Episode 4 Fake Britain

Welcome to a world where nothing is as it seems.

Welcome to Fake Britain.

-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 hoverboards catching fire in people's homes...

There was, like, a bang and the flame shot up above my head.

..Trading Standards find the unexpected

whilst searching for fake cigarettes...

That's poppy bulbs, isn't it?

Poppies are the unrefined part of heroin.

..the fake designer jackets that will leave you out of pocket...

This is partly glued, not stitched. It's rubbish.

..and the jewellery that could be worthless.

I'm really sorry to say that this is a fake.

You may have seen someone whizzing past you on one of these.

It's a self-balancing scooter,

but it's usually called a hoverboard or Swegway -

one of those latest must-haves.

Of course, the fakers, they know an opportunity when they see one.

Fashions ebb and flow,

and they're always quick to follow, so they've been churning out

thousands of fake boards to make money

while these are still popular.

But people don't realise -

these fakes are potentially dangerous.

The hoverboard is a futuristic means of travel

that has captured the public imagination,

but when Trading Standards tested 38,000 of the boards,

they found nearly 85% of them were unsafe

and many had fake safety markings.

As a result, major retailers across the UK

stopped selling hoverboards and issued recalls

because of those safety concerns,

but hoverboards can still be bought online,

and that means they could be coming to a seaside town near you.

Not far from the Cornish coast,

Anthony Goodman and his children were about to experience

the full force of the fake.

I'd come over to look after the kids that night.

My son is doing a photography course at school

and the idea was to take some photos.

Anthony's son Jordan and his friend Lewis

were using a hoverboard for the project.

We basically went out and the first, like,

five minutes of going out, it just turned off,

and it was really weird so we got really confused.

We tried turning it on and off to see if that was the reason,

but it wouldn't turn back on.

Thinking that the board might need more of a charge,

they brought it home and took it upstairs to plug it in.

Anthony's otherwise peaceful day

was about to be interrupted when his daughter Amber started shouting.

I was sat watching the telly and I heard Amber shout.

Dad!

I thought it was just the usual Amber, you know,

playing with her mate upstairs, and then she shouted again,

but this time there was panic in her voice

so I ran upstairs as fast as I could.

And when I ran in there,

there was smoke pouring out the side of the Swegway.

Within seconds, there was a bang and the flame shot up above my head.

Um...

I shouted to Amber, "Get me some towels," you know, wet towels.

That's all I could think of doing.

Anthony hoped his quick thinking would help to contain the situation.

But then there was another explosion and that blew the towel off.

I kept putting towels on. There was about eight towels in the end.

Every time, there was another explosion.

They were going off like fireworks, like rockets, and each time,

the flames were up in the air

and bits of metal were flying all over the room.

Within the lithium batteries that power these boards

are around 20 individual cells the size of AA batteries.

Anthony was seeing the individual cells

exploding one by one in his direction.

I said, "Amber, you need to get out."

As Amber turned to go,

it exploded and one of the batteries actually bounced off her leg,

hit the door and then started a fire just behind me.

The flames were coming everywhere.

It was really quite frightening.

The faulty board had set the bedroom carpet on fire.

Dad was yelling, "Get water! Get water!"

All I could see was smoke. It smelled like fire and smoke.

About the fourth or fifth jug,

the explosions stopped and it was just sizzling.

Lots of smoke.

With it smouldering, I just instinctively grabbed it,

wrapped it in the towels and ran downstairs

and threw out in the garden.

Anthony had done exactly the right thing.

Whilst water should never be used to extinguish an electrical fire,

it does work effectively to neutralise

a lithium-ion battery fire by cooling down the cells.

Anthony called the fire brigade

who checked the house to make sure there was no further danger.

He was finally able to survey the damage

and the device that had caused it.

The thought of what it could have done to my family,

especially if it had been left in, charging overnight,

I don't know what would've happened

but I don't think there would have been a house,

because it was that intense.

It was frightening.

