Episode 5 Fake Britain

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

Welcome to Fake Britain.

Police!

-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...

Police crack open a counterfeit champagne case

where the fakers are making a killing.

We think there's probably about £33,000 there in that bag.

We're given one of the most advanced fake £2 coins ever

from the one place you'd never expect - a high street bank.

It's certainly the best £2 counterfeit that I've seen.

And the fake carbon monoxide detectors

that could cost you your life.

The claims of compliance with the standard, in this instance,

with these particular products, is fake.

Britain is the world's largest export market for champagne.

Each year, we consume around 30 million bottles of the stuff.

It's big business and the fakers are desperate to get

their share of the fizz in this lucrative market.

So, not surprising then, that the police, Revenue & Customs,

Trading Standards and even Europol mounted a joint operation

to crack down on the burgeoning champagne fakery.

But even they were surprised at what they found.

-It's daybreak.

-OK, guys, can I have your attention, please?

Detective Inspector Simon Harsley

from the South East Regional Organised Crime Unit

is here to talk champagne.

All this stuff's been smuggled in.

It runs into millions of pounds that are owed to Revenue & Customs.

They're planning a dawn raid

on a wholesaler that's trading in fake bubbly.

We hope to find some counterfeit alcohol

and a quantity of alcohol that's duty-evaded,

ie smuggled into the country.

Briefing over. Now it's time to get going.

Can I task you with getting some prisoner transport to Team 3?

Team 3, please.

Just ahead of Simon, his team are swooping

on three separate locations connected to the business.

We're executing the warrants now at two warehouse locations,

so we're looking to secure the warehouses

and really see what we've got there and contain everything,

so it's a question of getting in there quickly

so no evidence is destroyed.

First up, Simon arrives at the main warehouse and business premises.

The owner isn't here, but police suspect

some of his employees could be illegal immigrants.

After questioning, one of them is arrested

-on suspicion of immigration offences.

-Hi, please step in the van.

A quick update.

We've obviously gained entry. Pretty sparse, really.

Not much there, as far as I can see.

So, not much by the way of champagne,

although the team soon discovers wine by the caseload

and they suspect this has been smuggled in

without the duty being paid.

But there's soon another surprise.

There's a whole hoard of other fake or illegal goods

uncovered by Trading Standards - generators, chainsaws,

angle grinders, even a couple of compactors to tarmac the drive.

The machinery you can see doesn't fit the British standard.

There's no instructions.

This machinery shouldn't be in this country,

being sold on the open market, and, potentially, it's dangerous,

so that's why it's being taken out of here.

These fakers certainly aren't whiter than white.

Counterfeit washing powder also seems high on the for sale list.

And it doesn't stop there.

As well as chainsaws, Trading Standards uncover power drills

that don't appear to meet European standards.

All of these products potentially putting British customers in danger.

There's another surprise in store for Simon's team -

and it still isn't bubbly.

OK, what we've just got out the safe is quite an amount of cash,

as you can see, that we've seized

and that will be coming with us.

We think there's probably about £33,000 there.

So, a big blow for the fakers and it gets worse for them.

The director of the company has been arrested at his home address.

That's where lead officer, DI Harsley, is heading now,

as his team has made an intriguing discovery.

I'm getting some messages

that there's a slightly strange scenario there,

in that there is a shop or something very similar,

that's accessed via his back garden.

I believe some Trading Standards officers have an interest in this

and I just need to see what the situation is.

DI Harsley arrives to oversee the search of the home

and the nearby shop.

I'm at the front door. Can you let me in, please?

The fake champagne the team have been looking for could be hidden in here.

I've just been inside the home address.

We've got a very unusual scenario.

We've got an alcohol store next door which actually feeds an off-licence,

the frontage of which goes onto an entirely different street.

We clearly want to have a look in the off-licence,

we clearly want to have a look in the alcohol store.

The search has commenced.

And it's in the alcohol store that Simon's team have finally found

what they're looking for - bottles of fake and duty-evaded champagne.

