Episode 5 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 taxis putting passengers in danger...

Mr Elahi wasn't a taxi driver. Mr Elahi's car was not a taxi.

..the fake celebrity endorsements tempting shoppers into spending,

and losing, hundreds of pounds...

How I felt was they literally mugged me,

pulled out my purse from my bag and took the money.

..fakes in the frame -

the camera equipment that isn't what it seems...

I couldn't believe it. They said, "Do you know this camera's a fake?"

..and the faker who cashed in on Cornish art.

That one was priced at £20,000 to £30,000.

If you're planning to take a minicab,

there are some things you can check to make sure it's safe.

Does the vehicle have a taxi licence?

Does the company have an operator's licence?

And does the driver have a private hire licence?

In many parts of the country,

you can now do these checks with the authorities easily online.

And it's worth checking. Look at this.

It's a booking form from a cab company.

It says, "Fully licensed and insured for private hire."

But those claims are fake.

Fake minicabs across the UK are putting people's lives at risk.

There are now around a quarter of a million vehicles

with taxi licences on our roads.

About a third of those are hackney carriages, or taxis,

but 150,000 of them are private hire vehicles, or minicabs.

As Sarah Thompson from Northamptonshire found out,

some of those minicabs are fake,

unlicensed and potentially dangerous.

One night, Sarah was out with her friends in Birmingham.

We went out on the Saturday night, we were staying at a hotel

and I got a lot drunker than I was expecting to get.

I thought it was best that I go home to the hotel, sleep it off.

Thinking she was doing the right thing,

Sarah headed for a taxi rank and found a minicab.

I asked them to take me back to the hotel

cos I thought it'd be safer to get into a taxi

than try and find my way home walking.

But the minicab driver didn't take her straight back to the hotel.

Instead, he pulled up on a side road.

I remember him climbing over into the passenger side

and leaning over me, started kissing me

and I remember gripping the seat just thinking,

"I need to just let what happens happen

"cos I'll probably end up worse if I try and fight him."

Sort of froze in fear.

Sarah was seriously assaulted by the minicab driver,

but she managed to escape.

So, I got out of the taxi

and I was just walking up the street in a bit of a daze,

and then that's when it hit me. I started running and panicking

and I saw this car coming down towards me,

so I ran out in the road in front of that to make it stop,

and two girls got out of the back and they helped me,

and I told them what had happened and they called the police.

I started panicking then that I didn't know what had happened

cos I couldn't remember it all.

I don't remember anything till I woke up

and there was all these police officers and paramedics around me.

Sarah's attacker was driving an unlicensed minicab.

He was caught and jailed for five years.

But there are other risks that come with fake minicabs,

from being overcharged to being driven in a car that's uninsured.

In Birmingham, it's PC Dave Humpherson's job

to keep minicab passengers safe.

Tonight, he's leading Operation Amethyst,

which is tasked with cracking down on private hire vehicles

that are operating illegally.

They may be a revoked-licence driver

that, at some stage, has been caught for an offence,

no longer have a licence.

So, what they will do is they will get hold of some either fake plates

or they may have stolen some plates. They'll put them on the vehicle.

Straightaway, it looks like a licensed vehicle.

Tonight, the officers are patrolling the streets

in search of fake and illegal minicab drivers.

I'm going to drop two officers off on foot

and I'm going to get into a position

where I can observe them approaching vehicles.

The undercover officers pretend to be late-night partygoers

in search of a cab.

The one that takes their fare doesn't know

that he'll shortly be pulled over by a police bike.

Alpha one. Subject vehicle is a silver Mercedes.

No deviation. Speed - 30. Newhall Street.

The driver was later questioned and it was discovered

he was operating in the wrong county, which is illegal.

Later, another team stops a second minicab driver

who's found to be taking illegal fares.

'Can you just follow me, at the roundabout,

'just back into Morrisons and stop there?'

He knows there's some money to be made. It's very easy money.

He'll take them. He'll take the risk.

And, unfortunately, on this occasion for him,

it's police officers that he's picked up.

We've caught four pliers so far tonight.

We've only been out a few hours. No fake plates that we're aware of.

I've got no doubts that there are people about in this city tonight.

It's a good result for the team

tasked with catching illegal minicabs.

They know that the fakes are out there.

