Episode 9 Fake Britain

Welcome to a world where nothing is as it seems.

Welcome to Fake Britain.

DOOR SPLINTERS

POLICE SHOUT

FIRE CRACKLES

CRASHING

Get down! Get down! Get him 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...

..Trading Standards investigate fake energy-saving schemes.

They are targeting elderly and vulnerable people and taking

large sums of money from them.

The fake concert tickets that ruined one couple's wedding plans.

It was just so soul-destroying.

My plans to propose were collapsing around my ears.

The fake remote controls that will really push your buttons.

There's over ?30,000 of stock that we are going to seize.

And a fake illuminated balloon that could be dangerous.

Balloons with rapidly-flashing lights might trigger seizures.

Most of us want a home that is warm

and uses as little energy as possible,

not least because it saves us money,

and we all know there are grants for all sorts of things these days.

One for saving energy sounds pretty good, doesn't it?

How about homes that are green?

Attractive to a lot of people,

but what if the grants and the greenery

aren't what they appear to be?

Fake Britain has been investigating.

In the North of England, teams from Trading Standards

and the police are on their way to an address.

They suspect that a company is conning customers by making

fake claims about access to government energy-saving grants.

We're five minutes away.

Senior Trading Standards officer Sophie Davies

has heard about people being duped by fake energy assessments.

Typically, consumers get a cold call from an individual

saying that they represent the government and they can come out

and do free energy assessments, and that if the consumer requires work,

they have access to government subsidies.

They then send out a sales rep who doesn't really carry out an energy assessment.

It's thought they tell the customer they need expensive building work

to make their home more energy-efficient.

The target is then pressurised into signing up to pay thousands

of pounds for work that isn't needed and might not even be carried out.

The reality is they are targeting elderly and vulnerable people,

making false claims and taking large sums of money from them.

The teams have separated and will raid four homes

and two business addresses thought to relate to the company.

Sophie's team arrives at the first house.

KNOCKS AT DOOR

MORE ANIMATED KNOCKING

There's no answer, but they're sure someone's at home.

Both windows are open.

KNOCKING CONTINUES

There's somebody coming.

Finally, someone answers.

Good morning, sir.

Can I just pop in and have a quick word with you?

The suspect is at home and is quickly arrested.

He'll be taken to the police station for questioning.

Now he's been arrested, we are going to be carrying out

a search of the premises, so we're looking for documentation.

We're looking for any computer, peripheral equipment and anything

that we think may have been used in the commission of this fraud.

It doesn't take them long to find evidence,

including brochures, invoices and a cheque for over ?1,000.

But there's more.

Officers were searching under the bed

and found large amounts of money.

Between ?10,000 and ?20,000.

Outside, they find what could be evidence of the vast profits

being made by this company -

some very expensive cars.

We've got the key date, it's quite an expensive model,

and we've got another expensive car

and if they're part of the actual investigation, then there's

a possibility they'll be seized under the Proceeds of Crime Act.

The officers search the cars and discover more evidence

thought to link the suspect to the fake energy grants company.

Along with the evidence from the house, it's bagged,

tagged and taken away.

This is the paperwork we've seized and the computer equipment.

This is what we can take back to sift through and have

forensically examined.

With the search in the suspect's house completed,

it's on to one of the company's offices.

But when they get there, there's no-one in.

So, they ask next door.

Right, we're going to force entry to the wooden door at the end,

so do you know any way that we could enter that before we force entry?

Thank you. Thanks very much.

The neighbours show them a back entrance that will get them

into the building.

We're in. We're in.

I look after these premises.

One of the men they come across isn't happy about the visitors.

You're acting like I'm BLEEP some kind of...

He's also a bit camera-shy.

Why are you BLEEP filming me?

What's the BLEEP camera for? Turn that BLEEP off.

Whoa, whoa, whoa. What the BLEEP is this all about?

What's this all about? What are you doing?

I didn't know what to do, so I rang my sister...

While the man is dealt with,

the rest of the team still need to get into the company's office.