I've never, ever gone through anything like that.

Anthony immediately contacted Sherry Carter

from Cornwall Trading Standards about his ordeal.

It's her job to investigate dangerous products

that have been unwittingly purchased by members of the public,

but in this case, there wasn't much left to look at.

All the wires have melted

that would've gone into each individual battery to charge them.

The batteries have corroded completely here,

and then the metal and the plastic have just congealed together

and there are still batteries

actually with the plastic melted around them.

We also have a lot more batteries that came out of this.

You can see that the debris and the melted coating

to the plastic that was left.

This family is extremely lucky that it was caught in time

and the fire brigade were able to help them.

A product this dangerous shouldn't carry safety markings.

If people see CE markings, Kitemarks on products,

they generally have the right to believe that those are safe,

or in this particular case, as you can see,

that's more than likely a counterfeit mark

and has just been applied to the packaging.

Sherry is concerned about how many other dangerous hoverboards

could be coming into the country.

When a toy like this has such high profile,

then organised crime and organised criminals, for example,

will make money.

So, what happens is they get imported into the UK

and bought as genuine presents,

but they are really dangerous items and continue to be recalled.

Across the world, there have been dozens of reports

of explosions and fires linked to dangerous hoverboards.

Big retailers like John Lewis and Halfords

have recalled all their hoverboards,

and it's now illegal to ride them on public pavements in Britain.

But the boards remain popular

and they're still for sale on the internet.

A quick search brings up thousands of listings.

Many of the fakes arrive here by ship at the port of Felixstowe,

the busiest container port in the country.

And today, Carol Garrett and her team from Suffolk Trading Standards

have intercepted a container with a suspicious load.

And we're just going to wait for the port staff

to open up the container and check that it's safe for us to go in,

there are no suspicious gases.

Gases that are dangerous to breathe can build up inside containers.

These could come from chemicals in the goods

being transported or from plastic packaging in the cargo,

so a probe is inserted into the container

to check that it's safe to open.

From here, I can use these bellows to draw air through the tubes

to test for the gas.

It's safe, so the team gets the go-ahead

to enter the container

where they find thousands of unmarked boxes

thought to contain hoverboards.

I can tell you instantly that the external packaging of this

particular product is identical to the packaging of other ones

that have been assessed as unsafe.

Carol has seen these hoverboards before.

They appear to be the same type as fakes

that have exploded in unsuspecting consumers' homes,

but they can be dangerous in other ways.

A compliant safe plug,

you should not be able to see any red around the plug.

The risk with having any of the red showing means

that you've got a risk of putting your fingers

around the plug as you put it into the socket

and the risk of electric shock.

We have a fake test laboratory mark on it

for a test laboratory that doesn't exist.

They will put marks on in the hope that

that will convince us that the product is compliant.

The power charger, I know that this, according to the labelling here,

is identical to a power charger that we've already sampled

and had tested, and that charger was assessed as unsafe.

All the indications to date are this is a false CE mark.

Overall, the CE marking for this as a product

in its entirety is false, and therefore we would consider that

to be a fake CE marking and a noncompliance.

As demand for hoverboards continues,

Carol Garrett and her team at Felixstowe Port

are fighting an ongoing battle against the fakers.

They've seized over 20,000 unsafe hoverboards so far.

Consumers are at great risk.

We have seen explosions and major house fires

as a result of these types of products.

But might what cause these fake hoverboards to explode?

-BEEPING

-No, it's failed.

You're effectively carrying around several hundred small bombs.

Coming up, we find out just what makes them so dangerous.

Trading Standards and the police

are constantly fighting back against the fakers.

They're trying to track down this kind of fake.

We recently followed Wolverhampton Trading Standards teams

on a major operation as they crack down on fake cigarettes,

but as we found out in the world of fakery,

there are often some very surprising discoveries.

It's daybreak in Wolverhampton and teams from Trading Standards

and the police are gathering for a major operation.