That's good news for the investigators here from Europol.

They've been tracking counterfeit champagne across Europe

and they suspect these fakes may have links

to an organised crime group in Italy.

The main suspect has been ordering the fake champagne from Italy.

It's processed by an organised crime group, located in Italy,

manufacturing and selling the bottles.

They were production sized,

they were manufacturing the labels, the corks, everything,

so that the bottle can really look identical to the genuine one.

And these show the tell-tale signs of being fake.

The labelling and the branding don't seem consistent

with the genuine product, so that's coming with us

and we'll look to get that tested

and look for an expert opinion on that.

It's not only fake champagne on offer here

that could pose a risk to public health.

Bottles of counterfeit vodka are also taken away.

But there are more places to search.

The police know of another warehouse down the road

that's used by the business.

And when they get there, they find more than 135 pallets

of smuggled alcohol, including fake vodka.

This is what over £200,000 of duty and VAT evasion looks like

and Simon's spotted the signs of duty evasion on the labelling.

There's a bottle of vodka here with a label on it.

This alcohol is destined for a market outside the UK,

therefore no duty's been paid on it.

What is happening is that the label is peeled off -

and an example of that has been found within the warehouse -

and a counterfeit label has been placed on the bottle

to indicate that the UK duty has been paid,

which is intended to deceive, of course.

We know that that is a counterfeit label.

You've got some whiskies as well. You've got a similar scenario.

And with many of the bottles,

you can actually see the sticky of the original label

outside the parameter of the label that's been put on there.

But even sophisticated fakers, with links to organised crime,

can slip up.

Looking at the label, I'm not even sure

that's placed on the bottle straight,

but that is a counterfeit label. We can tell from the markings there.

But to seize all of these pallets of duty-evaded alcohol,

the team will need help by the lorry load.

The entire contents of the warehouse have been seized

by Her Majesty's Revenue & Customs and, of course,

the police will look into the counterfeiting side

and any counterfeit labels,

anything that's being sold that's a counterfeit product

and actually look at what's being sold to the general public.

So, yeah, a good day.

And so the first of six 40-foot HGVs,

carrying the seized alcohol, sets off.

It's another win in the battle against the fakers.

The company was later wound up

with debts of around £8 million in unpaid taxes

to Her Majesty's Revenue & Customs.

Every year, around 50 people lose their lives

to carbon monoxide poisoning.

The gas can be released from appliances like a faulty cooker,

boiler or wood-burning stove, but you can't see it or smell it.

It's known as the silent killer.

These devices should protect you and your home -

carbon monoxide detectors.

And these ones claim to meet the European standard,

but their claims are fake.

Rely on one of these to protect you,

and you could be putting your life at risk.

Every year,

4,000 people end up in hospital

with carbon monoxide poisoning.

Around 40 of those people die.

With rising awareness of the dangers,

more of us are buying carbon monoxide detectors

to protect ourselves from the deadly gas.

The fakers know there's profit to be made in safety devices.

They're selling carbon monoxide detectors

carrying fake safety claims that could put lives in danger.

Gordon Samuel discovered the importance of these detectors

soon after his daughter, Katie, got married.

She was hugely popular.

She was hugely attractive and pretty and she was very intelligent.

She was just the most wonderful daughter.

She was very, very happy in her job

and it was the beginning of married life.

One evening, Katie decided to run a bath.

When her husband arrived home from work,

he noticed something wasn't right.

When he rang the bell and she didn't answer, he became quite concerned

and opened the door with his key

and he saw that the cat was unconscious...

..in the kitchen.

He called for her and she didn't answer.

And he rushed into the bathroom

and he found that she had been overcome

by very, very lethal carbon monoxide fumes.

Without Katie's knowledge,

her boiler had been leaking lethal levels of carbon monoxide.

A young doctor came into the room

and said, "I'm really sorry." And it was just...

..one of those moments in life that you just don't want to remember.

