Episode 6 Rip Off Britain

We asked you to tell us what's left you feeling ripped off, and you contacted us in your thousands.

You've told us about the companies you think get it wrong

and the customer service that simply isn't up to scratch.

They just want to take money from people.

That's what it's all about.

You've asked us to track down the scammers who stole your money

and investigate the extra charges that you say are unfair.

What kind of people could do this to an innocent human being?

And when you've lost out, but nobody else is to blame,

you've come to us to stop others falling into the same trap.

You have to go through various levels of authority

and push your way through.

So, whether it's a blatant rip-off or a genuine mistake...

..we're here to find out why you're out-of-pocket

and what you can do about it.

Your stories, your money, this is Rip-Off Britain.

Hello, welcome once again to Rip-Off Britain where, as usual,

we're investigating more of the subjects that you've brought to our attention.

And today, we're returning to a topic

that these days dominates our inbox,

and that is scams.

Every time we expose new tactics used by fraudsters,

we're inundated with reports of even more.

So we've picked out some of the latest to watch out for.

Of course, scams do come in all shapes and sizes and, indeed,

levels of sophistication.

And while you personally may not be fooled by some of them,

there's always the possibility of yet another

that could well draw you in.

I think it's fair to say that the ones that we're going to be hearing

about today feature right at the very worst end of the scale in terms

of the deceit that's involved.

And there seemed to be so many dreadful cynical cons

that play on the insecurities of whoever it is they are targeting.

And as a result, they could leave you

thousands of pounds out of pocket.

So, as we reveal just how plausible - and believe me, they're plausible -

that some of them can be,

stand by for all you need to know

to avoid being the next person to be taken in.

Coming up, how this woman was tricked out of hundreds of pounds

by a scamming technique that's becoming increasingly common

and is virtually impossible to trace.

I said to him, is this a scam? Are you doing...?

That's when he said to me, no, dear, if I was scamming you,

I would be asking for your bank details.

I'm trying to help you.

And nailing the fraudsters in the biggest investigation of its kind,

after an elaborate con saw huge sums of money stolen right across the UK.

It was one of only two times in my life when my knees actually gave way

beneath me. It was just that huge realisation that I had been duped.

You know, it's thanks to all of your e-mails and letters that we are able

to share details of all the latest scams with all of our viewers,

to make sure that you know exactly

what you need to watch out for to avoid being stung.

And in recent months, we've been particularly struck

by the number of people contacting us

to say they have all been caught out in exactly the same way

by an especially nasty scam

that asks you to pay money in a particular and,

if we're honest, rather unusual way.

One that can't be traced,

and that could leave you hundreds of pounds out of pocket.

It's a scam we've heard reports of nationwide,

but fraudsters seem to have targeted quite a few people in the town

of Comber, in County Down.

Where, one afternoon,

74-year-old Josie Andrews received a deeply unsettling cold call.

When I picked up the phone and I said, "Hello,"

he said, "Good morning. I'm from HMRC.

"And I'm issuing you with a lawsuit today."

And I said, "What for?"

And he said, "Because you owe tax money."

The caller claimed that Josie owed ?980 in backdated tax repayments

and, because of it, she was due in court the following day.

Worse still, she could face prison

if the matter wasn't resolved right now.

I thought I was going to jail.

I really thought, what's going to happen to me here?

It was terrifying. It was really terrifying.

The caller claimed that Josie had failed to respond to letters seeking

repayment of the amount of tax that she apparently owed.

Of course, she'd never received any such letters.

But the threat of prison

made the demands for repayment that day very persuasive.

And she was told that the quickest way of settling the matter

was to pay using iTunes vouchers.

iTunes vouchers are often purchased as gifts and come in values between

?25 and ?100.

Normally used to purchase music, games and films online,

they are widely available in a number of stores

and the man who claimed to be from the HMRC told Josie

that she could get hers from the nearby supermarkets.

He told me to write it down and put it on a piece of paper.

I wasn't aware I was getting music vouchers,

I thought I was getting vouchers for the tax office.

I said to him, "You know, is this a scam?"

That's when he said to me, "No, dear, if I was scamming you,

"I would be asking for your bank details.