They're about to launch a crackdown on fake and illegal cigarettes,

but on a day like this, they have no idea what else they might find.

What we'll be looking for is counterfeit or fake, illegal,

non-duty paid tobacco.

There are over 50 officers here from several different departments,

including the police, Trading Standards and Immigration,

because where there's fakery,

other types of criminal activity may not be far away.

Come on, guys. Let's go.

The officers have been split into teams.

One team is headed up

by senior Trading Standards officer Stefan Polatajko.

The other is led by head

of Wolverhampton Trading Standards Paul Dosanjh.

We're on our way now to the area of Wolverhampton.

We've got intelligence generally around the area of fake cigarettes.

We're particularly on the lookout for specially-made brands

with a fake market which have been linked with the fact

that they don't extinguish and they actually raise fire hazards.

People fall asleep smoking these things

and they wake up in a blazing inferno.

But in the search for fakes,

the teams also have to be prepared to find anything and everything.

It's a large operation

because we're looking at those issues of general criminality -

drugs, general Trading Standards issues and immigration -

so it's the broad sweep here.

Today, the teams will be targeting a range of shops

looking in all the secret places

where fakers might hide illegal goods.

OK, well, typically what we find behind the shop counter

is the usual sort of detritus and mess -

newspapers, receipt books.

It's often where we find cigarettes.

And the fakers can go to great lengths to avoid detection.

Sometimes the counter will have a false compartment.

It'll just look part of the shelving,

but actually what you'll find is tap or a knock of the switch

will open up a compartment

which is specifically designed for that concealment.

To help identify any possible secret hiding places,

the team are using a special camera

that allows them to see behind units and into small spaces.

It's basically a camera on a wire,

so if there's something like a little alcove that...

Well, rather than pulling all the shelving out,

we can just pop it in and see if there's anything there.

And Buster the tobacco dog is on hand

to sniff out any illegality.

The dog showed some interest in these two top shelves...

..so we'll go through them again.

So far, the hunt for fake cigarettes hasn't turned up any results,

but it has uncovered something completely unexpected

and very suspicious.

-We've got boxes here with poppy heads on them.

-That's the one.

So, what are in these bags then?

-That's poppy bulbs, isn't it?

-Yeah.

Finding poppy bulbs and a blender in this storeroom is very unusual.

It's difficult to know what's going on.

Poppies are a source of opium,

which is the unrefined part of heroin.

-This is quite a large quantity, isn't it?

-Yeah.

Cos that... I would say that bag is also full of it.

That's actually the poppy itself.

It's not clear if these husks are from opium poppies.

In the UK, it's illegal to possess dried seed pods

and other parts of opium poppies and to extract the opium from them.

Poppy husks can be used to make poppy tea -

a drink which is also illegal.

Drinking it can be lethal.

In fact, since 2003, it's been linked to the deaths

of at least eight people.

-50, 60 bags of this.

-Yeah.

-Maybe more.

It's a highly unusual discovery

for a team which set out to find illegal and fake tobacco.

Investigations are ongoing.

Large quantities indicate some sort of processing,

and I don't know what sort you'd do with poppy heads.

Is that a blender there?

The way it's been kept at the back in a storeroom that isn't lit

and the fact that it's quite difficult to get into it

just makes us slightly concerned about it.

In another shop, Trading Standards officer Stefan Polatajko

is still searching for fake and illegal cigarettes.

Hiya. Good morning.

And it's not long before they find

the dangerous fake Jin Ling cigarettes

that they set out to look for.

In addition to the hazards of smoking,

this cigarette will not self-extinguish either,

so it can result in it being left burning,

which has happened in somebody's house

when the house has burned down.

This fake brand of cigarettes has been linked to the death

of a woman in Lincolnshire whose house caught fire

after she fell asleep while smoking.

And behind the counter,

the team have found more illegal tobacco products.

These are German.

It's from Germany cos the warning signs are in German.

