home Office approved products.

When he blows into these jars, they'll release a vapour that

simulates human breath at various concentrations of alcohol.

Firstly, how do these breathalysers perform

when they're tested at 1.5 times the UK legal limit?

This is telling me I have a blood alcohol level of 0.05,

which is just over half the legal limit in the United Kingdom.

Whereas in fact, I'm 1.5 half times the legal limit.

So this machine is reading less than half of what it should do.

This is grossly inaccurate.

If you relied on this fake breathalyser to check you were fit

to drive after drinking, you would break the law and risk your licence,

not to mention the lives of other road users.

It's got a reading of zero, in fact.

It's actually telling me I've got no alcohol at all in my body.

But how would these fake breathalysers react to breath

from a person who is three times the UK legal limit?

Yet again, the readings are zero.

Anybody who relies on this is really playing with fire.

All of these devices gave false readings

and their claims to be approved by the police are fake.

These instruments should not be on sale to the public.

They are certainly not police grade equipment.

We showed our test results to the head of Dorset Police's traffic unit,

Inspector Matt Butler.

That's really quite scary.

What worries me is people are going to think

they're doing the right thing, they're being sensible,

they're being safe, but in actual fact they're not.

They may go out, they may think they're safe to drive

and be involved in a crash, hurt themselves or hurt someone else.

So what really worries me is these pieces of equipment, rather than

making the roads safer, they're actually making them more dangerous.

The police and Dorset Trading Standards also carried out a survey

of fake breathalysers bought online and their results were worrying.

Nine devices out of the 14 said you were safe to drive

when you weren't safe to drive.

You cannot rely on a piece of equipment that you buy

from the internet to make sure you are safe on the roads.

You may think you are safe but you may be over the limit.

The police officers on the front line who have to deal with

the damage caused by drink-driving, have a simple message for drivers.

We go to these incidents regularly and we have to go and deal

with the consequence of it.

I knock on the door, give the bad news to the family.

The message we give people is, don't drink and drive. It's not worth it.

So you need some work done at your home.

Who do you get to do it properly?

Well, you might look for someone

who's a member of a recognised trade association or federation.

Thousands of builders, roofers, plumbers

and window installers belong to them.

This is a quotation for work at a house in Staffordshire

and it has loads of trade association logos on it.

But they are all fake.

And that caused the home owner all sorts of problems.

Home renovation is big business

with the average home improvement project costing £13,000.

But who can you trust to do it?

Well, for every aspect of building work, there's a relevant trade association

designed to improve standards

and to prevent consumers falling prey to rogue tradesmen.

To be a member of the trade association, a tradesman must

often have the right qualifications and sign up to a code of practice.

In return, they can use the association's logo

to reassure and attract customers.

Customers like home owner Kevin Price.

The roof itself was in a bit of a mess.

It was about 30 years old, possibly even 40 years old.

Last year, Kevin decided to carry out some major roofing work

to his house in Staffordshire.

He turned to the internet and before long found the right person.

Or so he thought.

The gentleman was very amenable on the phone. He sounded very friendly.

He seemed to know what he was talking about.

He was very quick to get the quotation to me.

And Kevin was reassured that the roofer

appeared to be a member of various trade associations.

This is the quotation that he actually sent through.

Here is the list of jobs that he said he was going to do.

At the bottom you can actually see some of the logos, which I thought

at the time was a good sign that he was an accredited tradesman.

But the logos that really got Kevin's attention

were the ones for an organisation called CompetentRoofer,

a government-backed scheme.

I gave the gentleman the contract to do the job because of the logo.

Ray Horwood is the chief executive of CompetentRoofer,

which was set up to help improve standards in the roofing industry.

The CompetentRoofer scheme allows members

to certify their own work for building regulations.

They also have to meet strict standards.

To be a member, you have to be vetted

both in terms of the paperwork and on-site.

In terms of paperwork, we check the credit rating of the company,

we check they have got the correct insurance and liability insurance.

We also check they have the qualifications necessary to do that work.

We then send someone out to inspect them and check some work

actually in progress to make sure they are competent to do it.

Ray believes that while no scheme is perfect, his is not far off.

If there is something wrong with the roof,

we will go back to the company and ask them to fix it.

If the company, for example, becomes bankrupt in the ten years,

they have got a warranty that covers it.

So, really, it is the best guarantee you can possibly have.

And so Kevin thought his tradesman,

complete with his CompetentRoofer membership,

was bound to do a good job.

But not long after employing him, things started to go wrong.

The first thing that we noticed

was that the tiles on the gable end looked more like a jigsaw.

They weren't in line, they weren't as straight.

As you can see, that was the job that was left by the builder.

This completely contravenes any building regulations whatsoever.

As Kevin would find out,

this was just the beginning of his roofing woes.

We went inside the property and opened the loft hatch,

where my father-in-law was actually showered by all of the foam

that had just been left in the loft space.

Half of the work that he was claiming to have been done

hadn't been done.

Kevin was now so concerned about the roof, he felt he had no choice

but to ask a second company to come over and take a look.

What they found was even more worrying.

The tiles themselves were not fitted correctly.

They were loose and if there was any high wind,

all of those would have been ripped off the roof

because none were nailed in place.

And they actually removed some of the tiles

to find that the batons inside had been cut.

They basically said this had been laid by almost an amateur

and the whole roof had to be taken off and redone.

Finally, Kevin had had enough.

He contacted CompetentRoofer in the hope that they would intervene.

But he was in for a shock.