"I'm trying to help you, so as you're not going to court tomorrow."

So that sort of...made me think it was OK.

Josie said she would ask her daughter to drive her,

but the caller instructed her that it would be much quicker to jump into a taxi

and buy the vouchers straightaway.

He said, "It'll take you 10 to 15 minutes to go to Tesco's in a taxi."

I thought, is he sitting about somewhere watching my house?

Does he know where I live?

It was an anxious journey to the supermarket.

I was sitting in a taxi, I just sat there and hoping,

can I get these things and get this sorted out?

I just couldn't think, is somebody coming to arrest me,

what's going to happen to me tomorrow?

Josie visited two local supermarkets in order to buy the ?980 worth

of iTunes vouchers.

Each one has a unique number on the back,

which is revealed by scratching off a panel.

When she returned home,

she called the scammer and gave them the vouchers' numbers,

meaning they could go on to spend these vouchers online.

When Josie's daughter popped around 30 minutes later

and heard what had happened,

she realised that her mother had been scammed.

I said, "The taxman wouldn't ring you and ask you to go and get iTunes vouchers."

Then actually, half an hour later, the person on the phone rang

and I answered the phone.

They said to me, "Who am I speaking to?"

I said, "Who am I speaking to?"

They asked for my mum. I said, "My mum's not coming to the phone."

Josie and Amanda reported the incident to the police,

Action Fraud and Apple, the company that runs iTunes.

But with the vouchers working in the same way as cash,

the money Josie had spent had gone for good,

and months later she still feels vulnerable in her own home

and even dreads her phone ringing.

You shouldn't have to feel like this inside your own home.

You should feel that this is my house,

I shouldn't have to be taking calls like this that I don't want.

Josie's experience did at least

stop someone else in the area from losing out.

Her next door neighbour, Roy Kelly,

is a taxi driver and a few weeks later, he was booked by a fare,

which soon became clear, had been targeted in the same way.

It was an elderly gentleman that I'd picked up.

He had asked for a... It's called a wait and return.

He asked me to take him down to Tesco's.

He was going to run in for a few minutes

to collect something and come out.

As his customer told him more, Roy became increasingly concerned.

He said the Inland Revenue had got in touch with him that morning,

saying that there was a ?2,500 rebate for him.

But they needed an administration fee first,

before an individual for the Inland Revenue would be out that afternoon.

So they needed ?150 worth of iTunes vouchers.

Mention of the iTunes vouchers reminded Roy

of what had happened to his neighbour, Josie.

So, he was able to warn the man

and stop him buying the vouchers just in time.

But, clearly, there are plenty of other people who have been tricked

into handing over iTunes vouchers in this way,

because when we contacted HMRC,

it was well aware of the scam and of how its name was being used to give

it the legitimacy needed to spur people into taking immediate action.

It stressed that any requests to pay tax through iTunes gift cards

or any other type of voucher should be considered as fraud,

while warning that the fraudsters can be very convincing

and use intimidation to get what they want.

HMRC also said it's working closely with law enforcement agencies

to ensure that no more taxpayers fall victim to these types of scams

and encouraged anyone who has been affected to contact Action Fraud.

But I'm afraid all of this is just the tip of the iceberg

when it comes to scams involving iTunes vouchers.

Because they can't be traced,

they have become very appealing to fraudsters who,

we know from your letters and e-mails,

are using all sorts of other stories to persuade you to hand some over.

And Peter Marsden from Sheffield

is just one of those people to contact us

after losing hundreds of pounds

in the belief that he was dealing with a loan company.

Problems with his credit rating meant Peter had found it difficult

to borrow the money he needed to move to a bigger flat.

So, after searching online,

he was delighted to suddenly receive a call from a company that seemed

happy to help.

On the initial contact, this lady, Elizabeth,

said to me they could do the loans at a cheaper rate because it was

a government-backed incentive

to help people that were struggling with their credit rating.

The loan company said that Peter's request to borrow

?5,000 wouldn't be a problem.

She actually said to me, "Mr Marsden,

"we can provide you with that ?5,000 loan.

"We can do it at a rate of 6% over three years, that would be a repayment,

"a monthly payment of ?160."

