Episode 3 Fake Britain

Welcome to a world where nothing is as it seems.

Welcome to Fake Britain.

-Police!

-SHOUTING

-Get down! Get down!

-Get 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 fake and dangerous fuses sold on the high street...

We've seen plugs actually explode,

which can expose people to electric shock.

..the fake reviews that ruined one boy's Christmas...

We waited and we waited and nothing came.

To him, it was like the end of the world. He was devastated about it.

..we're on the front line with a private detective

taking down the fakers...

Fake bags, jewellery. This is a shop that's openly selling fake goods.

Fuses - they may not look like much, but these little things

are actually one of the most important safety devices

we have in our homes.

If something goes wrong with an electrical product

connected to the mains,

the fuse will blow and the power is disconnected,

so we should be protected from fire or electric shock.

That all sounds very important, doesn't it?

So, what if the fuses in your home were fake?

Your toaster, your kettle, your microwave, your charger -

every time you plug in an electrical item,

the fuse inside is quietly working away keeping you safe.

In fact, we all use fuses several times each day,

but many of us don't know much about them.

No, not a clue. I have no idea about the safety aspect of fuses.

I just know that you put them in a plug.

I think a 13A is for the iron, I think the five is for the kettle

and the pink is the universal one. I hope that's correct.

None of the people we spoke to knew much about fuses,

including the fact there's no such thing as a universal fuse.

One person who does know all about fuses,

and their importance for safety when it comes to your home appliances,

is Martyn Allen from Electrical Safety First.

What a fuse actually is there to do

is if there's a fault in that appliance,

then it would make the situation safe,

so it will prevent a fire or a serious electrical shock.

These small fuses are big business.

The average household has over 40 electrical items

and a huge number of these are Bussmann fuses,

made by technology company Eaton Electrical.

Fakers are now making money from the enormous demand for these fuses.

We've been raising awareness about fake electrical products

for quite some time now,

and what we've seen is both in unbranded and very cheap products

that you find predominantly online,

that often they come with fake fuses.

But the fakes don't just come preinstalled

in fake electrical items.

They're also being sold to people who need to replace the fuse

in a genuine appliance.

Fake Britain received a tip-off that suspected fake fuses

were being sold on the high street by budget chain Poundworld.

So, we bought two mixed packs for just £1.

These fuses are supposedly a type

made by the company Eaton Electrical.

We showed them to brand protection manager Simon Bircham,

who works to combat the problem of fakes.

Eaton has been a leader in fuses for over 100 years,

and like any other product that's of high esteem and regard,

it's a target for counterfeiters

because they look for a product that's highly recognised.

Eaton Electrical examined the fuses sold by Poundworld

and confirmed they're definitely fake and quite possibly dangerous.

If we think about the fuse industry, companies spend millions of pounds

in research and development to produce safe products,

and counterfeiters don't care about the quality of products,

they don't care about the safety of products.

To find out more about the fake fuses Poundworld sold,

we took them to Graham McKay at the British Standards Institution,

which sets the safety standards for electrical items.

So, in my left hand, I have a fake fuse.

In my right hand, I have a genuine fuse.

I've been in the industry for over 30 years.

I can't tell the difference between them.

With the fakes so similar externally to the real thing,

there's only one way to tell the difference.

Graham will need to look inside.

First, he cracks open a genuine one.

This is a good fuse. It's surrounded by sand.

So, the sand fulfils two functions. First of all, it insulates

some of the temperature effects from the body of the fuse

and it also damps out any explosive force

you might get in the event of a significant electrical fault.

But what's inside the fake?

We can see our counterfeit fuse

has no sand present.

A really important design difference.

The fakers are cutting corners

by not putting sand in fake fuses, and by doing this, they're putting

users of electrical appliances in danger.

In the event of a very large fault current,

which you might have if you had, I don't know,

a short circuit on your washing machine, for example,

the fuse will actually explode.

The sand damps that out, typically,

and prevents that explosion from creating havoc with the plug itself.

None of the fakes we bought at Poundworld

had any sand in them.

Absence of sand, we've seen plugs actually explode,

which can expose people to electric shock.

To find out just how dangerous these fake fuses might be,

Graham's going to test one to the EU standard

by passing a strong current through it for 30 minutes.

What we're checking for really is the temperatures -

the temperatures of the wiring,

particularly the temperatures of the plug and front of the socket.

The temperatures are monitored with a thermal imaging camera.

The wire inside the fake fuse

should be able to withstand the current for 30 minutes

without melting and breaking the circuit.

But after just 15 minutes, it's game over.

The fake fuse has failed.

It should've lasted 30 minutes under that condition.