This is tobacco. This is tobacco blunt. It's a roll.

-Oh, yeah.

-Yeah.

It's like pre-rolled and then you put your loose tobacco inside.

..something like this.

Because these blunt wraps contain tobacco,

they must meet strict regulations,

but these ones don't have the safety warnings required by law.

They were written in German so they can't be sold in this country.

While the search for fake and illegal tobacco progresses nearby,

another team have found a locked door

and are wondering what's behind it.

The heavy padlock on this door makes them think

it could be hiding something they need to see,

and there's only one way to find out.

PC Jonathan Peters makes short work of getting in.

It seems this boarded-up room

is being lived in and the occupier has left the fire on.

Even worse, there's a paper bag right next to it

which could easily have caught fire.

This flat is clearly not fit for human habitation.

If you look outside, all the doors and windows were boarded up.

It doesn't look like a dwelling. Look at the kitchen.

The window is broken.

You might never guess from the outside

that there are in fact people living here.

The window has been boarded up.

In fact, there's no glass on the other side of that thing.

The conditions here are at best unhealthy

and at worst downright dangerous.

It's clearly not safe to be renting this out.

I mean, there's no fire alarm in here. There's no fire exit.

There's just the one door.

If there was a fire here, how would somebody get out?

Teams looking for evidence of fakery can often come across

other things they hadn't expected.

Sergeant Jake Flanigan can't help but wonder

who would choose to live in a place like this.

In our experience, we say that this has been used by people

potentially being exploited, not got a work visa,

being kept in fairly shoddy conditions illegally.

They don't complain.

They don't understand the quality of living

that they are entitled to or should rightly expect.

They're exploited by unscrupulous landlords.

And it just goes to show doing this license enforcement activity

you uncover places like this.

Back downstairs, Stefan Polatajko and his team

have found more evidence of fake and illegal tobacco.

-There's 20 times more than that out there in the bin, right?

-Right.

And they're all "Cigarettes," "Tar," "Dioxide," "Monoxide."

They've found shredded cigarette cartons -

the outer packaging that usually contains individual packets

of cigarettes.

-Cardboard out of 200.

-Mm.

They've just gotten rid of the evidence by shredding it.

The shredding seemed to be from packets of fake Mayfair cigarettes.

Even with English warnings, they could be counterfeit.

Mayfair is a brand that's commonly counterfeited.

And Buster the tobacco dog is keen to get his nose into the find, too.

What he's smelling is the shredded packets

there of the illicit tobacco.

So, he's just showing interest on there

cos that will still hold the smell.

The shreddings will be seized as evidence.

We have got an indication that the fake cigarettes

have sort of gone through this premises at some point

because they're looking like they're sort of very carefully destroying

potential evidence.

At the end of a busy day,

there have been a few successes and a few surprises.

While the police are still dealing with the mysteries

of the poppy heads and the illegal dwelling,

other teams have found more fake and illegal tobacco,

including a few more unusual products.

We think it's been quite a good day's work.

That's just a small sample of our haul today.

As well as fake cigarettes,

they found other dangerous substances.

So, what we've got here is effectively sucking tobacco.

What you do is you have it in the cavity of your mouth

between your cheek and your gum.

There's an outright ban on that because there's a concern

that prolonged exposure to that tobacco

in that sensitive part of your mouth will give you oral cancer.

And it would appear that the fakers went to great lengths

to hide their contraband goods.

These are rather mischievously put

in a Glenfiddich bottle, fake whisky.

So, perhaps you wouldn't look in there, but if you see,

you'll see that they're absolutely packed with blunts,

which are sort of cigar wraps,

and there are more in the bag that it came from.

So, again, not concealment in a false wall,

but certainly concealment in a bottle of spirits.

And plenty there, so it suggests

that there's a roaring trade being done.

The shredded packaging found earlier hints at further attempts

to conceal the sale of fake cigarettes.

They have been split up, all that packaging around them,

and someone has tried to do this so that there's no trace.