That was absolutely perfect for what I was looking for.

And I thought at the time, it seems too good to be true.

And so it proved.

Peter was told that to secure the loan he had to prove he had capital,

and he was to make an initial payment of ?500,

which would be refunded,

and this should be made using iTunes vouchers.

He had to borrow the money to buy them from friends and relatives,

and it took a few days to get the amount needed.

You can get an iTunes voucher up to ?100,

but none of the stores had that amount of them available.

So I ended up having to buy the ?50 ones, multiples of ?50,

?200 to ?300 for each,

depending on how much stock each store had actually got.

The loans company told Peter they would pay him the ?5,000

after it had received proof that he had bought the vouchers.

Once I have the vouchers in my hand, I took them home, sat down,

with a coin, and scraped off to reveal the actual voucher number.

Peter then photographed the numbers and sent them through

to what he assumed was the loans company.

But a few hours later,

he was still waiting for the ?5,000 loan to appear in his account.

So I called them and that's when they told me they had got a problem and needed more vouchers.

A further ?300, to which I just said no, there's something wrong,

I don't think this is right. I refused to go any further,

and I tried to recover the ?500 in vouchers that I'd paid them.

But obviously,

all my requests for a refund were denied.

Peter realised that it had all been a con,

so that the fraudsters could get the voucher numbers.

The company made what looked like an honest offer of a legitimate loan,

and it turns out it wasn't a loan they were offering me at all.

They were just trying to get ?500 in iTunes vouchers,

which are more difficult to trace than cash through a bank.

Peter is angry with himself falling for it and, of course,

he now owes family and friends the money that they lent him.

His sister, Elaine, says the fraud has affected all of them.

This has really upset him.

No-one likes to see their family upset.

And he is.

Sorry.

It's really upset me.

?500 might not be a lot of money to some people,

but to Peter, it was a way of being able to move.

Police believe the fraudsters sell on the voucher codes and are issuing

warnings across the country to prevent others being conned in the same way

as Josie, Peter, and who knows how many others?

If you're not familiar with iTunes vouchers, Apple,

the company that issues them, has made it clear -

the crucial thing to remember is they can only be used to make purchases

on the iTunes website and App Store.

So if you receive a call, text or message that leads to requests

for them as payment for anything else, the advice is simple.

However scary or credible the story you are being told,

ignore it and report it, because the whole thing is just a scam.

Now, anyone who's ever set up a business won't need reminding how tricky

it can be in those first few weeks and months just to stay afloat.

In that opening period especially,

getting the right kind of publicity to generate more interest

and customers is essential.

But using the wrong kind of people to promote your company can end up

being a waste of time and money.

And that, unfortunately,

proved to be the case with a number of people who unwittingly

got caught up in the schemes of a criminal gang.

They managed to convince their targets to hand over hundreds,

sometimes thousands of pounds in return for promises

that they repeatedly failed to keep.

Anyone is fair game to a fraudster,

and certainly Polly Zabari from Surrey could have had no idea

that she was going to find herself caught up in one of the country's largest and most complex frauds.

At the time it happened,

she was running her own successful travel firm.

I fell into the travel industry purely because my ex-husband was a tour guide in Israel.

I do holy trips, so I do Rome, Malta, Lourdes,

anywhere people want to go, really, but Israel is my main market.

Polly's small holiday firm went from strength to strength.

Word of mouth and great reviews meant that by 2010,

she was running up to 18 annual foreign tours

with a turnover of around ?300,000 a year.

It was quite nice to be able to work from home,

running my own business that I was proud of,

and making enough money to sustain us all.

And then an unexpected call

seemed to suggest all the hard work had paid off.

Hello?

I received a phone call to say that I'd won some prestigious award

as best independent tour operator

and that this award was backed by British Airways,

and that part of the award was a double-page spread in their

newspaper, which had a phenomenal distribution.

Polly had been called by a company based in Derby,

called the Wyvern Media Group,

not to be confused with companies of a similar name.

It claimed to be a publisher of free newspapers with a distribution

running into tens of thousands.

He went on and on about how fantastic this was, how I had been selected,

and it was really quite flattering.