But the door's locked, so there's only one way in.

We're going to have to force entry into there, aren't we?

This door won't keep them out for long.

LOUD THUDS

ALARM SOUNDS

Finally they're in, but not without setting off the burglar alarm.

ALARM BLARES

The place is deserted.

As you can see, the occupants of this office have left in

a little bit of a hurry.

They've taken most of the computers, and on the desk here,

you can see a script for cold-calling customers.

ALARM BLARES

This could be more evidence pointing to the huge sums of money

the fakers are making and the lengths they go to

to target vulnerable customers.

These clearly relate to some kind of questions they've asked,

which is the age of the person, whether they're retired,

whether they have a pension.

It looks like they're targeting a particular demographic.

I mean, if somebody needs windows,

why would these questions be relevant?

All the evidence is bagged and taken away for further examination.

It's been a good day's work.

Six premises raided and four suspects arrested.

By taking action against these kind of individuals,

who operate companies making false claims,

it sends out a message that we will go after them,

they will be arrested and action will be taken

and hopefully they'll get a custodial sentence.

Despite this operation,

other energy-saving grant fakers are still out there.

Many claim to offer access to government grants for things

like a new boiler or double glazing

but these are fake versions of genuine schemes that offer

financial help to make your home more energy-efficient.

As Walter Dinn from North West Trading Standards has discovered,

it's all too easy for fakers to pose as legitimate companies

and con people out of thousands.

It's often difficult for a consumer to tell the difference between

a genuine government grant being available and a fake one.

Because conmen generally are articulate, engaging and friendly,

they can appear to be genuine

when in fact they're there to steal your money.

With the promise of a grant,

customers are duped into thinking they'll get a big discount

on building work that will make their homes more

comfortable and cheaper to run.

But the work is often unnecessary and overpriced,

and in most cases is never even carried out.

Victims have lost thousands of pounds, sometimes their

entire nest egg, their life savings, completely wiped out.

Erm...

It's not just the financial loss, it's the mental anguish

and the fact that they've been deceived in their own home.

Walter has some tips on how to avoid being duped by an

energy-saving grant faker.

If somebody cold-calls you and purports to offer you

a government grant, my advice, in the first instance, would be not

to part company with any money on the day.

If it sounds like something you might be interested in,

any reputable company would be very happy to let you take your time,

think about it and get back to them.

But it's not just fake energy-saving grants

that we need to watch out for.

Coming up, we meet the man who bought

a fake energy-efficient house.

I have a house, but I have to accept,

"You've bought a fake and you're stuck with it."

Well, I've got my tickets for the big game -

Liverpool at home to Tottenham.

Not cheap, but worth every penny if, like me, you're a fan.

If I had bought these, though, I wouldn't get to see the game

because they're fake.

And as we've discovered,

the fake ticket business is booming for all kinds of events.

CHEERING

When it comes to entertainment,

we love to splash out on a good day or night out.

Last year, we spent over ?1 billion going to concerts,

and over ?2 billion on sports tickets.

Woohoo!

But fans willing to spend hundreds to see their favourite team

or band are a lucrative target for ticket fakers.

Ken and Paula Sheridan are both huge fans of

the British band Mumford and Sons.

I decided it would be good to get some tickets to see them on tour

so, without telling Paula anything about it at the time,

I went ahead and tried to get hold of some tickets.

Now, all the shows were sold out.

Luckily, Ken managed to find some tickets at around ?80 each

on a fan-to-fan reselling site.

He booked a hotel and planned a special evening

as a treat for Paula.

And Ken had another surprise up his sleeve.

I got this great idea for combining

this big event with, sort of, a long overdue marriage proposal,

and I thought, "That's going to be the plan.

"We'll go in, have a great concert

"and at the right moment, I'll propose."

On the day of the concert, Ken and Paula travelled from their

home in Andover to Portsmouth for the gig.

But when they arrived at the venue, things didn't go according to plan.

When we presented our tickets to the security people on the door,

we were told that they were fake and that we couldn't come in.