As yet, no charges have been brought in relation to the poppy heads

discovered in the back of the first shop.

Trading Standards are still investigating.

The landlord of the padlocked flat

was advised that he must make the property safe.

When the housing team visited later, it was no longer being rented out.

Earlier, we saw how a fake hoverboard

put one family's life at risk...

Every time, there was another explosion.

They were going off like fireworks, like rockets. It was frightening.

..and how thousands of fakes are being seized

by Trading Standards at British ports.

We have seen examples of products of this type exploding,

so consumers are at great risk.

We wanted to find out more about

what could make a hoverboard so dangerous,

so we took one to electrical expert Ray Jeffries

at testing lab Intertek.

First, Ray takes a look inside the hoverboard

and specifically the lithium battery that powers it.

All in all, this looks like a fairly well-made battery pack.

Does look to be quite well manufactured.

The battery might look OK, but lithium batteries can explode

if they're overcharged and that could be caused by a faulty charger.

So, Ray will carry out an electric strength test

on the charger that comes with this board.

The charger or power supply should have insulation

from the mains supply that would prevent the user

from getting an electric shock.

For the charger to pass,

Ray should be able to send up to 3,000 volts through it

while the end that plugs into the hoverboard remains safe.

If it fails, the machine will trip,

and it means that there is insufficient isolation

between the mains and the pins here,

which means that you could get mains on these pins

with the consequence of possible electric shock or serious fire.

Time to crank up the voltage.

So far, so good.

-BEEPING

-Hello. Failed.

But all of a sudden, it's game over.

That failed at around 1,700 volts,

which is approximately half of what it should be...

which means it's possible you could get a serious electric shock.

Further, if you plug this into the actual product itself

and the breakdown occurred,

it's possible it could also cause a serious fire

and a lot of other damage as well.

And that could mean bad news for the hoverboard battery.

No matter how good the battery pack is,

the serious danger here is the charger.

We saw the breakdown, which could put high-voltage

onto the terminals of the battery pack

leading to a serious fire.

There have been many different theories

as to why hoverboard batteries have been exploding in family homes

and out in public across the world.

But what is clear is the danger if one exploded next to others

in the cargo hold of a ship or an airplane.

I just want to try something

-to see whether or not...

-BEEPING

-Well...

-OVER SPEAKER:

-'Bluetooth Connecting.'

That's surprising. It is actually charged.

What concerns me about that

is there are international requirements

for transportation for batteries,

because lithium batteries can be very dangerous

in a transportation condition.

It's thought that fully-charged batteries

are more dangerous in transit

if they explode as they contain more energy.

New regulations state that lithium batteries shipped by air

should be no more than 30% charged.

This one could be full.

I very much suspect that this product has never had

the batteries tested to the relevant standards.

Therefore you're effectively carrying around

several hundred small bombs inside a container.

We went to see Geoff Leach

at the International Fire Training Centre

in County Durham.

He's an expert in the transportation of dangerous goods.

Lithium batteries have become the batteries of choice

to power our laptops and mobile phones and e-readers,

and when they're manufactured by reputable companies

to very high standards, the safety records are outstanding.

Unfortunately, there are a number of batteries out there

that are poor quality, maybe counterfeit,

that pose a real danger to us.

Fake or damaged lithium batteries can become unstable and explode.

Geoff will run a test that mimics what could happen

if a lithium battery stored in ship or plane cargo

develops a catastrophic fault.

So, in our test today we're going to attempt

to get it to demonstrate the energy that's contained in these devices.

If you're thinking of buying a hoverboard,

the Charted Trading Standards Institute advises extreme caution.

Remain vigilant at all times

and never leave the device unattended whilst charging.

There's a few more cells to go.

The results today were really quite dramatic.

The energy released was quite significant.

We saw a number of cells rocketing from the hoverboard,

and one can only imagine that if this were to happen

in perhaps a shipping container with other hoverboards,

other battery-powered devices,

or even in the hold of an aircraft,

clearly that could potentially lead to a catastrophic situation.

