Episode 7 Fake Britain

Welcome to a world where nothing is as it seems.

Welcome to Fake Britain.

-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 sports memorabilia that could lose you thousands.

It's wonderful. You know, it's signed by this player,

it's signed by that player.

They're all fake.

The fake debt collectors who just want your money.

They promise to recover your debt. That happened in no case at all.

The fake blenders that could cause a fire in your home.

It's in the lap of the gods

whether or not this thing catches fire or explodes.

This boxing glove is signed, it appears,

by Muhammad Ali and had a price tag of nearly £1,000.

Because it was on sale as having belonged

to the former heavyweight champion of the world.

But if I'd paid big money for this, I would have taken a big hit

because this glove and all of this memorabilia is fake.

The memorabilia fakers are punching above their weight

and the problem is getting worse.

It's daybreak.

A major operation is underway

to catch one of the many fakers out there

thought to be selling vast quantities

of fake sporting memorabilia to members of the public.

The officers have no idea what to expect when raiding a property

so the police are providing some heavy-duty backup.

Trading Standards Officer Neil Martin kicked off the operation

after buying this football shirt,

which the seller claimed had been signed

by a rather famous Manchester United striker.

We did a test purchase of a signed Wayne Rooney shirt,

which cost £150.

We've subsequently had the signature examined by Wayne Rooney himself,

who said, "That's not my signature."

So what, in effect, they've done is added £100 value to the shirt

by providing the signature.

It's thought the suspected faker has raked in over £1 million

by selling fake memorabilia.

When the officers arrive at the address,

it's not the warmest of welcomes.

Hi. My name's Neil Martin from Trading Standards in Dorset.

Can you just leave the door open?

Can you just leave the door open?

On this occasion, the battering ram can stay where it is.

The officers are quickly inside the property,

where they find the man they believe

is selling fake signed football merchandise.

Do you know why we're here? OK. Right.

The reason we've come here is we made a test purchase

of a signed football shirt,

which has been confirmed as being a fake signature.

The search gets under way

and the officers soon discover what could be

a major fake memorabilia operation.

In the property itself,

there's an office set up at the back of the house.

containing blank shirts that don't bear any signatures.

We've got bags and bags of blank shirts.

They're genuine shirts, but unsigned shirts.

I suspect what would have happened

is he would have applied the fake signatures to these shirts,

increased their value by, you know, £100 plus.

Boots, as well. Again these are blanks.

Also footballs.

We've got probably 60 or 70 footballs,

again, waiting to be signed.

The officers also seize electronic evidence

that could point to a fake memorabilia factory

being run from this suburban home.

Now, we've just seized a number of computer items. A tower.

In fact there's three towers have been seized and telephones also.

The evidence we'll actually be able to retrieve off of these computers

will go a long way to actually securing, hopefully,

a successfully conviction at court at a later date.

It's a huge success for Trading Standards,

with 26 bags of evidence,

including over 60 blank football shirts seized.

But this might not be the last case of fake memorabilia

that Neil has to deal with.

Fake memorabilia has been around

for as long as famous people have been around.

Particularly, sports memorabilia seems to be very popular.

You can get a blank shirt, you can fake a signature on it

and make significant sums of money from it.

So it's on the increase. We're finding it more and more.

Coming up, we meet the people

who thought they were buying the real thing

but who have lost thousands of pounds on fake collectors' items.

I've spent about £9,000.

It's devastating really,

because, all of a sudden,

you've got a room full of stuff that's not worth anything.

What do you do if someone owes you money and refuses to pay?

Well, you could hire a debt recovery service to get your money,

like these guys -

Barclay Collection Management.

Barclay sounds good, doesn't it? Like the bank.

I can rest assured they will get my money back in no time.

But despite appearances, they won't.

It's a fake company.

And as we've discovered, they fooled a lot of people

and swindled them out of tens of thousands of pounds.

John Thorpe used to run a successful kitchen design and fitting business

based in Huddersfield.

He'd had the company for 20 years and things were going well.

I'd run a successful business for all these years,

with big contracts for lots and lots of different clients

and had a good reputation.