You know, it's failed to do its job.

The wire inside the fuse disconnected before it should.

As well as leaving out the sand,

the fakers are using inferior materials.

This is an unreliable fuse

that might break down before a fault even occurs

or not break the circuit when it needs to.

Graham also tested another fake fuse we bought from Poundworld,

with more dramatic results.

Here's one we tested earlier.

In this case, the fuse carried on operating for 30 minutes

and the plug got extremely hot,

leading to some melting of the plastic here.

You can see the burning that's taken place inside.

That could lead to the plug coming apart,

exposing you to electric shock.

Looking at the socket, the pin of the socket

has actually burned and charred here.

You know, that could easily lead to a fire.

Tests on other fake fuses have had more catastrophic results,

like this explosion that was caused by a lack of sand

in the fake fuse inside the plug.

We showed footage to members of the public

to see what they made of it.

Oh, my gosh. That's awful.

It's literally, like, exploded off the wall.

And that could happen, like, at any time.

Like, that's really terrible. Like, that's really dangerous.

I'm just shocked.

It's actually quite horrendous and really quite scary.

It will blow up. It will kill everybody in the house.

I'm really disappointed that somebody would actually sell them

in such mass production considering the damage that it could do.

As a result of Fake Britain's investigation,

Poundworld was informed.

They immediately issued a recall of the fake fuses.

Poundworld told us...

They actually come in unique packaging,

and it's very clear for the consumer,

that if you have a product that's in that pack,

that you need to contact and take that product back to Poundworld

because that's a fake product.

Martyn Allen from Electrical Safety First

wants to emphasise that people shouldn't underestimate

the potential dangers of using a fake fuse.

In the UK every year, we have about 7,000 fires

that are caused from faulty electrical products.

Some of those fires clearly will be associated with fake fuses

that can lead to loss of life through either the fire

or electrocution, so it's a really serious issue.

Are you a savvy online shopper?

Do you do your research on a business you might buy from,

like checking up to see if they have positive reviews

from satisfied customers?

That sort of information is very reassuring.

It makes it less likely

you're going to have a problem, doesn't it?

Well, you may have to think again.

As Fake Britain has been discovering,

it's not only fake products you have to be careful about,

it's fake positive reviews on websites too.

We spend more money online per head than any other developed country.

More than three quarters of us shop over the internet,

and last year, we spent over £110 billion online.

When buying a product or service, many of us turn to online reviews

written by other customers who bought the same thing.

Andy Ward from Nottinghamshire wanted to buy a video game

with limited-edition toy for his son for Christmas.

He has a great passion for video games.

Getting him off them is difficult.

He loves collecting figures and things that you get with them.

In fact, he probably enjoys that

more than the games themselves, to be fair.

The video game Andy's son had his heart set on

had sold out in shops,

so Andy went to online auction site eBay to see if he could get one.

I started looking around for, I don't know,

half an hour or so before deciding that the seller

that I'd chosen seemed to be asking a fair price.

It seemed legitimate,

the feedback seemed genuine and it seemed to tick all the boxes.

Andy felt he could trust the seller

because there were several positive reviews

from previous buyers.

The seller had only been a member of eBay for a few months,

but had accrued about 27 positive feedback, 100%, no worries.

So, Andy went ahead and bought the game for £149.

He was pleased to have found the rare game that his son,

who has autism, had set his heart on.

They were both excited about the game's arrival.

We waited and we waited and nothing came.

The days went by,

and with Christmas approaching, Andy started to worry.

He e-mailed the seller but got no reply.

He tried calling but the phone number wouldn't connect

so he looked up the address the seller had given.

I took minutes to establish that the door numbers on the road

that the seller supposedly lived on never went to that number.

The address didn't exist.

On some websites, customers can see what products

the person they're buying from has purchased.

Andy decided to take a closer look at the customer feedback

on the seller's profile.

He was surprised by what he discovered.

On closer examination of their feedback,

I found that several of the feedbacks

were basically purchased.

They'd been bought from other eBay sellers.

The video game seller's positive reviews were fake.

He had, in fact, bought the reviews from this eBay seller.

Fake Britain has since found that other online sellers

are claiming to sell positive reviews.

Andy had believed he was buying from a respected trader,

but none of the reviews he'd believed

were actually from satisfied customers.

When people buy fake feedback,

they can have written whatever they want.

They can pretty much say,

"Yeah, well, say I'm a fantastic seller.

"Say everything arrives on time. Couldn't be any better.

"Very reliable."

It was all lies, and the video game Andy ordered never arrived.

He had to break the news to his son.

Part of his condition would be that he does not really understand

that concept that, you know, sometimes, these things happen.