It was a bombshell.

It was an absolute shock to be hauled out as soon as I presented

my ticket and told, "I'm sorry, these are fake tickets."

You just couldn't believe that this was happening to us.

You've heard about this before and now suddenly,

here we are and it's happening to us.

Paula was upset, but, of course, she had no idea yet

why Ken was so crushed.

My plans to propose during the concert were suddenly

collapsing around my ears, you know, in fairly quick order.

The security guard told Ken and Paula they'd need to go round

to the box office for advice.

We went around to the front of the Guildhall to the office and,

lo and behold, we were two people in about 200.

There was quite a large fake thing going on here

and everyone was distraught, lots of crying, lots of emotion,

lots of shouting, lots of anger and disappointment.

Instead of enjoying an evening in front of their favourite band,

Ken and Paula found themselves being told to go and report themselves

as victims of crime to the police.

It was just so soul-destroying.

We had all these hopes and plans, and here we are walking back

to our hotel, so, you know, it was just like a hole in your stomach.

Ken's elaborate preparations were now in tatters.

Look at all the trouble we've gone through here,

planning to stay overnight, planning to propose marriage,

quite a distance to get down there, a lot of money being committed -

all of this is going to waste.

But it's not just music lovers that are being conned.

The fakers are also targeting football fans,

of which there are plenty in the city of Liverpool.

So, when DC Rob Viney at Merseyside Police started

getting complaints about fake Liverpool FC matchday tickets,

he knew it could be the start of something big.

We became aware of an issue whereby individuals were entering

into transactions to purchase football tickets online.

They were placing monies into a particular bank account,

and the tickets would never arrive.

Football fans were paying up to ?250 a time

for tickets that didn't exist.

Police tried to track the fakers through their online accounts,

but they were foiled by a network of fake IDs

and usernames that led nowhere.

Finally, though, they got a breakthrough.

A chap from America had entered into a transaction to purchase tickets,

but he had arranged to meet the suspects in Liverpool City Centre.

He would hand over the cash and they would hand over the tickets.

Of course, when he went to the ground, he found that he wasn't

able to get in because the tickets were identified as being fake.

The police realised this was the first time the fakers had

slipped up by appearing in public.

They now had a solid lead.

This time, they'd met with a real person in the city centre

and an actual exchange had taken place.

Of course, that excites you,

because you can look at when that transaction took place.

If there's closed-circuit television in the area,

that may give you the identity of an individual that's doing this.

The police set about monitoring the fake ticket seller's online posts

to identify which other matches he was selling fake tickets for.

We were able to have officers waiting at Anfield.

Anyone who couldn't get in, we could then identify.

Obviously then, from that, we could get descriptions.

From witness descriptions and CCTV,

officers were soon able to identify the ticket fakers

as Craig O'Donoghue and Paul Murgatroyd, both from Anfield.

They'd been conning football fans on their own doorstep.

But the police still had to catch them in the act,

selling fake tickets at another big game.

What happened next was captured on CCTV.

We have our victim here, who's waiting for the suspect to arrive.

If I move it on, you'll now see the transaction take place.

This is our suspect.

He has the tickets and the victim will give him the money.

Police waited as O'Donoghue met up with yet another customer

to hand over more fake tickets.

This is another prearranged meet.

The guy, again, they've exchanged.

A little bit of conversation, bit of a thumbs-up,

"you'll have a great day," and he's away.

With their latest crime caught on camera,

it was time to move in on O'Donoghue and Murgatroyd.

We'd seen them go into a bookmakers in the city centre,

and we had officers waiting.

And as you can see now, the two are just about to be pounced upon,

separated and searched.

They both had fake tickets for the game the following day,

and they also had cash on them as well.

And when police searched the suspects' homes,

they found dozens more fake tickets.

It has the watermark,

it has the Liver Bird, it has the typing on it.

To all intents and purposes, it looks like a genuine ticket.

The only way they're going to find out, of course, that it isn't,

is when they try to go through the turnstile with it.