Take a look at this intricate and beautifully handcrafted bead.

It's also known as a Trollbead,

and they come in many different shapes and colours and designs.

It can be worn on a bracelet or necklace.

Trollbeads can cost well over £200 and lots of people collect them.

Of course, the fakers know that too.

So, you would waste your money collecting this one

because it's a fake.

As we're about to find out,

lifelong collectors can still be fooled by the fakes.

These are Trollbeads.

They're intricate beads that have soared in popularity

and now sell in their thousands from leading department stores

and jewellers across the country.

Made of glass or precious metals like sterling silver,

they can be mixed and matched to create their own individual pieces.

Sophie Lilith from Glasgow

and Sandra Pickthall from West Sussex

are both fans of Trollbeads.

This is my collection of Trollbeads.

Treated myself to this box for Christmas cos I had so many.

I've been collecting for about four years now, roughly,

and as for how many, I've never actually counted them.

Over 100, certainly.

Amongst the most popular bead designs are the animals

which come in pairs - head and tail - like this fish.

Sandra already has the cat set,

but she recently bought another that she found online.

However, when it arrived, something wasn't quite right.

These are what came in the post, and it's completely wrong.

I don't even know whether it's silver or not.

Sandra has doubts about the cat beads, clearly,

and they're leading her to question some of the other beads

she's bought from the same online seller.

Unfortunately, I bought three other beads.

I have no way of telling whether these are fake or genuine.

Sophie has also become concerned about two of her Trollbeads

which are shaped like trees.

They've got seams in the silver where it's been cast,

which Trollbeads don't have.

The colour is different between the two metals,

and worst of all, the chain does not even fit through this one.

The first Trollbead was designed in 1976 by a Danish silversmith.

It was decorated with troll faces,

and as the collection grew, the name stuck.

Today, there are hundreds of different designs

costing from around 30 to over £1,000 each.

But like any successful brand, they have a huge problem with fakes.

Pam Aujla is the managing director of Trollbeads in the UK.

The danger is that you get something that's substandard,

it's not made to the same quality, it's not using genuine materials.

It could be using base metals as opposed to sterling solid silver.

It's not guaranteed, obviously, to last.

The only way Sandra and Sophie can find out the truth

about their Trollbeads is to have them verified by an expert,

so today they've come to the Trollbeads store here in York

to show them to Pam.

-Hi.

-Hi. Very nice to meet you.

-Pleased to meet you.

First, Pam examines Sandra's beads, starting with the cat.

-This one definitely doesn't look right.

-No.

On the back of this, you can see how it's quite smooth,

-so what we do is we finish off all of our beads by hand.

-Oh, right.

So, the little details that you get are quite difficult to replicate.

To be completely sure,

Pam compares the weight of Sandra's beads

with one from the store.

We take the top and the bottom of the cat.

You can see that's 8.7.

And we take the top and the bottom...

..cat from the store.

So, that's 10.9.

I'm really sorry to say that this is a fake.

-Really?

-Yep.

Sandra's beads are more than 20% lighter than the ones from the store

which confirms they must be fake.

And Pam has her doubts about what the second bead is made of.

If it's not silver, it could contain potentially harmful metals.

You do get quite a lot of people who are actually allergic

to base metals, so if you don't get solid silver,

that can also cause people issues with skin irritations.

Pam has got bad news for Sandra about all her beads.

All of these pieces are fake.

I don't even know if they're worth anything as scrap metal.

Sophie is hoping for better news with her beads.

So, this is the one that you bought.

This one is 6.6.

The one from the store on, it's 9.7.

-So, a huge difference.

-Mm.

I'm really sorry, Sophie, but these are both fakes.

It's a frustrating result for all concerned.

It's always really, really difficult

when you have to break news like that to customers

who love the brand and just want to get the genuine product.