On one particular job,

a customer refused to pay for work that John's company had done.

John was owed £11,500

and the huge debt was causing him serious cashflow problems.

But then, one day, a solution presented itself out of the blue.

And we got a couple of faxes sent, over two or three days,

saying Barclays debt collection company. Can we help?

It seemed fantastic that somebody were going to help us

get that money back. So I gave them a ring.

The company, Barclay Collection Management,

promised to be able to reclaim unpaid debts within six weeks.

There are legitimate debt collection companies out there,

helping people to get their money back.

And because this one was using the names Barclay and Barclays,

just like the bank,

John thought he was dealing with a household name.

I thought it was Barclays Bank.

Never thought to check out that it wouldn't be anybody else.

I don't expect somebody else using somebody else's name, like a bank.

Barclay Collection Management sent a representative

to meet John and his partner to discuss their case.

He persuaded them to sign up to the service and pay an upfront fee.

I think it was about £1,500, or something, to start with.

John was told that he'd get his £1,500 upfront fee back

as the costs would be recovered from the other side.

But over the course of the next few months,

the company asked John for more and more money.

Even though nothing ever seemed to get done.

You could more or less say about £1,000 a time.

Which stretched over about eight, nine months.

Overall, John paid out over £7,500 to the company,

hoping to get his debt repaid.

He was struggling financially,

but all of a sudden he got the news he'd been waiting for.

The debt company called and told him the client had finally paid his debt

and the money was ready to hand over.

But...there was a catch.

I had to pay the insurance cost of £1,500

to cover their costs

and I was at the bank ready to pay the money in.

Luckily, at that very moment,

John had a phone call from a concerned family member,

who thought John might have been targeted by fraudsters.

I had a phone call on my mobile to say, "Don't pay this money.

"You must not pay this money."

John realised the very people he trusted

were the ones he should have feared.

But he wasn't the only person to be conned.

Over at North West Trading Standards,

Officer Walter Dinn was receiving other complaints

about the debt recovery company.

We first became aware of the allegations of fraud

after a gentleman in Coventry

was defrauded out of a total of, I think, £8,000.

It was thought the debt recovery company was fake.

They promised to recover your debts in full

within a period of either six or 12 weeks.

That happened in no case at all that we managed to find.

Walter investigated further

and the trail led him to Samaira Sadique

and her brother Mohammed Ali.

It's true to say that Samaira Sadique

was the brains of the outfit.

And she, day to day, used to call the shots.

Ali operated as a representative

and Sadique would deploy Ali to the victims.

The siblings hooked their victims

by churning out hundreds of thousands of faxes every day,

containing false information about their fake company.

They had fax servers

and those servers are capable of generating

between 80,000 and 100,000 unsolicited fax messages a night.

Walter needed hard evidence and so he arranged for John to set up a phone call

with the debt recovery company

and secretly recorded the conversation.

PHONE RINGS

The woman reminded John

he just needed to make a final payment of £1,800

and the money he was owed would be released.

There was no holding account. The debtor had not paid a penny.

It was a complete pack of lies.

John had become a target of a type of advanced fee fraud,

which is when fraudsters persuade victims

to make advance or upfront payments for goods and services

that never materialise.

It is one of the most common types of confidence tricks,

claiming thousands of victims each year.

The huge scale of the fraud being carried out

by Sadique and her brother was about to unravel.

Around 100 people had lost money to the fake debt-recovery company,

with one victim losing over £44,000 to the pair.

It's difficult to estimate.

They didn't keep any business records.

So it could be £250,000, £500,000 of losses in total.

Sadique pleaded guilty to conspiracy to defraud

and her brother pleaded guilty

to defrauding one victim out of £80,000.

But there may be no justice for those taken in by their con.

There is little chance of recovery of the money.

We think it's gone overseas and it's a difficult matter to recover that.

The victims, I'm afraid, have lost their money.

John paid out £7,500 to the fakers.

He had to close down his company.

He had to let eight employees go.

John's former showroom has since been taken over by another business.

Very upset.

And it was very hard having to shut down and tell people.

And I think it's one of the worst things you can be in

is a scam like that.