The tickets looked almost as good as the real thing because the

fakers had managed to get hold of real blank tickets from the

previous season, which should have been destroyed.

They then printed the details of upcoming games

onto the blank tickets using home printers.

What we have here is the three printers.

These were taken from one of the addresses

belonging to our defendants.

And officers found more evidence of fakery when they went through

Craig O'Donoghue's phone and e-mail records.

Someone's made an enquiry about purchasing a ticket,

and they've obviously expressed a little bit of concern about going

ahead with the transaction, but our suspect has replied, "Yes, mate.

"Can pay half now, half when you receive them,

"as there is more trust on both sides.

"I would not con you for half of the funds, mate,

"as you have all my details and, to be honest, wouldn't be so low."

But O'Donoghue was so low,

because the contact details he'd provided to the customer were fake.

The lies were earning O'Donoghue and his partner-in-crime a fortune.

It was certainly over ?100,000 in total.

Whilst I've been with the economic crime team, this is certainly

one of the biggest of its nature that we've investigated.

Craig O'Donoghue and Paul Murgatroyd were found guilty of fraud

and given prison sentences of four

and three and a half years respectively.

Nine accomplices who helped them

to sell fake tickets were also convicted.

For DC Viney, the reward is getting justice for innocent people

who spent huge amounts of money on their greatest passion -

the team they love.

It's not just about buying a ticket.

People build their whole weekends around coming to this city

and to watch a football club, so you're talking about flights,

you're talking about hotels or trains or petrol.

It's so much more than just the cost of a ticket.

Ken and Paula, who are holidaying in Spain, did have a happy ending.

The company they bought the tickets from gave them replacements

for another Mumford and Sons gig

and Ken finally got to propose.

Gave it my best shot, and asked, "Paula, will you marry me?"

She said yes and, you know, we hugged and kissed.

But although things have turned out well

for the new Mr and Mrs Sheridan,

many other fans haven't been so lucky.

A huge amount of people there on that evening were not able to

get their money back and this is just wrong to do this.

It's wrong to sell fake tickets and disappoint so many people.

There are hundreds of thousands of these

in homes up and down the country -

the remote control for a Sky satellite box.

They cost around ?20 and you can even get them in the colours

of your favourite football team.

Use this one, though, and the big match could be elusive.

It's a fake

and fake Sky remotes are big business.

It's the early hours of the morning.

Trading Standards investigator Chris Jones is leading an operation

to investigate a multi-million-pound business

thought to be making huge profits

from the sale of fake Sky remote controls.

There are substandard fakes made in China that either don't work

or they work only a short distance from the television

and invariably pack up very early on.

It's thought the sellers of the fakes have based their

operation on a farm.

Fingers crossed, when we get there, we're going to go straight into

the unit and basically if they're not there, we'll force an entry.

When the team arrives, Chris is straight in to identify himself.

Are you employed here or is it your unit?

We have a warrant to search the premises -

we're from Trading Standards and the police, OK?

Where's the owner? Is he about? Not yet, no.

But then Chris spots one of the company bosses driving up.

Here comes the boss now.

He's done a runner. Let's go, boys. Let's go.

It looks as though the boss has also spotted the officers.

That's his car - that's your car.

The suspect car came in, saw us,

at speed, he turned off down the lane

and has gone out of sight.

So police are going in pursuit of the vehicle to try and stop him now.

Whilst the police give chase,

another suspect has arrived back at the address.

We've got a search warrant for your premises -

would you like to come and see what we're going to do?

We are looking for Sky products on your premises.

The police are here with us - we're going to search your premises now

and any items that Sky say shouldn't be there,

they're counterfeit or fake, we will seize those items.

OK. OK.

Chris heads inside to look for fakes.

Meanwhile, the police have managed to catch up

with the suspect's getaway car.

The car's parked down there in a ditch

and basically he's run off.

We've got a description of him but he's gone off

and he can go a number of ways.

The suspect is nowhere in sight and officers are keen

to have a look inside his car.

He hasn't had much time to actually store anything

but we need to make sure.