In Bradford, Josh Ripley was violently beaten unconscious

after getting in to a fake minicab.

And one night, PC Jason Dooley came face-to-face with one.

He saw a minicab being flagged down by passengers and taking the fare.

Plying for hire is illegal,

so PC Dooley followed the car on his police bike

and pulled over the driver.

I spoke through the open window

and I just asked, "Lads, have you booked this taxi?"

And they both said, "No, we're just doing it now."

I've then asked them to get out of the taxi cos it's not booked

and the driver's committing an offence.

I've then told the driver to follow me.

But the minicab driver had other ideas and sped off,

leaving PC Dooley no option but to give chase.

I heard a wheel spin.

He then went the wrong side of the road through a No Entry sign.

When he got on to the dual carriageway, he slowed down.

I think he realised that, "I'm not getting away from

"a police motorcyclist, so I'm just going to give up."

And that's when I've arrested him for dangerous driving.

He had taxi plates on the car.

It was emblazoned with taxi door numbers.

I assumed it was a legal taxi.

But after arresting the driver, the truth emerged.

The plates displayed were expired and they weren't in his name.

Mr Elahi wasn't a taxi driver.

Mr Elahi's car was not a taxi.

But when we interviewed Mr Elahi,

he stated that it was a one-off,

but we proved that it was numerous times -

he was using this vehicle as a fake taxi.

Fake cab driver Babu Elahi admitted dangerous driving,

fraud by false representation and driving without insurance.

He was jailed for four years, suspended for two years,

and banned from driving for 12 months.

There are fake taxis out there.

If you get into the rear of a fake taxi,

they are not checked, they are not monitored,

so they could be anybody, and it's a danger to the public.

Celebrities sell, and they get everywhere.

You'll find them endorsing everything from cars to crisps,

teabags to trainers, all in the hope that we'll buy the product

because we're convinced that if they like it, it must be OK.

Perhaps some of their magic may rub off on us.

But if you're impressed that someone you admire endorses a product

and you decide to buy,

can you be sure the celebrity actually has anything to do with it?

What if the endorsement is a fake?

This is a genuine advert for a well-known bank

featuring Olympic athlete Jessica Ennis-Hill

and racing driver Jenson Button.

You name the celebrity

and the chances are their face is being used in an advert like this.

More than a quarter of shoppers have bought something

because it was being promoted by a well-known personality.

And one such shopper is Tanya Worsfold

from Clackmannanshire in Scotland.

She'd been thinking about going on a diet when, one day,

she saw an advert online about a slimming supplement

called raspberry ketones.

It was accompanied by a picture of comedian Dawn French.

And I really like Dawn French. I've followed her for years.

As a comedian, I think she's brilliant,

and I'd been to see her recently in her show,

and it was about her losing weight and what she'd done.

The supplement raspberry ketones are a natural plant extract.

Some people think they help with slimming,

and they're widely available in high-street health-food shops.

The advert suggested that the supplements

had helped Dawn French to lose weight,

and a trial pack was being offered at 50% off the normal price.

What it suggested was that Dawn French was

endorsing the product and that, you know,

she'd used that same product to help her with weight loss.

Well, it certainly makes you think, "Oh, if Dawn French is using it,

"it must be all right, then, cos she was looking so good."

So, Tanya bought the supplements.

When they arrived, she started to take them,

but after taking a closer look, she began to have doubts.

They looked cheap and the labels weren't put on straight

and I just thought, "You know, I've bought something over the internet.

"It could be anything. It could be rat poison."

Tanya decided to stop taking the pills

and thought no more about them.

She assumed she'd lost a bit of money on a one-off bad purchase,

but a few weeks later, she received a parcel.

I got, through the post, another packet of the vitamins -

two packs - with a bill saying I think it was £80.

I thought, "Oh, God!"

Tanya phoned the company to tell them they must have made a mistake.

And they said no, this was right,

that I had signed up for a 12-month supply.

I said, "Well, I didn't," and they said,

"Well, you didn't read all the terms and conditions."

Having been lured in by a supposed endorsement from Dawn French,

Tanya now found herself caught in a so-called subscription trap.

Customers are hooked in with a free trial or discount for a product,

but if the trial isn't cancelled within a certain time,

the company starts to take regular payments

from the target's bank account.