To say that I miss her now is just a huge understatement. I just...

I can't articulate...

..how much we miss her.

Katie died just weeks after her wedding day.

It later transpired that she did, in fact,

have a carbon monoxide detector

but it had been left, unopened, in its packet.

If they had known, they would have activated the alarm

and if the alarm had sounded and she was...

and they, all of us, were aware of what carbon monoxide was,

she would have had a chance. She would probably have lived.

Gordon went on to set up a charity in Katie's name,

campaigning for ALL homes

to have a carbon monoxide detector installed by law.

But the fakers know there's profit to be made

out of safety-conscious consumers.

Fake Britain has discovered that detectors are being sold online

that could be dangerous.

We decided to buy several detectors

that were advertised as meeting European safety standards.

We then sent them for testing at BSI, the British Standards Institution.

Expert Graham McKay thinks that the dangers of carbon monoxide

are closer to home than we might think.

Many, many combustible appliances

have the capability to produce carbon monoxide

if they're not adjusted properly or installed properly.

It kills somewhere in the region of 25 to 50 people a year in the UK.

It's very hard to diagnose because the symptoms in mild cases

are very often confused with a cold or the flu.

The detectors we bought were advertised

as meeting European safety standards

but, at first glance, Graham's concerned.

The product itself doesn't contain any of the warnings

or information that the standard requires.

It doesn't even tell me the name of the manufacturer.

It doesn't have, crucially, the end-of-life information.

Carbon monoxide alarms have sensors that have finite lives,

so it's important that you know when to replace it.

They won't last forever.

Graham's also unimpressed by the incorrect advice

given in the instructions.

It tells you not to install in kitchens.

Kitchens are probably the biggest source

of carbon monoxide-producing appliances in the UK,

from cookers, boilers, water heaters.

They are typically in kitchens.

When a genuine carbon monoxide detector goes off for the first time

after detecting high levels of the gas, its job isn't over.

The detector must continue working and go on to detect further leaks

in the future, in order to pass the European standard.

Graham needs to see if these are genuine detectors,

so he'll simulate a catastrophic carbon monoxide leak from a boiler.

This test mimics a scenario whereby maybe you have a release

of a high level of carbon monoxide into your home.

Your alarm will detect that and go off, which is great.

You'll then ventilate the space and take other preventative action.

Eventually, you'll go back into that space,

thinking everything's OK and you need your alarm to operate again.

First, the detectors are exposed to a dangerously high level

of carbon monoxide - 5,000 parts per million -

enough to render a person unconscious and kill them within minutes.

ALARMS BEEP

So far, so good. The detectors have passed the first part of the test.

But, if their safety claims are fake,

the sensors inside these detectors could actually be of poor quality.

Some cheaper sensors can be physically damaged.

They can be poisoned, effectively, by these very high levels.

If the alarm has been damaged, you could be putting yourself at risk,

because the alarm is no longer functioning.

The detectors are rested.

Then they're exposed to carbon monoxide at lower levels.

It's time to see whether they will pass the European standard

by going on to detect the silent killer gas once again,

having already done so.

They'll have to detect the gas and sound their alarms within 90 minutes.

90 minutes later, and counting, they've failed to respond.

Two of the alarms didn't respond at all

and one of the alarms has entered an erratic error mode,

where it beeps occasionally but it's not going into a full alarm mode

because it's not beeping continuously.

The conclusion is that the high dose of CO has actually damaged them

and affected their ability to accurately detect the gas.

The performance of every carbon monoxide detector

bought by Fake Britain was found to be unpredictable.

The claims of compliance with the standard, in this instance,

with these particular products, is fake.

They don't comply and they obviously don't comply.

We showed our findings to Gordon Samuel,

who lost his daughter to carbon monoxide poisoning.

It's very, very upsetting

that these are finding their way onto the market.

These fake carbon monoxide detectors cost us about £10 each.