We've seized plenty of cash

and sat nav which might be related to the offences.

We've done a search, section 1 of PACE, cos he's made off from us.

Back inside the storage facility,

Chris has found the fake Sky remotes they're looking for...

and there's a lot of them.

It's much larger than we thought.

In each bin, there's a different type of remote control.

They're ready to go, they've even got the tracker on them.

All those boxes are full of them.

The boxes at the top are full of them,

the boxes behind you and down.

Under this one roof, there are hundreds of boxes

containing thousands of fake Sky remote controls.

We found a substantial amount of fake Sky remote controls.

They look exactly like Sky,

even down to the Sky logo on them and the Sky manual or leaflet

on how to programme them in to your Sky box.

It's a significant find today.

They might not be much to look at,

but these fake remote controls are making the suspects huge profits.

It's got a massive turnover - over ?500,000.

There's over ?30,000 worth of stock that we are going to seize.

But it's not just fake remote controls that Trading Standards

and the police have discovered.

What they're concerned about - they think that the products in

the boxes, the little things that go on the satellites - they're fake.

This is an LNB - it's the receiving device on a satellite dish.

You can't watch satellite TV without one of these.

You open it up - that has the Sky and the barcode on it as well.

The Sky investigators today say they have not seen this product,

so it's a case of finding where it's come from.

Is it something that's manufactured as a fake?

It's a huge job for the team to seize all of the fake products

they've found here today.

I think we're going to be hours and hours.

We've hardly made a dent in it, you know.

It's just as well they've brought a big truck.

That's the van - it's full.

That's the van we had to hire and I bet we fill that...

and another one.

And there's more good news about the young suspect who ran away.

The boy that ran away earlier has handed himself in

and apologised to the police.

He just panicked, he said, because he saw us standing there

and suspected something was going on, so the police have

taken his word and warned him of his future conduct.

It's a good day's work for Trading Standards

with a vast quantity of fake remote controls now off the market.

We cleaned it out -

a substantial amount of fake remote controls have been recovered,

potentially fake receiver parts of the satellite television system,

at least ?30,000 worth of stock has gone.

They're making substantial money from this sort of trade.

The consumer, I can guarantee,

won't be buying fake products in the future from this particular source.

No, these fake Sky remotes won't be pushing anyone's buttons,

but there are others out there,

and they can cause you more problems than you might think.

James McAvoy from Milton Keynes

specialises in satellite television installations and repairs.

He comes across many remote controls that work,

and quite a few that don't.

I've been coming across Sky remote controls, fake ones anyway,

for quite a long time now, a good few years.

The first ones that were coming out, they were quite obvious to see,

the buttons were not as fluid in their usability,

and they were quite obvious when you spotted them,

but now they are getting better.

Modern fakes might look better on the outside,

but they usually don't work as well as the real thing.

And that can be very upsetting for the elderly customers

that James carries out many installations for.

Fake remote controls can have a big impact on people's lives,

especially if TV is their social life.

I've had customers crying because they've had a fake remote control

and it hasn't done what they've wanted them to do.

They're using it to control their telly and turn it off and on,

to navigate through all their programmes,

and if they can't actually do that then, all of a sudden, their whole

window to the outside world,

which is their TV, has become very closed.

So it can be quite detrimental to people's wellbeing,

even though it's only a remote control.

And the fake remotes aren't just bad for vulnerable customers,

they can be bad for business too.

Some people may have bought a secondary remote control

after having an installation done

and they don't believe that the remote control's at fault.

If you're blaming someone that's installed the equipment,

it can have a massive impact on people's reputation.

James was so concerned about the impact of fake remote controls

on his elderly customers, and his own reputation,

that he started a blog to help customers spot the difference.

This is a genuine Sky remote control and it works fine.

This one is a fake one

and it doesn't work at all.

Things to look for on a genuine Sky remote control is the writing

underneath that clear infrared end of the Sky remote,

and the two little dimples on here

are quite large compared to the fake.