I don't even remember ticking a box, but I must have done.

I thought it was a one-off purchase.

I thought the bottle was valued at a tenner

and they were giving it to you for 50%.

Worried about losing even more money,

she contacted her bank and cancelled the direct debit,

but by now, the company had taken over £300 from Tanya,

which she still hasn't recovered.

When I realised how much money they were taking out,

I just felt like I'd been mugged.

How I felt was I was walking along the street,

they literally mugged me,

pulled out my purse from my bag and took the money.

I realised that the endorsement was fake

and, yes, you know, it couldn't have been anything

to do with Dawn French. It was just a con.

But Tanya's not the only shopper

to have fallen for a fake celebrity endorsement.

Mike Andrews from the National Trading Standards

eCrime Team is leading a crackdown on subscription traps.

The latest intelligence and reports we have suggest that

the total loss does run into and millions of pounds a year.

We're aware of one bank that reported

that 37,000 of their consumers have been the victim

of some sort of subscription trap,

so these traders are making a significant profit

out of these scams.

Dawn French's agent told Fake Britain that...

But Dawn French is just one of many celebrities

having their identities faked by companies

who are trying to sell products.

Lorraine Kelly and Fern Britton have been quick to issue public denials

after their images were used without their consent to peddle products.

Some celebrities have even had their identities faked

by criminals out to commit fraud.

Finance expert Martin Lewis is the founder

of the MoneySavingExpert.com website.

His advice is trusted by millions of consumers,

and because of that, he's a regular target for the fakers.

I've had problems for years with people knocking on people's doors

or calling them up pretending to have some form of linkage with me

or with MoneySavingExpert.com.

Recently, fraudsters actually pretended to be Martin

in order to persuade pensioners to hand over their money,

either to get tax rebates that didn't exist

or to protect themselves against a fraud that hadn't even happened.

This is pure fakery. They were using my name,

they were using MoneySavingExpert.com's name

because we're trusted,

to try and get into vulnerable, elderly people's houses,

the type of people I spend my life campaigning to protect.

It makes me feel physically sick.

Remember this is a salesperson, or, potentially, even worse -

a fake salesperson, a scammer, trying to get your money.

Anybody knocking on your door, calling you up

saying they represent me or this website is a liar.

Whether it is to push a product or a scam,

using fake celebrity endorsements on social media

to convince consumers to part with money is now a real threat.

Many adverts are being endorsed by fake tweets,

like this one purporting to be from none other

than the Duchess of Cambridge herself.

Rest assured, neither she nor any of the other stars featured here

are linked, in any way,

with the products they appear to be promoting.

Of course, it's all fake

and it's all designed to try and get the consumer enticed onto the site

where they'll be parted with their hard-earned money.

For customers like Tanya,

being targeted by a fake celebrity endorsement

has cost her more than just money.

It was really highly unpleasant,

and it wasn't so much about the loss of the money, although that hurt,

you felt stupid and robbed.

This digital camera is packed with technology

and can deliver a brilliant and memorable picture.

It's expensive, of course,

but I have the security of knowing that if anything goes wrong,

there's a warranty, so it can be fixed or even replaced.

Well, that's what WOULD happen with a genuine camera.

This one is fake.

So is all this camera equipment, and as we're about to find out,

even the professionals can find it hard to spot the difference.

These days, it seems everyone is into photography.

The global photographic market is now worth over £50 billion.

But some budding British photographers

are being duped into buying cameras that aren't what they appear to be.

Eager photographers snapping up what looks like an online bargain

could be in for a nasty surprise.

Tristan Findley is a professional photographer

with a successful photography business.

He needs reliable camera equipment and backup if it lets him down.

I need to have equipment that's fully supported

by the manufacturer's warranty. It has to be reliable.

I need to know that I can get a replacement camera

sent from the manufacturer in a very short amount of time

to carry on with whatever it is I'm shooting.

Tristan needed to buy a new Canon Digital SLR called the 7D.

It's a professional camera which cost around £1,600 at the time,

without lenses.

He found one online for £100 less than that.

Everything seemed 100% normal. The camera was in its original box.

There was nothing untoward about it at all.

Tristan had no reason to think anything was wrong,

until he decided to go on a photography trip abroad.