I admit, I was completely bowled over by it all.

The first thing I did was ring my mum and tell her.

The only catch with this wonderful-sounding reward,

and the resulting publicity,

was that Polly would have to pay a small cost of ?50

to help with the article's publication.

He did tell me that if I'd taken out advertising across the double page

spread in colour, it would have cost me thousands.

I mean, obviously making the ?50, to me, seem quite paltry.

So I gave him my debit card details.

And that was the only time that I gave him my card details.

The caller from Wyvern Media Group assured Polly that,

given the backing of such a prestigious company

as British Airways, and with their own huge distribution,

all this would be a great thing for her travel firm.

But with so much riding on it,

she asked to see the article before it was published.

The copy was so badly written,

I think my eight-year-old probably could have written something better.

And even then, alarm bells didn't go off.

I rewrote it and sent it back to them.

You know, in hindsight, I can't believe how stupid I was.

But I think the flattery had won me over.

Over the coming weeks,

Polly received dozens and dozens of calls from Wyvern Media Group,

apparently to check facts.

I think, in all, over a period of five or six weeks,

I probably received 40 or 50 phone calls,

really to a point where it was getting really annoying.

So they'd check the spelling of my surname,

or they'd just check my address, or they would check...

You know, just a small detail.

Each time, that is all they ever seemed to ring about,

to the point where I was giving the same information three, four,

five times a day to different people.

Despite all that,

Polly was never sent a copy of the final printed article,

nor did she receive the award she has supposedly won

or even a certificate. And it was only when she heard from her bank

that she realised what all those calls had really been about.

I didn't realise that anything was wrong

until I got my bank statements.

And I just saw these endless withdrawals.

It was one of only two times in my life when my knees actually gave way

beneath me. It was just that huge realisation that I'd been duped.

Over the period of six weeks,

Wyvern Media Group had drained her account of ?18,000.

But it had been taken out in lots of small amounts,

using the card details she'd provided

when she paid the first ?50 setting-up fee.

It kind of clicked into place,

that every phone call that I had had from somebody,

probably tallied with an amount of money going out of my bank account.

Every time Wyvern Media Group had called Polly,

they had put a charge against that call,

creating an invoice and helping themselves

to the money in her account.

Polly phoned her bank to report the fraud,

and also contacted Trading Standards,

where staff were already very familiar with Wyvern Media Group.

And the man who was investigating complaints was James Delaney.

We had a significant amount of complaints about businesses

who had paid for this advertising

and their card details had been reused without their permission,

and people had lost significant sums of money.

As the investigation continued,

it became clear that the Wyvern Media Group business was huge.

It had 12 offices across the UK,

employed 250 people and it generated

a turnover of over ?7 million a year.

This was an enormous, organised fraud on an industrial scale.

It was an enormous business,

with a considerable amount of organisation and infrastructure behind it.

Trading Standards had dozens of complaints similar to Polly's,

with the pattern always the same -

small-business owners were tricked into handing over their bank card

details, and then were called over and over again.

And each call would lead to money being taken without permission.

The call centre staff that were employed by the group were trained

in the dark arts of cold calling and pressurised sales.

They were extremely convincing and deceptive in terms of how they

approached and executed their sales.

With enough evidence that this was a fraud on a massive scale,

in November 2012, the police, alongside Trading Standards,

simultaneously raided the company's offices in Nottingham, Rugby,

Leamington Spa, Slough, Taunton, Bristol, Gloucester and Derby.

They confiscated tens of thousands of documents.

Steve Wyatt was the senior investigating officer

who had to organise wading through all that paperwork to build a case.

I was quite shocked when I walked into the head office at Derby,

to see the amount of documents that were there.

We needed to bring in teams of officers to sift through the evidence,

to look through for any documents or other exhibits

that could be relevant to the case.

During their raids, officers came across thousands of documents,

including copies of the newspapers Wyvern Media Group claimed to

distribute to tens of thousands of people.

But even to Steve's untrained eye, they looked amateurish at best.

This is one of the newspapers.

You'll see the quality is extremely poor.

And also, our victim has been sold multiple advertisements

in the one newspaper.