I was advised that the logo was actually fake,

that the gentleman was not a member of their organisation,

and they basically advised me to get in touch with Trading Standards.

Kevin had been the victim of a simple deception known as logo abuse.

The fake accreditation had duped him into hiring a rogue trader.

All the way through, he kept telling me that he wasn't a cowboy,

he wasn't ripping me off.

I have since found out that he's been ripping off a lot of people.

There are other people who have suffered at his hands.

So what is CompetentRoofer doing

to prevent fraudulent use of its logo?

Chief executive Ray Horwood says they take action wherever they can.

Anybody who runs any kind of successful business

or successful mark, will know that however many strengths

you put into your work in guaranteeing that logo,

people can copy it.

So we get it on a semi-regular basis

and any report of misuse of logo,

we go straight to Trading Standards and they follow it up.

The use of fake logos is a prosecutable offence

and can carry a hefty fine.

But that's not enough to prevent widespread logo abuse.

Kevin's roofer wasn't just faking CompetentRoofer logos.

Trust Mark is the Government's flagship approved trader scheme.

He was also faking the Trust Mark logo

and he's not the only faker out there.

We spoke to Trust Mark who told us

they have been the victim of persistent logo abuse

with over 200 companies found to be falsely using the logo in one year alone.

Kevin took the roofing company to the Small Claims Court.

Judgment in default was entered against them

because they failed to respond to the proceedings.

Fake Britain tried to contact the company for comment,

but nobody responded.

For Kevin and his family,

the ordeal has taken a huge emotional and financial toll.

The gentleman charged us £3,360.

It cost a further £2,510 to put right what he had done.

I have resigned myself to the fact

that I'm never going to see a penny of that money ever again.

Fairy lights used to be just for Christmas.

Now, they can glitter away all year round

at parties, events and in shops,

adding a bit of sparkle and colour to our lives

or just making us feel more cheerful.

But as with anything you're going to plug into mains electricity, they need to be absolutely safe.

So I don't think I'll plug these ones in.

Because they're fake.

From our homes to our shops, we love LED fairy lights.

They are a cost-effective way of bringing sparkle to our surroundings.

Will Lightburn from West Sussex

decided to get some to spruce up his house.

Driving around, I kept seeing all these houses

with these fancy new LEDs, like blue ones.

And I thought, they look quite nice.

I ought to put a set of those up because my place looks pretty dark

in comparison with other places around.

Will decided to look online for some fairy lights

that would brighten up the front of his house.

He ordered some and they arrived a few days later.

Will couldn't wait to use them.

Looked all right. I unwrapped them and put the lights on the trees.

I tested them out and they worked and they looked pretty good.

So far, so good, but the plug was about to be pulled

on the new look Will had given his home.

One evening I came home and I noticed some of them weren't working

and I thought, I must go and investigate what's up with those.

So I started just going through them,

starting at one end and flexing them,

looking at them for broken wires,

and when I got to pretty much the end one,

the one furthest away from the controller box,

suddenly I got an electric shock.

What Will hadn't realised was that his new fairy lights

were live with mains electric current.

It was painful,

but I dropped them straight away as soon as I got the shock.

The reaction was to let go of the lights.

But I was more surprised than anything

because it hadn't even crossed my mind that there could possibly be

any mains voltage on those tiny little...

low-voltage LED lights.

Will was surprised he had received a shock from lights

that were carrying clear safety markings.

They said that they were certified

to safety standards on their listing.

The seller looked pretty legitimate.

The listing looked OK.

Their feedback was OK and it had the address of the company...

It was an English address, so it's coming from England.

So, yeah, I'm surprised they could get away with something like that.

It turns out that Will's fairy lights aren't the only unsafe ones

with safety markings out there.

Ian Smith from Northampton Trading Standards recently raided an online

seller of fake fairy lights very similar to those purchased by Will.

We had considerable concerns with regard to the safety

of the fairy lights in question and we felt

we had no option but to take away those that he still had in stock.

These are the fairy lights as we found them

in the unit that was posting them out...

This is how he received them, apparently.

If we open one up, we should...

..find an example of the fairy lights that were being sent out.

Brand-new.

Ian sent the fairy lights to independent test house TUV,

where expert Richard Poate carried out some safety checks.

He was very concerned by his findings.

I can put my finger on here.

If I did this for real and this was plugged in,

I would be having a serious mains electric shock right now.

This electrocution risk could only mean one thing

for the safety markings on the fairy lights.

Symbols that are moulded into it are obviously intended to fool

the authorities and consumers into believing that this item has been

properly tested and complies with the European safety standards.

But it isn't the case.

The markings are fake.

Fake safety markings but very real safety risks,

as Trading Standards discovered when they examined

a load of faulty lights returned by disgruntled customers.

Consumers have returned items that have clearly either melted,

got hot or in some instances, clearly appear to have been on fire.

On this one, the mains lead,

the insulation of the wire along the mains lead appears to have melted,

indicating that it has obviously been subject to a fair bit of heat.

And the melting of the insulation also raises the possibility

that a live wire could be exposed to a consumer as well.

Ian thinks that fake fairy lights like this

could be putting lives at risk across the country.

If one of these items did catch fire in somebody's home,

there is the potential risk that it will cause a fire,

it could lead to fatalities.

Back in West Sussex,

Will Lightburn is realising what a narrow escape he had.

Luckily, I am quite a strong, healthy chap.

But you know, if a child had gone and touched it

or one of my dogs had gone up and sniffed it with a wet nose,

it might have been a different matter.

That's all from Fake Britain. Goodbye.