FOOD BLENDER WHIRS

This gadget might help you get healthier

because its powerful motor is supposed to pulverise fruit and veg

to create more wholesome drinks.

What this one is actually doing, though, I'm not sure.

It's a fake. This is the real thing, the Nutribullet.

It's become the latest must-have kitchen gadget.

And look, they're virtually identical,

except, while this might be good for you,

the fake here might be very bad.

-MAN:

-It's a UK phenomenon.

Health conscious Brits have gone mad for blenders,

especially ones like the Nutribullet.

Its inventors say its powerful motor helps release more nutrients

than a regular blender

and a million of them have been sold in the UK alone.

Katrina Blake, from West Yorkshire, was hoping to lose some weight

by using a blender to eat more healthily.

We're doing some renovations at home, so eating a lot of fast food.

I thought this seemed a good way

to get my five a day

and get some fruit and veg into myself and my husband,

who doesn't really like eating fruit and vegetables.

Katrina went online to find a good deal and bought one for £75.

When it arrived, she couldn't wait to get started.

I was getting ready for work one morning

and I prepared all my fruit and vegetables

and put the Nutribullet on.

Literally, I was 30 seconds. I ran upstairs to grab my bag.

I came back downstairs and my husband was shouting in the kitchen.

So Katrina rushed in to see what the problem was.

I thought the house was on fire.

There was such a smell of fresh smoke.

I just kept thinking, "It's going to blow up.

"It's going to set the tea towel on fire that's sat at the side of it."

So I quickly unplugged it and took it outside.

Katrina had narrowly escaped

what might have been a catastrophic house fire.

She tried to contact the seller, but got nowhere.

So instead, she got in touch with High Street TV,

Nutribullet's official UK distributors.

They asked her to send in some photos of her blender

and she was shocked when it was revealed that it was a fake.

I thought, if I bought something,

I thought it'd be real and legitimate.

I couldn't believe it.

Andrew Malcher is the boss of High Street TV.

A number of consumers now contacted us

with the disappointing news

that they have indeed purchased a fake product.

His company's call centre

is inundated with calls from disgruntled customers

who've bought fakes.

And that number is increasing all the time.

We have hundreds on a monthly basis.

Andrew showed us the difference

between the fake units and the genuine item.

The telltale signs are, for example,

if we turn the unit to the back,

first of all, what we'll see here

is a number of certification marks.

Whereas the counterfeit unit doesn't have them at all.

It's not been safety checked in any way.

And the fakes are just as bad on the inside.

What we see here, for example,

this is a very, very high-quality piece of steel.

Whereas this unit, upon even touching it,

you can feel that it's an inferior quality on the counterfeit.

Fake Nutribullets are not just being sold online,

they are also for sale on the high street.

Jennifer Farry from High Street TV is going to check it out.

We've been tipped off

that there is a guy selling counterfeit Nutribullets.

So I am about to go and purchase one and see if they are real or not.

Soon Jennifer is back with her purchase.

Time to see if it's a fake.

On first looking at it, I can tell again that it's not real

because of the tacky plastic bottom.

You wouldn't get that on the genuine Nutribullet.

The fake blenders are clearly selling well.

While I was inside purchasing one for myself,

there was three other customers behind me

also buying one for themselves.

However, you can't guarantee these counterfeit Nutribullets are safe.

There are concerns that these machines are dangerous.

So Fake Britain took a fake blender

to independent safety expert Steve Curtler,

from Electrical Safety First.

Steve will simulate a fault to put the fake to the test.

The test that we're going to apply to the fake Nutribullet

is one that's foreseeable condition,

where a fruit stone or something locks the motor

and then the motor will start to heat up.

When the motor overheats,

a built-in safety feature should shut the blender down,

in order to prevent any injury or fire risk.

BLENDER WHIRS

The test gets under way.

But the blender's not shutting down.

Things are obviously getting very warm, very quickly.

And Steve is concerned about the smoke.

The bit that you can't see

is the toxic fumes that are being released

from the damage being caused by the heat.

And it really does get to the back of your throat

to the point where it feels like you can't breathe.