His feature appears on the front page,

and also on the inside of the front page

is an exact copy of what appears on the front page.

In all, our victim paid over ?8,000

for his advertisements in this newspaper.

Which didn't go anywhere.

Wyvern Media Group would produce these papers as proof they were

a legitimate company.

Each paper was printed 5,000 times.

And the reason for that was that enabled the sales staff,

when asked about the distribution numbers,

the sales staff were able to say 4,000 to 5,000.

But they would always say it very quickly,

to make it sound like 45,000.

And this was something that we found that ran as a theme

throughout the whole of the Wyvern Media offices.

The man behind the company was Jonathan Rivers,

who'd made a fortune at the expense of thousands of customers.

Jonathan Rivers was the main driving force behind the Wyvern Media Group.

He had complete control over every part of the business.

The police and Trading Standards investigation was so huge

that it lasted six years and it wasn't until October 2016

that Jonathan Rivers and his cohorts were finally brought to justice.

At Nottingham Crown Court,

Rivers admitted fraudulent trading

after more than 500 complaints against his company were lodged.

He was jailed for six years.

Four other members of staff were also jailed and a further seven

were given suspended sentences.

These people are ruthless.

Their main objective is just simply to take money from people.

What people don't understand is that

once they've handed over their credit card details,

then they're handing over control of their bank account

to whoever they've given the details to.

With the ringleaders behind bars,

the police are attempting to recoup

some of the money the company's victims have lost.

And, in Surrey, Polly's bank did reimburse her ?11,000 of the ?18,000 taken.

I think now the case is over it would be nice to think

that maybe I could get my money back. I mean,

it's been seven or eight years since it was taken and it would be quite

nice to have it back, as it's rightfully mine.

For Trading Standards, this was the biggest case of its kind.

And with a successful prosecution,

they hope fraudsters will think twice about running such a scam again.

It's a massive result for the team.

It sends out a message that we won't tolerate businesses that go to these

lengths to defraud consumers and businesses.

And being able to successfully take home a job of this size and scale

does bring a certain amount of satisfaction and pride to the team.

Still to come on Rip-Off Britain,

the companies repeatedly selling their targets vitamin pills

and products costing hundreds of pounds -

but how much of what they're flogging

is even what they say it is?

I was really upset.

I was gobsmacked, actually.

I felt angry, I felt...

upset that I hadn't picked up on it, to be quite honest.

Sorry...

The Trafford Centre in Manchester was this year's venue for our annual Rip-Off Britain pop-up shop,

where one of the real joys

is meeting up with as many of you as we possibly can.

Good morning, how are you?

I think I'll keep you with me today, Henry.

You'd be a very good sparring partner, do you know that?

Do I get a kiss bye-bye?

A slobbery one!

A nice slobbery one?

Lovely.

Now, one of the people keen to get some help from our team of experts

was 70-year-old Roy Saddler.

He's come to see our technology guru, David McLelland,

about a very frustrating problem with his phone line.

Right, David is your man.

Tell us what the problem is, exactly.

Periodically, I get very loud crackling noises

that cut the broadband off.

And do you hear it on the telephone, when you're talking to people?

Oh, yes. Yes, very much so.

Roy has complained about these noises to his service provider.

But while the company has sent out engineers numerous times

to look at the connection,

Roy says the issue still hasn't been resolved.

And, for some of the visits, he's even had to foot the bill.

If an engineer comes round and finds there is a problem in the house,

he wants to charge me ?165, which I've paid twice up till now.

So that means you've paid ?330, and you've still not got it checked?

Since then, it's been a fault in the exchange,

it's been my line has been hit by lightning, and it's the router.

Well, after more than two years of the same problem,

Roy is hoping that David can give him some advice to get it sorted out

once and for all.

Let's boil this down a little bit.

The problem here is with the line that's coming from the exchange

into your house. Correct.

So it's not necessarily a broadband issue, it's a telephone line issue.

Correct. It's those copper lines that provide the various services

to your house. The challenge you've got is providing evidence to say,

I've got a problem with my line.

When they turn up, there is no problem.

Yet you're experiencing problems all the time.

So you need to show somehow that you've got those problems.