Like a car, you tend to service a car before you go on a long trip.

I decided to do the same with the camera.

I sent it back to Canon for their professional service.

Canon checked the camera's unique serial number against their records.

The serial number is used to trace the origins of the camera.

They came back to me and said, "The serial number's been changed

"and we don't make a Canon with a seven-digit serial number."

Canon stated that, because of that, it was classed by them

as counterfeit and was not eligible for any warranty.

Tristan had unwittingly bought a grey-import camera

destined for sale outside Europe.

In the US and Asia, different manuals,

accessories and warranties are offered.

We spoke to Lee Boniface from Canon.

So, this product is made for the Asian market.

What's happened here, the importer has taken off

the serial number on the side of the box.

That should match the serial number on the bottom of the camera there.

And I've got one here that's been put on over the top

of the genuine serial number.

That serial number doesn't mean anything, and therefore,

this consumer who bought this product, unfortunately,

they wouldn't have a valid warranty.

Fake serial numbers don't show up on Canon's database,

making the identity of the camera impossible to trace.

Tristan bought his camera in the UK,

but it was a camera intended by Canon for sale in Asia,

not Europe or the UK. He bought it online.

Some online shops are able to sell grey imports

at low prices because, that way,

they avoid paying the correct tax or duties

when the camera enters the UK. Left without a warranty,

Tristan was lucky that nothing had gone wrong

with his camera on the shoot.

Photos capture a moment in time and if that moment passes,

it doesn't come back.

But what if something had gone wrong?

Photographer Craig Skinner bought

a Nikon D7000 digital SLR camera online

for a discounted £600.

But on his first big wedding photography job,

something went wrong.

I could tell something wasn't quite right.

The autofocus just wasn't working properly.

The results of the autofocus failure were disastrous for Craig's photos.

In the photo, the couple weren't sharp,

they weren't in focus. Just not usable.

I would never give an image like that to a client.

Back home, Craig called Nikon about the faulty camera.

They told him to send it in as it should still be under warranty.

They said basically, "Do you know this camera's a fake?"

I couldn't believe it.

The serial number on the bottom of the camera had been replaced

with another one.

Craig wasn't covered by a warranty.

Like Tristan, he'd unwittingly bought a grey-import camera,

but in his case, the camera was actually faulty.

With a faked serial number,

there was no way of knowing whether it was even a genuine Nikon product.

We spoke to Nikon about Craig's case.

They said, "We can confirm that the serial number on the camera

"which Mr Skinner purchased was tampered with

"by an unknown third party, which, unfortunately,

"invalidates the product warranty.

"In order to avoid the problems Mr Skinner faced,

"we recommend customers check the list of approved retailers

"on the Nikon website for guaranteed satisfaction."

Back at Canon, Lee comes across fakes on a daily basis,

and it's not just high-end cameras.

Even point-and-shoot compact cameras are being faked.

This is a counterfeit Canon camera.

It's actually not a Canon camera at all.

If you switch the product on,

you can see it even comes up with the Canon logo.

The fakers are smart enough to have programmed the software

in this camera to tell you it's a Canon,

even though it's not.

Lee's concerned about the safety of some of the fake camera equipment,

like this charger.

You can see on this fake product already

this wire has come loose.

You could get a very nasty electric shock.

If you also happen to have a fake Canon battery,

the combination of the two could actually be quite dangerous.

The charger would not be protecting the battery

and we don't know how stable and how well that battery was being made.

Photographers Tristan and Chris

have had their fingers burned with online shopping.

They won't be making the same mistake again.

It has made me a lot more cautious,

and now I won't always seek out the cheapest price.

If I was going to buy another camera or lens,

I would go into a reputable camera shop every time.

This picture looks as though

it might have been painted by a child, doesn't it?

A simple picture of a boat in a harbour in Cornwall.

I really like it. It's signed A Wallis.

In fact, Alfred Wallis took up painting late in life

after his wife died.

He's one of Britain's most admired artists,

and his pictures hang in Tate Britain.

If this had been painted by him,

it would be worth thousands, but it wasn't.

It's a fake, and Wallis fakes have fooled a lot of people.

For centuries, the beautiful scenery of Cornwall

has inspired generations of artists.