If this was in your kitchen letting off those fumes,

it would be a serious hazard.

This fake has definitely failed the safety tests.

But it's not the worst that Steve has seen.

We've proved today that, out of the test samples we've got,

the fake Nutribullet is unsafe.

But we've had far more dramatic results and more hazardous results

in the past with testing.

The main issue you're looking at here is something overheating

It's just in the laps of the gods

whether or not this thing catches fire or explodes.

Earlier on Fake Britain, we followed police and Trading Standards

cracking down on a suspected memorabilia faker.

We've got bags and bags of blank shirts.

Whether it's to do with sports or pop music,

collectible memorabilia is now a multimillion-pound industry,

popular with teenage fans and adult collectors alike.

At this established and reputable memorabilia fair in Kensington,

big money changes hands for celebrity-signed merchandise.

But fake memorabilia of all sorts is on the rise,

with people across the country losing hundreds

and, in some cases, thousands of pounds.

Jane Body, from Hampshire,

is a lifelong Manchester United fan

and loves to buy anything to do with her club or her heroes.

My parents left me some money when they died

and I was debating on what to do with it.

I'd wanted to use it for something so it would help me remember them

and I thought, "What better than my passion for football?"

I love football. So I thought,

"I'll buy as much as I can."

And then I found Steve.

That was when I started spending a lot of money.

The Steve in question was Steve Pearson.

He'd risen through the local community

to become a stadium announcer at Portsmouth Football Club.

He scored the goal!

Pearson opened a shop selling sporting memorabilia.

He was fast gaining local celebrity status and Jane was impressed.

Steve was a brilliant person.

You went in the shop, he was chatty

and talked very knowledgeable about, you know, football.

And so everything that he sold you, you'd think, "Oh, it's wonderful."

You know, it's signed by this player, signed by that player.

Jane couldn't resist.

Before long, she was spending vast sums of money in the shop.

I've spent about £9,000 plus, on, like, for instance,

my Bobby Moore shirt.

Maradona. A Messi shirt.

Cruyff. Cantona.

At first glance, everything that Jane was spending

thousands of pounds of her inheritance on did look wonderful.

Suddenly, she got a call from Trading Standards.

Jane was about to discover

that Pearson and his glossy signed sports memorabilia

were not all they appeared to be.

Somebody informed Trading Standards

that they thought Steve Pearson was selling fake goods.

I thought, you know,

"It is probably just somebody's got a gripe against Steve or something."

I was still going down the shop once or twice a week.

And then I suddenly realised

the second time he came round and warned me

not to go down the shop any more.

I realised then I was in trouble.

Trading Standards Service. Craig Copeland speaking.

The Portsmouth Trading Standards Officer who called Jane

was Craig Copeland.

Craig had been getting some very worrying phone calls

about Steve Pearson and the signed memorabilia that he was selling.

The allegations against him were that

they were either purchased counterfeit goods

that he was selling off as genuine

or that he was actually creating these signatures on the products.

Allegations about Steve Pearson selling fake memorabilia

were now flooding in.

It was time for Trading Standards to draft in an expert opinion.

So they turned to leading autograph memorabilia specialist Gary King.

His knowledge of memorabilia, both real and fake,

has helped to bring dozens of prosecutions

and even put one fraudster behind bars.

Gary believes that fake memorabilia is rife across the country.

Fake memorabilia is a serious problem.

There are so many items out there that are just absolute rubbish.

It was up to Gary to examine Jane's football memorabilia

and to break some very bad news.

-Yes.

-It's certainly not Peter Shilton.

-No.

-And that is definitely not Bobby Charlton.

The signatures of footballing legends Peter Shilton,

Bobby Charlton, Ronaldinho...

-I would say that that is not authentic.

-Look.

..all of them fake.

Jane is fascinated by Bobby Moore, the England captain,

who famously held the World Cup aloft after England's 1966 win.

So her biggest purchase from Pearson

was a signed Bobby Moore shirt.

Very proud of this. It was out in my hall.

It's like a Holy Grail, really.

And then you find, no, it's not Bobby Moore.

£650 plus £150 for the frame.

And it was a fake shirt.