The name of the game here, I'm afraid to say, is one of persistence.

You've called engineers around, they're been doing lots of things,

apart from actually testing the line.

Exactly. Because that's the thing that takes them time,

and it takes them money, and they're under pressure.

But if you keep on calling them out, at the end of the day,

they're going to have to say, well,

either we fix this line or we're going to be round here every couple of weeks.

But should he have paid that money in the first place,

if it's actually a problem with the line? I don't believe so, no.

If there's a fault within your property,

then you are liable for those costs.

If it's outside your property, it is the infrastructure,

it's the service provider who bears those costs.

They think that they've found the fault inside your house,

but the fault is still there, so it's clearly not inside your house.

I feel your frustration.

Thank you very much. It's a very unfair service that you've been

receiving, and paying a lot of money for.

After visiting the pop-up shop,

Roy did again speak to his phone provider,

but alas, his phone line still crackles.

But he's ever hopeful that one day it will be sorted out.

Meanwhile, shoppers have been lining up in their droves

at our Gripe Corner,

ready to get some of their consumer grumbles off their chest.

What gets me really annoyed is bad customer service,

when people are serving you and not paying attention to you.

What really annoys me is the price of car insurance.

Why is it he lives ten miles away, and his insurance is cheaper?

You know what, what's the point in having a car?

What annoys me is when you go out shopping

and they never have the things in your size!

Now, I'm afraid every year on Rip-Off Britain,

we are contacted by viewers concerned that a friend

or elderly relative has been persuaded to sign up

to something that leads them to handing over hundreds or even thousands of pounds

for products or promises that simply do not stack up.

And in most cases, they're all just an out and out scam.

Very often, of course, the claims made to convince people to hand over

their cash are all too convincing.

So we've taken a look at some of the worst cases that you've told us about recently,

to see if there's anything that will stand up to scrutiny or,

indeed, maybe it was all just a big pack of lies from the beginning.

We've long been told of the importance of a balanced diet

to live a long and healthy life.

And as we get that bit older,

we're often advised to top up what we're eating with supplements,

to make sure that we get the vitamins and minerals we need

to keep the joints moving and our brains in tiptop condition.

So when 89-year-old Dorothy from Watford had a call from a company

offering to sell her some vitamins, she felt compelled to say yes.

But Dorothy's daughter, Sue,

says the cold caller was not entirely honest right from the beginning.

She said that she got the impression

that maybe they had this from her GP,

that they knew what her ailments possibly were.

But they directed it as if they were a doctor speaking. You know,

"What day-to-day issues do you have?

"What health care issues do you have?"

Being really quite personal,

and getting details from her about her health condition.

Thinking the caller had some connection with her doctor,

Dorothy agreed to buy some vitamins

and gave her bank details over the phone.

But I'm afraid that was just the start.

Dorothy was then inundated with calls from other vitamin companies

as well, and each time, she ended up buying more.

Why do you feel you continued to buy them, Mum?

What was it that made you?

I don't know, just thought it would do me good.

I don't think she would have really understood

what was occurring, what was happening.

Overwhelmed and really confused by the number of calls,

Dorothy kept on buying more vitamins, and her daughter, Sue,

only found out what was happening when she noticed regular payments

of up to ?900 leaving her mother's account.

I was really upset, I was gobsmacked, actually.

I felt angry. I felt...

upset that I hadn't picked up on it, to be quite honest.

Sorry...

Hi, Mum. I just thought we'd have a quick look through these together.

Over a period of 15 months,

Dorothy had spent an incredible ?24,000 on vitamins,

money she just can't afford to lose.

We reached the point where, on the month when it all came to light,

she'd actually for the first time gone into arrears on her bank account.

And we had to get money transferred in to get it back into credit,

and that was very alarming.

Sue called Dorothy's bank and asked them to block any further payments.

But the bank explained that staff had actually called Dorothy

to query the transactions, but she confirmed that all was OK.

They showed us various recorded details of where the bank had directly phoned my mum,

and where they had requested her to confirm that she was happy

with some of the amounts that were going out of her bank account.

And each time they contacted her, she just said,

"Yes, I did authorise that payment."