Campaigners like Gordon say that by spending just £10 or £20 more,

customers can buy a reliable detector that they can really trust.

You should be buying properly branded alarms,

alarms that are compliant.

You're putting our life at risk

and you're putting your loved ones' lives at risk

and you'd be a fool to buy something like this

when the real thing's available and it could save your life.

Take a look at these. Yes, two £2 coins.

First made by the Royal Mint back in 1998,

there are two different metal components,

so it's complicated to manufacture and very difficult to counterfeit.

The problem is, this one wasn't made by the Royal Mint.

It was made by a faker.

A leading expert has told us it's the best he's ever seen.

So, how many are out there, who's making them

and could you tell the difference?

Previously, on Fake Britain, we've seen huge hoards of fake coins.

Here, police were raiding the premises of criminals

churning out £1 fakes.

Coin bags. Loads.

An estimated one in thirty £1 coins is fake.

The Royal Mint is so concerned, they'll soon be introducing

this new 12-sided pound coin to combat the counterfeiters.

But now the fakers are turning their attention to the £2 coin.

And that's a problem for Andy Brown.

His company services coin-operated machines across the country.

In the last year, he's seen an increase

in the number and quality of the new £2 fakes.

It's a far cry from how the coin-fakers started out.

This was one of the early fakes that we found,

which is really just a lump of lead-tin alloy

and then spraying it gold to make it look like a genuine coin.

That was then.

Now, fake £2 coins are getting much closer to the genuine article.

The fakes have got much better.

They can now be accepted in some of the vending machines

and car park machines that are out in the field.

For us, the concern is to try and stop the fakers

before they really start getting going.

Today, Fake Britain has asked Andy to see if he can find

any of the latest fake £2 coins in circulation.

He's going to his local bank to withdraw £2,500-worth of £2 coins.

He expects to find some fakes amongst all 1,250 of them.

We're going to put them through the coin validator to see if any of them

get rejected and then we can check to see whether they're counterfeits.

This coin validator is identical

to anything you'd find inside a ticket or vending machine.

It takes 16 different measurements of the coin,

including its width and weight, to work out if it's genuine or not.

Any coin outside the validator gets rejected out of a different slot

and generally would be returned back to the customer,

if he was putting it in the machine.

None of the coins from the bank have been rejected by the validator.

But Andy knows the latest fakes are good enough to beat the machine.

So, using his experience and a keen eye,

he and a colleague sift through the coins

to try and find anything unusual.

Halfway through the batch, Andy spots something out of the ordinary.

We've discovered a coin that looks a bit different to all the rest.

It's a 2011, which is one of the years

that we've got a number of counterfeit coins for already.

This may look convincing,

but there's a simple test to tell the fake from the real thing.

If we go to a genuine coin, one of the quick and easiest tests

to discover whether a coin is counterfeit,

is to hold it up with the £2 at the top and the date at the bottom

and then spin the coin on its axis.

The Queen's head should be facing upwards,

what we would call 12 o'clock.

And on the fake, when we turn the head round,

it's more like it's at 3 o'clock,

so that one is definitely a counterfeit coin.

But it's only by using a microscope

that Andy can uncover the signature markings of a fake.

Now I've got the counterfeit and a genuine coin side by side

and we're just checking the rim inscription

to see what difference there is there and straightaway,

when we look at the mint marks, the one on the bottom is a genuine coin.

You can see the nice mint mark, which looks really well stamped.

The one on the top is the counterfeit with the poor mint mark.

As we go round the edge, the lettering is all totally different,

the text is very poorly done.

Particularly, the letter S is a very distinctive letter

on this counterfeit, and the A's,

which has got like a circle in the centre of it.

Next, Andy takes his find downstairs for computer analysis

to have a more detailed look at the properties of the fake £2 coin.

There you are. I'd like you to try and calibrate that one for us.

Here, he can measure the probability of the coin

beating a vending machine in the outside world

and there's no stopping this £2 fake.

It beats the coin validator again and again -

30 times out of 30 and beyond.