And now I've got a house full of stuff that's...

that's no use to anybody now.

It's devastating, really.

Jane had unwittingly surrounded herself with fake memorabilia

worth far less than she paid for it.

But at least one good thing was to come out of this.

Gary King's analysis of the fakes

gave Craig and the team at Portsmouth Trading Standards

enough evidence to finally raid Steve Pearson's property.

They were shocked by the scale of what they found.

Over 100 items of fake signed memorabilia.

And not just football.

This is a glove containing the signature of Muhammad Ali.

It's definitely not the signature of Muhammad Ali.

We found one of these on sale in his shop for £900.

It's a massive amount

and anybody who is going to part with that much money

to get an item like this, I mean, is going to be absolutely devastated.

Pearson's fakery even infected the certificates of authenticity

that came with the memorabilia

to fool people into thinking it was the real deal.

They basically outline that he's purchasing

only from reputable dealers,

that he's a member of a trade organisation.

And this, of course, is completely not the case.

He has no...no expertise in the industry,

He's never been a member of the trade associations

that he claimed to be

and these are not worth the paper they're printed on.

Pearson had fooled dozens of collectors

with his fake memorabilia,

but he wasn't just targeting super fans.

He was also targeting investors.

Jim Conway, from Portsmouth, invests in rare memorabilia.

He collects everything from cars to guitars.

In total, with Steve Pearson,

I approximately spent £6,000-£7,000

over five years.

I will spend, not only just to build up a nice collection,

but later on, it would be me pension money

and one day I'll say,

"Oh, I'll sell it now and get a nice lump back."

Hopefully, it was going to go up in value.

Let's see what you've got.

As an expert witness in the case,

Gary had to examine some of the memorabilia

that Jim bought from Steve Pearson,

but he hasn't yet seen everything.

Today, he's visiting Jim

to see if he might be able to bring some good news.

Let's have a look. Well, that's not Tiger Woods.

No. That's not authentic.

Gary also examines this apparently rare photograph

signed by John Lennon.

Now, how much did you pay for this?

-About 200.

-£200?

It's printed.

As a print, it's probably something you could buy, you know,

in a shop somewhere for nothing more than £10.

-Wow.

-I'm sorry about that.

But Jim hasn't only bought memorabilia

from Steve Pearson over the years.

He's been an investor for decades

and bought a range of signed electric guitars from other sellers

before he even knew about Steve Pearson.

During filming, Gary spots them and decides to take a closer look.

This one is meant to be the Rolling Stones.

So we've got Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Ronnie Wood.

This is Charlie Watts.

And I honestly have no idea...

-..who that one is meant to be at all.

-OK.

But they are not authentic.

That was signed in somebody's bedroom.

And this one here.

-This one's pink...

-Yeah.

-..but it's not Pink Floyd.

They are very difficult to get signatures from.

Dave Gilmour, in particular, is a very tough signature to get.

Shockingly, these aren't the only unexpected fakes

in Jim's collection.

Bruce, Cliff, The Eagles, they're all fake.

I expected Steve Pearson's to be fake,

because of the nature of the investigation and the court case.

But obviously I didn't expect these to be fake,

which never even come from...

Unfortunately, Steve Pearson is not the only person

who's faking this stuff.

-It's upsetting, isn't it?

-Yeah.

Yeah. I'm not collecting no more.

Not interested.

It has put me off collecting, you know?

Because there's so many unscrupulous people out there, and as I said,

I thought Steve Pearson was a friend,

but, obviously, he was just lining his own pockets.

Steve Pearson eventually pleaded guilty to 13 counts of fraud

and was ordered to pay over £2,500 compensation to his victims.

He was sentenced to 14 months in prison,

suspended for two years and given 200 hours' community service.

But it will take Jim and Jane longer than that to get over their loss.

-JANE:

-It's the fact he's got me,

it's the fact he's done everybody else.

-Um...

-What are you feeling right now?

Upset with him. Angry with him.

You're just kind of shattered because, all of a sudden,

you've got a room full of stuff that's not worth anything.

The amount of money that I've lost will always be with me.

That's all from Fake Britain. Goodbye!