Sue's next call was to Hertfordshire Trading Standards,

where Sue Shanahan took up Dorothy's case.

I did ask her, "Why do you not just put the phone down?"

And she said, "You know, I've tried, I tell them no,

"but they just keep going on and on, and on, they are so persistent,

"they won't take no for an answer, so I just give in.

"You know, I don't want the confrontation,

"it's just easier to get the bank card and pay up."

It's so sad, but Sue and her colleagues have heard many similar stories

about vitamin companies that repeatedly target the elderly.

And she's keen to raise awareness of how they typically operate.

I'm aware that there are dozens of these health care companies

out there at the moment who are targeting our elderly and vulnerable

over the phone to sell them vitamins.

If they find a victim who will pay up, who will not complain,

not contact their bank, then they will target them again and,

as well as that, they will pass on their details

to other companies to target.

Which is why we end up with so many of these products being sold,

when they are not wanted or not needed.

It's a massive, massive problem and hundreds,

thousands of pounds are being spent.

And these expensive products are not just sold over the phone.

Many vitamin companies target pensioners by post,

seizing their attention with the promise of a huge cash prize.

"Yes, you've won ?15,500 - nought, nought -

"in our multi-wins grand draw.

"This sum is available from this morning, so claim it right away."

Margaret from Brighton, who has Alzheimer's,

received a letter many of us will have come across,

telling her she had won a small fortune

and all she had to do to release the money

was to sign up and buy some vitamins.

It was a message that she found very hard to resist.

Now, on all of those, I would have done something,

bought something, or whatever I had to do.

Even to her son, Richard,

the offer of a cash prize seemed quite convincing.

There is everything on there that would lead you to believe

that you were just one more cheque away, I think, from riches.

It seemed to Margaret that she had nothing to lose,

with the benefits of taking vitamins,

coupled with the promise of the ?15,500 prize,

she was happy to place an order.

But once she made a purchase,

more companies called to sell her even more vitamins,

and soon she was buying supplements faster

than she could ever have taken them.

They did get put over here, on this kitchen surface.

And they came out, literally,

all the way across and about three deep at the worst of it.

The bottles of pills were in every single room.

Lights! Well, here we've still got

quite a stack of the Tonic Royals.

That's one, two, three, four, five, seven of them,

five of them not even out of their packing.

One of the companies selling to her is called Biotonic, based in France.

She bought a product called Tonic Royal with ginseng,

which contains the honey bee secretion royal jelly -

said by some to be very good for your immune system.

She also bought pots and pots of a manganese compound, claimed to be,

amongst other things, an antioxidant.

There were also pots of jouvence and lecithine,

containing that all-important vitamin C,

another supplement generally thought

to be really good for the immune system.

And while we're not going to question the apparent benefits of the supplements themselves,

we've heard complaints and concerns about Biotonic many times before.

So, with the company's products hardly what you'd call cheap,

we were interested to know if it's pills really contain quite as much

of those key ingredients as they claimed.

So we asked scientist John Griffin from Kent Scientific Services

to run some tests on a few of Margaret's pills.

So, when we tested the four products,

the results were interesting and varied.

First up, John tested how much royal jelly was in this Tonic Royal.

So, when we looked up the honey product, or the Royal Tonic,

we looked at the sugar profile and certainly the levels of sugar in there

were consistent with a honey-based material being in there.

Our estimations were around 30%, so the label declared around 34%.

So, in terms of information,

this appeared to be sufficiently accurate.

Now, remember, we weren't questioning if the products

actually do what's being claimed,

just whether they even contain the ingredients they're supposed to.

This first one did, although there was something of a surprise

with the next product tested,

the manganese compound.

We did find manganese. We didn't find it at the level they declared.

It was about 19% lower.

The acceptable tolerance in terms of accuracy of information is 20%.

So it just crept within that acceptable tolerance.

The accuracy of this information certainly could be a lot tighter.

So, this product contained just about enough manganese to pass,

but still 19% less than you pay for.

And things were even worse with the final two tablets,

sold as being full of vitamin C.

So, when we looked at the jouvence and the lecithine tablets,

the level of vitamin C present was significantly less than the declared values.