And when you open it up, Sky have always got

a little emblem with some writing inside to tell you what model it is,

and a little sticker box for your TV code when you tune it in,

and if you look really deep inside,

you've got a little square cut-out here and inside, there's lots

of little holes with a little bit of writing at the back.

On the fake one, you don't have all those things.

You don't have the writing underneath the infrared bit

for a start, the two little grooves on the bottom are a lot smaller,

and in the little square, there's no little dimples

and there's no writing or anything like that.

And then on the back,

there's nothing to tell you what revision it is.

It does have the codes, so this is a really good one,

I'm quite impressed with this apart from it not working.

But other than that, it is quite a good one.

And then also the writing as well and the colours of the buttons...

On the fake one, the yellow button is a completely different yellow,

so that is always something to look out for.

Another good thing to check is whether it's got the CE mark,

the fake one hasn't got anything on it.

So don't know if they're child-friendly, dog-friendly,

if the buttons are going to come off -

you really don't know what they're made out of at all.

Modern remote controls are highly advanced and used for far more

than just changing the channel,

so James has some good old-fashioned advice.

When you buy it cheap, you pay twice, unfortunately.

You might have to fork out for another remote control,

even for someone to come out and visit you to see what the fault is.

Earlier on Fake Britain, we saw how Trading Standards are cracking down

on companies offering fake government grants to people

who want to make their homes more energy-efficient.

It looks like they're targeting a particular demographic -

if somebody needs windows, why would the age of the person be relevant?

But it's not just fake energy-saving grants that are the problem -

fakers have found other ways to dupe people who are prepared to pay extra

in order to be energy-efficient and friendlier to the environment.

They're even selling entire energy-efficient homes that are fake.

Richard Mulholland found that out the hard way

when he decided to buy a new home on the south coast of England.

I wanted a new-build house to take advantage of the new

building regulations that had been brought in in the last ten years

that covered things like energy efficiency -

that was important to me.

Richard had his heart set on a new housing development

on the Isle of Portland in Dorset.

The houses were advertised as meeting

an energy performance standard known as Passivhaus.

The hoarding outside the development said, "Passivhaus standards".

I rang the agents who sent me a copy of the sales brochure

for the development and yet again, it reiterated the phrase,

"Built to Passivhaus standards",

so it seemed like you were actually buying something that had

been built to the standards that I was looking for

in terms of energy efficiency and greenness.

The Passivhaus energy performance standard was developed in Germany -

a building that meets the standard

is very efficient at heating and cooling the air inside -

this means lower heating bills for the owner.

The houses are tested for their energy efficiency

after they're built, and if they meet Passivhaus standards,

they get a certificate.

In the UK, the system is guided by the non-profit Passivhaus Trust,

and John Bootland is the Chief Executive.

The main principles of a Passivhaus

are this super-insulation layer all the way round.

We also have triple-glazed windows,

we have a mechanical ventilation system

which provides fresh air into the house

and then recovers the heat from the air going back out.

We try and make the best use of the sun as it comes in

during the winter, and then in the summer, we have shading

to make sure that the buildings don't overheat.

Of course, all this hi-tech energy efficiency comes at a price.

A Passivhaus may cost you a little bit more in its initial costs,

so maybe 5 or 10%,

but you should recoup those costs over time, because the

running costs should be so much lower than your standard home.

So when Richard met the developers, Lomand Homes,

and heard all about the benefits of owning an energy-efficient home,

he was happy to commit to buying the house off-plan before it was built,

knowing his new-build would save him money

and be better for the environment.

I went away reassured at that point in time

that it was a quality product.

I visited the site several times but the house that I was buying

was not actually finished until two days before I actually moved in.

At least he thought it was finished.

An important piece of documentation and one of the main reasons

for buying the house was still missing.

Much more importantly, there was no Passivhaus test certificate,

which, of course, you would expect to be forthcoming in the bits

and pieces that the developer gives you when you move into a house.

Richard repeatedly contacted Lomand Homes to ask them about the

certificate proving the house had met its energy efficiency standards.