Sandra and Sophie's beads are definitely fake,

but what are they actually made of?

To find out, we took them to

The Goldsmith's Company Assay Office,

which has been hallmarking and testing precious metals

for over 700 years.

The tests will be carried out by head of training Dave Merry,

and he's already spotted signs the beads may not be

the sterling silver they claim to be.

It's quite yellowy,

which straightaway starts to give us worry.

Some of the lesser metals are a more yellowy colour

rather than that typical bright silver colour.

If the beads aren't sterling silver,

who knows what they could be made of?

Sometimes they use quite hazardous materials,

and in the past we have seen things like silver-plated lead products,

and obviously lead is very poisonous.

But obviously things like heavily nickel-plated

on the surface, so you're obviously

wearing the nickel next to your skin.

60% of women are hypersensitive to nickel in the UK,

so straightaway we have health hazards there as well.

To find out if these beads do contain any harmful metals,

Dave uses a special X-ray machine to analyse each one.

Each of these peaks represents a different metal.

If these Trollbeads are genuine, they'll be made of sterling silver,

but Dave's tests quickly show that they aren't.

They're fakes.

The yellowy ones are actually brass.

They have just a little trace element of nickel in them as well.

Not sterling silver in any shape or form. Completely fake.

Only one bead, the daisy, contained silver,

and then it was only a tiny trace.

The rest are all 100% base metals...

worth only a tiny fraction of the hundreds of pounds

Sandra and Sophie paid for them.

I'm cross with myself as much as anything. I'm angry.

I honestly thought that what I bought was genuine.

It's not a nice feeling thinking there are people out there

exploiting other people's good nature.

Brad Pitt, Johnny Depp, Kate Moss, David Beckham,

even the great Steve McQueen - they've all worn one of these.

It's a Belstaff jacket.

The brand started life as all-weather gear

for motorcyclists, but now it's a fashion icon,

and I've got one too.

Well, not quite. This is a fashion faux pas, a fake.

And as we found out, even fans can be fooled.

It's an iconic brand that's become a great British success story.

This is the classic kind of motorcycle dispatch riders coat.

From humble beginnings,

the Belstaff label is now synonymous with celebrity, glamour

and a sense of adventure.

'I'm falling up.'

A-listers like David Beckham and Liv Tyler

are all happy to promote them.

This is the iconic Trialmaster, as worn by Steve McQueen.

Douglas Gunn is a vintage clothing expert

who has charted the brand's rise through the years.

As Belstaff grew from the '20s,

straightaway it really adopted quite a celebrity customer base,

starting from really the first generation of aviators

right through to Steve McQueen in the '50s.

Vintage Belstaff jackets are a collector's item

and can go for thousands of pounds at a time.

Little surprise then that the fakers

are now trying to capitalise on the premium that fashionistas pay

to own a jacket like this...

..as Darren Williams from Wales discovered.

I started collecting jackets many years ago

and it's just escalated from there.

You buy one, you buy another.

Then before you know it,

you've got a wardrobe full of jackets.

New Belstaff jackets cost from around £400 for a waxed cotton one

and go up into the thousands for leather.

Darren wanted a new jacket

so went online to look for a discount.

I think I paid around £300 for it.

I was over the moon with it. Very happy.

The stitching was perfect, the fit was nice on it.

Everything about it pointed to it being the real deal, you know.

I was very happy with it.

These jackets can be customised by the wearer,

so Darren decided to buy a detachable inner liner to put in it.

So, I got in touch with this guy from Italy

and he said, "Send me a photo of the jacket you've bought."

I sent him a photo and he came back to me literally within an hour.

He said, "Your jacket's a fake."

The expert explained that the serial number

on Darren's jacket ending 0133 was a known fake.

He said they're renowned for being fake jackets.

The fakers use this serial number

which obviously should be individual to every jacket.

A worried Darren went online to see if he could verify

what the expert had told him.