In one case, it was less than 1% of the declared value.

In the other, it was around about half.

So the levels of vitamin C there

would not allow you to make any health claims based on the intake,

or based on the number of tablets you should take per day.

So, would really have no beneficial nutritional effects whatsoever.

In other words, these pills, of which Margaret has bought

dozens and dozens of pots, really aren't worth the money,

as she would really struggle to feel the health benefits

normally associated with this kind of vitamin supplement.

We put our findings to Biotonic in France,

but the company didn't respond to any of our questions.

But for Sue Shanahan at Hertfordshire Trading Standards,

what we found just confirms what she has always believed,

that such companies are encouraging older people to waste their money

on health products that they just don't need,

and she thinks it's crucial that that message is passed on.

The advice from Trading Standards for families

who might be really worried

about their elderly relations, their vulnerable relations,

is talk to them about these scams.

Tell them what's going on,

because the more informed people are,

the less likely they are to fall for them.

And it isn't simply the sale of vitamin pills that Sue includes in that warning.

She's concerned about all manner of other scams,

from those that have come in a phone call right out of the blue,

to door-to-door sellers, trying to coach you into buying on the spot.

Her advice for all of them is to steer well clear.

If you get a cold call out of the blue, didn't ask them to call,

didn't want them to call, and someone's trying to sell you something,

say no. Just don't buy.

You don't give your bank details to a complete stranger,

even if they say they are calling from the doctors,

they're calling from the police, they're calling from your bank.

They're a stranger, you don't know who they are,

you don't tell them anything.

It may sometimes be, of course,

that an elderly relative has signed up to an expensive scam without

realising. So Sue advises relatives and friends to be on the lookout

for suspicious parcels.

If you're a relation and you're concerned about a family member,

and you think they might be falling victim to scams,

look out for unusual products, look out for unusual amounts of products.

Ask about those products and how they were sold, and be supportive.

Because shame is often what stops people reporting these crimes.

Now, if you find anything you think is a scam,

report it to your local Trading Standards and the police immediately.

Back in Watford, while Dorothy and her daughter have to accept

that they will never recover the ?24,000 spent on vitamins,

the good news is that Trading Standards

has now installed a call blocker on her phone,

so at least she'll no longer receive any more nuisance calls.

And Sue wants others to be aware of how easy it is for fraudsters

to target vulnerable people and what that can end up costing.

I don't want other families to go through what we've been through.

And realise just how vulnerable people are.

So I want people to listen and then maybe look around them.

It could be a neighbour.

Check in the nicest way possible,

that they are not being ripped off for a load of money, or taken for a ride.

Meanwhile, in Brighton, Margaret,

who is ?5,000 out of pocket, won't be buying any more tablets either.

And she'll be ignoring further promises of big cash prizes.

You get little yellow leaflets every now and again. Yes, to send cash.

But I don't. No, good girl.

Excellent. Thank you.

If you've got a story you'd like us to investigate,

get in touch with us via our Facebook page, BBC Rip Off Britain,

our website, bbc.co.uk/ripoffbritain,

or e-mail...

Or if you want to send us a letter, our address is...

Well, that's just about all we've got time for today.

But I must say, it's really shocking

to see just how ruthless those scammers are.

There seems to be no limit to what they'll do or say to get their

hands on someone else's money.

So, a huge, genuine thanks to everyone who has shared their experience with us today,

because, as we've said on this programme many times before,

any one of us could be scammed.

And it really is only with the help people who are prepared to talk about

what's happened to them that we can be warned and stop others from being

taken in in the same way.

So, if you find yourself targeted by a scammer in any way at all,

please do let us know.

You can bet this is a topic we will be coming back to again and again.

Also, keep sending us your other consumer stories as well,

because the team is working on many more programmes

for the next few months.

So it could be your experience we're investigating on one of them.

But for now, that's where we leave it.

From all of us on the Rip Off Britain team,

thanks for your company and we'll see you soon.

Goodbye. Bye.

Three reasons we love Eurovision - the costumes.

Ah, yes! Who could forget the milkmaids?

The passion. We are unstoppable.

The commentary? Oh, stop!

Well, OK, if you insist!