Every time I contacted the developer, it was always,

"We'll get round to it, we'll be doing it soon but we'll be

"getting back to you before next week, we promise."

And, of course, they never did.

Richard began to worry that his new house might not be

a certified Passivhaus house at all.

I actually engaged a surveyor at my own expense after I'd bought

the house to survey the entire thing and he was quite adamant

that the house hadn't been built to Passivhaus standards.

Now concerned that the claims of energy efficiency could be fake,

Richard contacted Dorset Trading Standards

where officer Richard Herringshaw started to investigate.

The first thing he needed to find out was whether this was

a case of deliberate fakery or whether the company just didn't know

that its houses weren't meeting the energy efficiency standard.

We found that although the company had started at the very beginning

of the development to try to meet the Passivhaus standard,

at some stage through that, it became obvious that the houses

weren't going to meet that standard.

The tests that had been done on the houses while they were being built

showed that they didn't meet the required levels of insulation

and ventilation to meet the strict energy efficiency standard,

and the developers had been told about that.

But the company continued to market the development as being certified

Passivhaus, and indeed they used a brochure which I have here.

One of the pages, you can see, it says, "Pennsylvania Heights

"is a pioneering energy-efficient development that has been built

"to certified Passivhaus standards."

By now, it was clear that the energy efficiency claims

that had persuaded Richard to buy his house were fake,

and fixing the problem would be very expensive.

To make them meet the Passivhaus standard would cost someone

in the region of ?26,000,

because they would have to have major building work carried out

inside the property and then it all made good again.

So that's a significant loss.

John Bootland from the Passivhaus Trust is concerned

that fakers are taking advantage of the brand's reputation.

If people have bought what they thought was a Passivhaus

and that's fake, then that's just terrible.

You're expecting to get a high-quality home, you're expecting

to have a very high-quality internal environment

and very low running bills,

and if you're not getting that then it's incredibly frustrating.

Lomand Homes pleaded guilty to unfair trading offences

and were ordered to pay over ?15,000 in fines and costs.

But Richard, who bought a fake energy-efficient house,

remains devastated at paying over the odds for a property

that hasn't got all of the features that it should have.

The end result of this, for me, is that I now have

a house that I have to accept is not going to be Passivhaus-certified.

It seems very strange to me that you've bought a fake

and you're stuck with it.

Check this out.

It's an iLLoom, or illuminated balloon and if you've got kids

then you may well have come across these at events and parties.

It's one of the latest success stories from British inventors.

This, on the other hand, is not an iLLoom.

It looks the same but it's a fake and you certainly don't want

to take this one to the party.

We love balloons - they're fun, they're great for celebrations

and they bring out the kid in all of us.

So how about a balloon fitted with a light-emitting diode or LED light

which then makes the balloon light up?

That's exactly what inventor James Halliburton

of Seatriever came up with.

I was in my garden shed and effectively had lots

of different trials of balloons and I just happened to have lots

of spare LEDs and lots of different colours, so I used those.

My next-door neighbours were a couple of kids that I knew,

five and six, who came round and loved the light-up balloons

so I thought there was a great idea for a product in there.

From humble beginnings in a garden shed, iLLooms have taken off.

Now we're for sale all across the world,

we're in the world's largest retailers...

We've sold roughly 250 million balloons to date.

But when a small company comes up with a big idea,

the fakers aren't far behind.

They started flooding the market with fake iLLooms that breached

the 300 international patents that protect the original.

Recently, a warehouse in South Korea was raided and over 60,000

fake iLLooms worth hundreds of thousands of pounds were seized.

When we first found counterfeiters,

it was shock-horror that someone could do this.

Everybody knows that products get counterfeited but when it actually

gets done to your own products, it's a very different matter.

It's a personal hit at you.

It's not just the copyright infringement and loss of business

that worry James and his team -

tests have revealed that fake iLLooms can be dangerous.

An iLLoom is not just a balloon,

it contains small electrical parts, so it's crucial that they meet

strict safety standards since they're aimed at children.