We've now inserted the coin over 100 times

and we've still got 100% acceptance rate.

Some vending operators deposit their money into a bank

via a cash centre. So, if this coin can be accepted by a validator,

it would generally be accepted as a genuine coin in a sorting machine,

so they won't be able to take them out of circulation.

It's thought that there are hundreds of thousands

of fake £2 coins in circulation.

But with the latest fakes able to fool a machine,

can they also fool consumers?

It's a normal £2 coin, isn't it?

It looks like the genuine article. A normal £2 coin.

If you're walking the streets

and you're exchanging this very quickly,

you wouldn't know the difference.

Fake Britain wanted to know

what the experts make of the new high-end £2 fakes.

We arranged for Andy to take it to the Goldsmiths' Company,

an assay office in the heart of London

that's tested and hallmarked precious metals for nearly seven centuries.

Every year, they check and approve a selection of Britain's coinage.

Goldsmiths' Dave Merry is here to analyse Andy's fake £2 coin.

-Been a busy man, by the look of it!

-We have, yes.

-This is one we found last week which is of a much better quality.

-Yeah.

It's been accepted by most of the vending machines.

Blooming hell, you can see why, on that.

Dave Merry's immediately impressed by the look of the coin,

but you can also tell a lot about a coin by how much it weighs.

So, Dave puts the fake £2 coin to the test, using his scales.

The Royal Mint's published weight for a genuine £2 coin is 12g.

We've just weighed the counterfeit one

and, again, we're getting a reading of 12g.

It's remarkably close to a genuine Royal Mint coin.

The weight of the fake £2 coin matches that of a real one,

but Dave wants to know exactly what the fake is made of

and, to do that, he'll have to X-ray it.

The great thing about this bit of kit is it will give you

a readout and percentages of all those different elements

that go to make up a coin.

A genuine £2 coin is bimetallic,

meaning it's made up of two different copper-nickel alloy metals.

This makes the outer rim gold and the inner part bright silver.

The bimetallic feature was introduced by the Royal Mint

to make it harder for the fakers to copy coins.

First, Dave shows us the composition of the inner part of a genuine coin.

It's just over 70% copper and nearly 30% nickel.

Now, how about the composition of the fake?

We can see, straightaway, we've got 68% copper, 31% nickel

and there's a trace element of iron in there.

This is a very good fake.

The figures look much closer

than I've seen previously for other fake coins.

That coincides with what we've seen with the validators,

where it's been accepted by some of the validators,

so it would seem that the metal content is, obviously,

fairly close to that of a genuine coin.

The outer yellow ring of a genuine £2 coin also contains the metal zinc.

The fakers have even managed to get that into their fake.

We've got nickel, copper and 14.2% zinc,

so we've got the added element there now,

which wasn't in the middle part, which is the zinc.

So, a really good-quality fake.

If experts are having difficulty,

consumers have got no hope of being able to tell the difference.

We showed the results of our tests on the fake £2 coin

to Robert Matthews, a former Assay Master of the Royal Mint.

This is certainly the best £2 counterfeit that I've seen.

Robert's concerned about the implications

of the huge amount of effort that's gone into this fake £2 coin.

It is worrying that this counterfeit and the alloys used

point to a sophistication

which tends to point towards organised crime being used.

Once organised crime is starting to get involved,

we are going to have more and more of a problem.

We reported our discovery

of this sophisticated fake £2 coin to the Royal Mint.

They told us they...

They also told us that forgers would require...

Difficult to produce, but they are being produced in their thousands.

Recently, over 550,000 bimetallic euro coins were seized

in the port of Naples on the way from Shanghai.

Experts are worried that shipments of similar £2 fakes

could be arriving on our shores.

The £2 counterfeiting is entering a new stage

and this should be tackled now, whether it means changing the coin.

We need to be thinking seriously now

about how to increase the security of the £2 coin.

That's all from Fake Britain. Goodbye.