So, to him, it was like the end of the world, you know.

He wanted that and he was devastated about it.

eBay is not the only website

that has problems with fake positive reviews.

Fake reviews are appearing on all sorts of websites,

tricking consumers into thinking they've been written by customers

when, in fact, they were written to order by someone paid to do it.

Chris Emmins is the founder of KwikChex,

which works to verify online information.

Every bit of research we've seen over the last few years

and the investigations we've conducted ourselves

show that online reviews are one of the ways

you can most influence consumers to buy products.

A huge number of customers relying on online reviews

to reassure themselves are being fooled.

On a daily basis, we are contacted by consumers

that say they only bought the supposed goods

because of the reviews they saw online.

I think it's fair to say that there must be

literally millions of consumers falling prey

to this sort of deception on a daily basis.

Some fake reviews are used by real companies

to make their genuine product or service appear more attractive,

but fake reviews are also used by fraudsters to convince shoppers

to buy products that don't even exist,

which is what happened to Andy.

With that degree of influence, it was obvious that fake businesses

and fake online sites were going to use fake reviews to dupe consumers.

But give your details to these fakers

and you might lose more than you bargained for.

Not only will they take your money in the first place,

but they could start opening up bank accounts, credit cards, etc

in your name and really going to town on you.

They could destroy your finances

and they could destroy your credit reputation, as well.

At their worst, fake reviews can be used

to make entirely fake websites,

selling fake services, seem legitimate.

Fake Britain wanted to find out just how easy it is to create one

selling not just non-existent video games but a fake service,

so we asked Chris to build one that could entice people

to give over some of their most sensitive personal data.

It took him just a few hours to create a fake glossy website

from scratch advertising a fictitious company

that purports to help people with passport and visa issues.

Here's one we made earlier.

What you'll see on it is a very credible-looking website.

It purports to belong to various well-known trusted organisations.

It says it's 100% guaranteed.

But none of this is real.

And of course, to convince customers to go ahead and buy,

the new website is full of positive reviews

from thrilled customers.

And there they are - all five-star, glowing testimonials.

They look credible. They're well phrased.

So, in 24 hours, you have a credible website

capable of deceiving consumers.

But it doesn't end there.

Chris is now going to try to get his fake website

onto a trusted reviews site -

an independent forum allowing consumers to post reviews,

both good and bad,

of products and services they've used.

Shoppers trust these sites because the reviews are impartial

and haven't been posted or edited by the company,

or so they think.

One of the key problems of reviews sites

is there is a considerable lack of diligence in their processes.

There is no real verification not only of the reviewers,

but, quite astonishingly, in many ways,

of the business itself.

We wanted to see how easy it would be

to get the fake online business accepted

by a trusted online reviews site,

so Chris submitted it to a popular one called Review Centre.

What we did here is put entirely fake details on it,

so fake e-mails on the website, a fake telephone number,

a fake address, and none of that was actually picked up in the -

I hate to say it - so-called verification process.

His fake company now looks legitimate,

featuring on a trusted reviews site,

and Chris is able to start posting fake positive reviews on there, too.

How many stars? What sort of rating am I going to give it?

I'm going to give it five.

Would I recommend it to a friend?

Unquestionably, I'd recommend it to a friend.

Here's my review title.

"Excellent".

And now I've taken one of the fake reviews

from the fake website.

I'm just cutting and pasting that in there now.

What it's asking me to do now

is to confirm that I'm a genuine consumer.

I'm going to agree with that.

And there, lo and behold,

is the first of what would be many, many fake reviews.

None of the contact details on Chris's fake website are live,

so no consumers contacting the service were fooled

into thinking it was genuine.

But if it's this easy to post fake reviews online,

what can you do to be sure that the ones you're reading are genuine?

If you see lots and lots of five-star glowing reviews,

look and see how many of the reviewers

maybe have only posted one review

because, actually, really dedicated reviewers tend to post quite a few.

Try cutting and pasting the review that you're seeing

and see then if it pops up on other reviews sites.

If you're seeing it on more than one review site,

it's really likely to have been placed by a bogus company

using fake reviews trying to get as much exposure

on the internet as possible.

We contacted Review Centre and eBay with our findings.

Reviewcentre.com told us...

"While this system has been shown not to be 100% foolproof

"by your programme..."

"We've also carefully complied with the laws in our sector and..."

eBay say...

Andy did finally manage to get hold of another version

of the video game for his son,

who was very happy with his Christmas present.

But Andy is still furious with the faker.

It just made me feel really angry.

It's the fact that you can have massive impact on a family.

It could be quite difficult to deal with.

To him, it was very, very important.