The team has to make sure the genuine product

passes all the required tests.

We've spent an awful lot of money,

we've spent in R making sure we got the products right,

because at the end of the day,

kids are going to be playing with these things so it has to be right.

Their number-one priority was to make sure the part that lights up,

the LED unit, is firmly attached so it won't fall off and become

a choking hazard when you blow up the balloon.

Our light unit here, as you can see, extremely securely attached -

I can do that as much as I want and that won't come off.

The iLLoom is also fitted with a patented parachute device

that not only makes it impossible to swallow,

but also prevents injury if the balloon pops and parts fly off.

This is all part of safety precautions and as you can see from

an engineering side of things, this is quite a complex bit of kit.

The team test-purchased a selection of fakes from different sellers

and quickly found they had none of the safety features found

in the genuine product.

This is only held on with a little bit of string

so I'm guessing that if I pull that, it will all fall to pieces.

On this fake, the LED unit is not securely attached to the balloon.

So I've just taken the string off and now if I...

Exactly that.

That is a full light unit -

that could easily fall in your mouth.

The loose LED unit and other small parts in the fakes could be

a choking hazard for a child trying to blow up the balloon.

One, you could swallow that.

Two, you've got batteries that are easily accessible,

so you don't want those anywhere near your mouth.

You've got an LED here that is exposed.

If I give it a small twist, you can see that just comes out -

a very, very sharp bit of metal.

But fake iLLooms can be dangerous in other ways,

and that's to do with the way the LED lights inside flash.

Lights that flash or flicker at a certain frequency

can trigger seizures in some epilepsy sufferers,

so the flashing of genuine iLLooms is carefully controlled.

As you can see, this is one of our lights flashing and this is

flashing at roughly 1.5 flashes per second.

The law states there should be no more than three flashes per second,

so at just one and a half flashes a second,

these genuine iLLooms are well within the safe zone.

The same can't be said of all fake iLLooms -

if they flash too fast,

they could trigger seizures in some epilepsy sufferers.

Professor Hannah Cock is a consultant neurologist

who specialises in epilepsy.

Seizure is due to an abnormal burst of synchronised brain cells

all firing together.

There are a number of things that can make that more likely to happen.

One of those is photosensitivity,

so if you're looking at a flashing or triggering light,

it's recurrently stimulating a group of cells which can then

trigger off the seizure in a susceptible brain.

The risk of seizure rises when the light is flashing

or changing colour quickly.

Any device that has a flickering or flashing pattern of lights

at the sort of rate, three per second, 30 per second, would be

at risk of triggering seizures in a susceptible individual, particularly

if they weren't perhaps aware that they were photosensitive,

and that would apply in particular to the younger age groups.

So there's a risk to young children playing with fake iLLooms,

especially if they are epileptic.

The concern with a device like a balloon would be

that's very much aimed at a younger age group,

so I think there would be a concern about balloons

with rapidly-flashing lights, that that might trigger seizures.

We wanted to put the fake iLLooms to the test to see just

how dangerous they might be.

Because of the risk of flashing lights like these,

we've treated the pictures to make them safe to view for any member

of our audience with photosensitive epilepsy.

Look at the rapid colour transition on that.

When compared with the safe flashing of the genuine iLLoom,

the dangers of the fake are clear.

Their flashing...

Our flashing.

Their flashing...

Our flashing.

You cannot use these.

The fake balloon is flashing at eight times a second -

that's almost three times the safe limit.

The flashing speed of that...

Well, it hurts your eyes

just looking at it.

These are all dangerous

and should not be out on sale.

A product that James designed for children's fun

has been stolen by the fakers and turned into something dangerous.

You've got an enormous number of dangers with fake

and counterfeit products and it's just not worth the risk.

That's all from Fake Britain. Goodbye.

The case against you is too strong.

It's not a question of whether you'll be found guilty, but when.

I am a gentleman.

I am a gentleman's wife.

Soon to be a gentleman's widow.

In truth, I would do the same again.

Guilty...or not guilty.