So, I did a bit of looking about to see the sort of jackets

that I'd been sold, and there was about five or six on there

with 0133 - the same number that I had on my jacket.

Darren had lost hundreds on a fake high-end jacket

that on the outside looked almost as good as the real thing.

I was annoyed with myself more than anything when I found out

that it was fake because I didn't do my homework.

People are getting ripped off.

You're buying counterfeit goods

when you think you're getting the real thing.

The genuine jackets aren't just a fashion statement.

They're designed to be waterproof.

The waterproof, waxed-cotton fabric in the jackets

comes out of this British Millerain factory in Yorkshire.

The company is a British manufacturing success story,

with over 50 employees.

James Keeble is sales director.

We start with the finest quality cotton which is woven

to strict specifications

to ensure that it has good resistance to tearing.

It then moves into the dyeing where we have to dye the fabric

to Belstaff's standard shades.

Once the fabric is dyed, the wax is impregnated into the cotton yarns

under high temperature and pressure which gives the fabric

its water resistance.

Getting the waxing process right

is crucial to make a jacket waterproof -

a fact lost on the fakers.

This is one of the steps where a faker or copycat can get it wrong

in the manufacturing process.

If they do not use the correct form of wax,

then the finished article will not have

the correct weather-resistant properties.

The wearer will get wet when it rains and also the jacket

can actually have quite a pungent diesel-like aroma.

Gavin Haig is the CEO of Belstaff.

He showed us the difference

between the genuine article and the fakes.

Three jackets here. Just have a look at them.

This one, believe it or not, is from the 1970s.

That's what you should expect from a Belstaff jacket.

This is new. High-quality wax cotton, highly resistant.

You look at the sleeves, which have this very ergonomic shape

so when you're sitting on the motorbike

it's in the right shape.

And you'll still have it in 50 years' time.

Third on the rail is a fake leather jacket

that's been sent in by a customer

who thought they were getting the real thing.

If you look at the sleeve, this is a straight shape.

In fact, believe it or not, the zippers are on the inside,

and on every motorbike jacket,

you'll have the zippers on the outside for function.

So, a very basic mistake in terms of a counterfeit.

But it's the quality more than the design of this fake

that's got Gavin worried.

If you look at the quality of the leather,

this almost feels like plastic. It's rubbish.

This is partly glued, not stitched. Probably if I...

Yeah, there you go. That easy.

It's like paper.

And I look at the inside,

look at the cheapness of the filler that's inside this jacket.

It's a very, very poor make.

There are so many of the fake jackets for sale

on the internet that Belstaff has drafted in help

from brand protection company MarkMonitor.

Jerome Sicard is regional director.

So, the first job when you start a project like this

is to scan the internet, identify where the brand is exposed

and where the consumer is potentially at risk.

So, we do that for Belstaff across all kinds of websites,

and recently we started doing the same job across social media.

Over 2,000 websites selling fake clothes have been shut down,

and in a huge win against the fakers,

Belstaff was recently awarded over 42 million in damages.

We found a group of sites owned and managed

by one unique organization that was running 800 websites,

so that's quite phenomenal.

And it gives you good insight into not only how profitable

a business it is but also how confusing it might be

for the consumer because if there's 800 websites

selling fake products out there,

it becomes very, very difficult for a consumer

to make a decision as to whether he's on a legitimate

or a website that sells fakes.

Jerome knows wherever there's a successful brand,

the fakers will follow.

I don't think it's the kind of problem that disappears completely.

At the end of the day,

counterfeiters will follow the money trail.

If a brand is successful,

they will tend to try and replicate that.

Company boss Gavin knows that the fakes

are damaging British business and traditional craftsmanship.

He wants to protect the people who've made the company a success.

We have families who have over six generations

generating the know-how to build these products.

We have people on our team who have poured their energy into it,

so if I find that someone is selling under our name

with our logo on it, it is illegal,

it affects our brand reputation

and I get very passionate about that.

That's all from Fake Britain. Goodbye.