A recent government report named an area of Manchester

as the counterfeit capital of the country.

Millions of pounds worth of fake goods are sold there

and distributed across the UK.

Fake Britain has been given exclusive access

to the private investigators and police units

tasked with cracking down on the fakers.

This is Manchester city centre, where over £900 million a year

is spent on clothes, handbags and other high-end products.

But just north of the city centre lies Cheetham Hill,

where the authorities suspect fake goods are being openly sold

in huge volumes from high-street stores.

The authorities, however, are watching,

and Fake Britain has been given exclusive access

to private investigator Dave McKelvey

and Greater Manchester Police on a major operation

to disrupt the sellers of fake goods.

Cheetham Hill is effectively the fake capital of the UK.

Most of the fake goods that come into the UK come into this area,

and you can buy anything here, anything at all -

footwear, clothing, electrical goods, handbags.

Absolutely anything.

It's like an open street market.

Extremely hostile to law enforcement.

This is an absolutely vast area of criminality.

Street after street selling fake goods.

The sellers of fake goods employ an army of lookouts,

also known as spotters.

Spotters there.

CAMERA SHUTTER CLICKS

You've got spotters out on the street.

You can see two there, two more there. Three.

Three on this corner. You see spotters in the doorways.

Those spotters protect the premises

so that if law enforcement come down here,

the shutters go down immediately. If one premises gets raided,

all the shutters go down on all the other premises,

close the whole area down. So, they're all working together.

This is an organised crime syndicate.

Private investigator Dave has been working

with Greater Manchester Police for six months,

and today, Fake Britain has been invited on their raid

of the premises of a major counterfeiting gang.

All the premises are all shut up,

secured with metal shutters.

The shops are protected by steel shutters,

but the officers have come prepared with heavy-duty circular saws.

It's time to hit the shops.

But then they find reinforced doors behind the steel shutters,

so it's time for the police to unleash

what they fondly refer to as "the enforcer"...

Yeah, you're in. Right.

..and it's not long before they're in.

This is exactly what we expected to find.

You've got a premises here that is absolutely full of fake goods.

As you look around the room, just fake bags, fake Uggs.

There's perfume, jewellery. Absolutely everything here.

This is a shop that's openly selling fake goods.

There is a bewildering array

of fake clothing and gadgets in the shop,

and the fakers have an ingenious method of bringing their haul

into the country without being detected.

They're buying in bags that don't have any labelling on.

That way, they can get them through customs without any problems.

The tags that they put on.

They generally get the stuff shipped in untagged

and then the staff that they hire, they'll tag it up in the shop.

Sometimes, they even use superglue.

Just stamped in.

Dave's got a shopping list of his own today,

and this store isn't the only one he's planning to visit.

Down the road, the circular saw is out again.

They'll literally lock the whole place down

the moment there's any police activity.

We're now in, so we'll see what's inside this one.

Police!

The lights are off in this shop,

but Sergeant Darren Thomason still spots a fake.

Clearly, there's a lot more stock in this shop.

You're into the tens of thousands of pounds' worth of gear,

from your North Face jackets

all the way down to your jewellery as well.

It's a big shop, which will take officers a while to search.

Oh, my God.

Darren's concerned about the safety of some of the fake products

for sale in this shop, like these hair straighteners.

You can tell by the quality of these items that

they're not the real thing, they're fake,

and as you can clearly see there,

it's got the approval stamping on there,

but again, that's going to be fake.

There's no way on this earth that that's the real McCoy.

You know, these things can catch fire so quickly

because they've not passed their safety regulations, so, yeah,

they can certainly cause fires within the home.

It's not just fakes that Darren's found.

He's uncovered hard evidence

of just how lucrative the fakery business is.

This is the ledger you see.

Cash takings here for £7,000.

£9,000.

Just under £4,000.

£10,424.

This is all cash in hand.

So, a hell of a lot of money going through the door on a daily basis.

While the officers continue their search,

Dave decides to take a drive around the local area.

He's surprised to see that, for some of the shops,

it's business as usual.

We've got huge police presence across the road.

You've got a shop being searched

and there's people down that road still openly selling fake goods...

I'll just reverse back again.

..literally 100 yards from where there's a police raid going on.

It's completely lawless. It's like the Wild West.

Police and Trading Standards have been seizing about

£1 million worth of fake stock every year from Cheetham Hill.

This operation is the culmination of months of hard work

and it's been a resounding success.

So, this is not small businesses.

It's seven days a week, £5,000 to £10,000 a day.

This is vast, vast business. This is organised crime.

So, it's a huge haul worth millions and millions of pounds.

That's all from Fake Britain. Goodbye.