One of the best-known is Alfred Wallis,

a local fisherman born in 1855

who painted in a childlike style known as naive,

ignoring perspective

and painting on scraps of cardboard with boat paint.

Today, Wallis's work is sought after by collectors.

Graham Bazely is an art auctioneer and expert on the artist,

and so when he was shown a Wallis by one of his regular customers,

he was very excited.

A lady customer came in one Saturday morning

and I said to her, "You're looking very cheerful this morning."

She said, "Yes, I'm absolutely thrilled.

"I've bought an Alfred Wallis."

As a Wallis fan, Graham was keen to see the new painting

that his customer had spent £5,000 on.

Well, we're seeing what is basically a naive picture

of sailing boats in a harbour,

which is just typical of the kinds of things

that Alfred Wallis painted.

The woman had bought the painting

from a gallery in the small town of Hayle,

where she'd been reassured of its provenance -

that's the record of who'd previously owned it

and where it came from.

Part of this provenance was the view of a well-respected art expert

known to Graham.

Well, I immediately e-mailed him.

He'd been quoted out of context

and, indeed, his e-mail actually stated, you know,

"Do not quote me on this. I have not seen the painting."

By now, Graham was concerned about the piece of artwork,

so he contacted the gallery owner, David Carter,

suggesting a refund for the customer.

But he didn't get the answer he was expecting.

The response was a long and rambling letter -

it was rather arrogant -

which said, "My opinion is as good as everyone else's,

"and I'm as much authority on Alfred Wallis as anyone."

Graham was beginning to suspect

that the painting might not be all it seemed,

so he contacted Officer Ben Adams at Cornwall Trading Standards,

who was also unable to establish the provenance of the painting.

She had been told it had documented history,

provenance to it, and it turned out that

it was a very vague, patchy history,

simply not authenticated by any paperwork.

Rumours were starting to circulate about the Hayle gallery

and its plethora of Alfred Wallis paintings.

They had a whole series of paintings on their website

and everyone said to me, "Who is that man

"who thinks he's got a collection of Alfred Wallis paintings?"

The woman who bought the paintings gave Trading Standards a statement,

but there was only one way to tell for sure whether it was a fake,

and that was to get it tested.

So, it was sent to a company called Art Analysis & Research,

experts in the forensic examination of paintings.

Dr Nicholas Eastaugh examined the work.

What we specialise in is looking at the materials of paintings.

When the team looked at the supposed Wallis painting,

their verdict was unequivocal.

One of the things that popped out

was a pigment called titanium dioxide - white -

and that's quite key because it's too late for the artist.

It was introduced later in the 20th century,

so he wouldn't have had access to it,

therefore, to find it in a painting means that

Wallis can't have created that painting.

The paintings were definitely fake.

Trading Standards finally now had enough evidence

to raid David Carter's gallery.

Then obtained a number of items,

including five or six paintings in total,

together with a computer,

a number of documents, including invoices, receipts.

That allowed us to piece together

basically the history of the paintings.

For all Carter's tall stories about his Alfred Wallis paintings,

Trading Standards were about to discover invoices

that revealed their humble origins.

One in particular was described

as an item in the style of Alfred Wallis.

Now, that clearly showed that he bought the item

effectively as a fake.

Carter was buying fake art from online traders

with unconvincing names, including Timeless Tat.

The works only cost Carter a few hundred pounds each,

yet he was selling them at a huge mark-up,

in some cases tens of thousands of pounds.

So, you've got three paintings along the back there

which are all from the same supplier.

Those cost around about £500 each.

The one on the left was up for a price

of about £30,000 to £50,000,

that one in the middle there was priced at £20,000 to £30,000,

and the one on the right-hand side, that was as much as £18,000.

It was sold for £5,000 in the end.

Trading Standards were now confident

they had enough evidence to press charges.

It was clear that we were talking about fraud here.

Mr Carter was being dishonest, basically.

David Carter was charged with seven counts of fraud.

At the last moment, he pleaded guilty

and received a suspended 12-month prison sentence,

200 hours of community service and £50,000 in costs.

But Carter's legacy of fakery lives on.

I would hazard a guess that the majority of them

probably still exist.

People might not be aware that they're in the possession

of something which is worth a tiny fraction of what they paid for it.

That's all from Fake Britain. Goodbye.