Episode 5 The Real Hustle

This is The Real Hustle: New Recruits.

The hustlers are back, and this time,

they've brought in two new faces to help them with their scams.

New recruits Polly and Jazz.

They'll join original hustlers Paul, Jess and Alex.

Working as a team, they'll carry out scams that are more cunning and devious than ever before.

On tonight's show:

Ex-copper Rav Wilding gets a taste of the criminal life.

I know you want to count it but it's all there, mate.

-Jess finally snaps.

-Snap it in the middle but don't actually break it.

Hang on a minute.

And these guys will never use free Wi-Fi again.

I feel violated, almost.

The hustlers have invited celebrity friends to help with their scams.

They'll be thrown in at the deep end. No training or practice, just straight in.

Today's celebrity guest hustler is former police detective

and presenter of Crimewatch, Rav Wilding.

I don't know if I'd make a good hustler. I'd like to think I would

because my time in the police, obviously I've seen people get hustled themselves for real.

I'd probably be able to do it but until we put it to the test, I just don't know.

I definitely think if I hustle someone, I'll feel guilty. I'm actually dreading that.

Rav has been told to go to a Central London landmark and wait for instructions.

Lucky for him, he brought an umbrella.

Here comes Alex to fill him in.

Come with me.

-How are you?

-Yeah, good.

So, you've been a policeman, you present Crimewatch.

What we're going to do today is put you on the other side of the law.

We're doing a scam that was done in New Jersey a couple of years ago.

It had the police fooled,

but it also fooled some of the criminal underworld as to how it was done.

-I'm intrigued.

-You're intrigued?

-Yeah, bring it on.

-Let's go.

The good cop will have to turn bad cop in:

This is the mark.

He's on his way to a corporate office complex for a meeting.

He's expecting to meet a PR manager

who's selling props from a major film shoot.

And he's in no doubt he's come to the right place

because he walks straight into a press scrum.

Suzy, can you give us one look, please? >

It looks like a celebrity starlet is trying to avoid a prying photographer.

Suzy, this way. Thank you.

Actually, nothing is quite what it seems.

The starlet is Jess, the paparazzo is Jazz and the chauffeur is Alex.

The little scene has been staged purely for the mark's benefit,

who now thinks PR man Paul must be the real deal.

I'm Rob. Nice to meet you. Come on upstairs.

Paul takes the mark into the office building.

They head upstairs to sort out the purchase.

Don't let it fool you.

We don't have phones that work yet but it's all good.

As they settle in, Paul has some bad news.

So, you're here about the Netbooks from the Indian production.

I have to tell you, I'm afraid they haven't arrived yet.

So the mark is here to buy a laptop that's being sold off with other props from a film shoot.

The only problem is the laptop hasn't turned up yet.

I'd love to do something for you. I've got something coming in.

Maybe Paul can offer him another computer instead.

There's a BBC production that's using Apple computers, that type of thing.

Won't be released for about a month or so.

Before they can discuss alternate arrangements,

another customer turns up.

It's Rav, who's also here to buy something.

Have you got a minute, Jack?

Er... I'm a bit early. Do you want me to hang on?

Do you mind waiting for five minutes? Let me take care of this

and we'll see what we can do for you.

I feel bad you've come all this way. Give me a few minutes. Sorry, guys.

Paul asks the mark to wait outside while he deals with Rav.

Rav is here to buy some jewellery, also left over from the film.

Good news. They've sent double. It's 18-22 carat.

Rav and Paul talk loud enough for the mark to overhear.

I've got 15, Rob. You know that. And I'm going away in the morning.

Can you get another 15 out?

Not cash, I can't.

-Can you split it?

-No.

But Paul's got more goods than Rav can afford to buy.

If only there was someone else nearby with money in his pocket.

Who are these geezers? Are they yours?

-They've come to buy a couple of Netbooks.

-What do you reckon?

Let me ask. I'm not usually in the habit of asking guys to buy that.

-Um... you guys brought money for the Netbooks?

-Yep.

Would you like to make some money today?

Probably double your cash, if you're interested.

It's probably nothing you'd want to keep but you could sell it on.

What do you think?

Come on in and I'll tell you.

Jack, grab that chair over there. Pull it over.

Paul has a little business proposition for the mark.

Even without that cheap laptop, he might be able to make this meeting worth his while.

At this company we represent a lot of artists for press reasons,

but we also represent productions, and Jack is here to pick up something

because a company just made an Indian movie on the South Bank.

They had a massive amount of gold and the excess is here.

I've got double what I was expecting.

The prop manager told me it's 18 carat, so it's very good gold.

You can melt it and make about four grand.

If you sell it wholesale, you can get about five for it.

If you've got £1,500 you're going to make about a grand at least.

If you're interested, if not, then I'm sorry. I can't split it up.

I've got to sell it all in one package and give them the money.

So Paul is offering some cut-price gold left over from a film shoot,

which could be a nice little earner for the mark.

-Can I have a look?

-Yeah, let me go get it and have a look at it.

He goes to get the jewellery, leaving Rav to persuade the mark

that he can trust PR man Paul.

I've worked with him loads. He's all right.

Yeah, loads. The cars especially.

He's all right. He's all legit but he can't take it to the jewellers

cos he's got to register himself and stuff which he doesn't do.

But let's have a look at the first bit.

Get someone in here and test it.

It's my money as much as yours.

I'm not going to put my money into it unless... you know what I mean?

Sure. Yeah, yeah.

If it's genuine and they say what it's worth, if they say it's worth five grand...

Paul's back with the goods.

It certainly looks like authentic gold.

I can weigh it, but I would highly recommend you test it.

You could weigh it, it wouldn't mean anything to me.

-Absolutely.

-As nobody here is an expert in gold,

maybe they should arrange for a professional to examine it.

Paul helpfully supplies a local business directory.

You guys want to bring somebody in? Just have them invoice me - I will take it out of my commission.

Why don't you choose someone?

They would come here and value that? But we choose who it is?

It is down to the mark and his friends to arrange the test. That way, it is all above board.

But will he really make that call?

Just any goldsmith at all.

A goldsmith would do? Right.

-He has picked up the phone book...

-It has to be today, mate.

-What are you doing this afternoon?

-I'm not doing anything after five.

And he puts in a call to a jewellery company.

Six o'clock?

He arranges for a callout appointment to test

the quality of the gold later that afternoon.

So, what's the name of the company?

BLEEP

All right, I won' ask you for the cash just now.

I will trust you for it. But these stay with me.

Listen, I don't want to chase you, but I need to get some lunch before it kicks off this afternoon.

So, how will the hustlers separate this man from his money?

They might be able to fool the layman, but they will never fool

the professional gold test.

Or will they?

When hustlers go out, they don't bring money, they bring prop bets.

Challenges designed to win or lose a drink.

But a proposition bet only has one rule.

And that's that the hustler always wins.

Jess is out on the town and has made some new acquaintances.

Someone is going to have to get the next round in.

And Jess is going to make sure it's not her.

I have a challenge for you. I need you to help me set it up. Are you going to help me?

-Yeah.

-OK. I have some cocktail sticks here.

There's four of us, I need five, so I will do two and you do one each.

There you go, there's one,

two, three, four, I have got five.

Snap it in the middle, but don't actually break it.

I want it to be as close to the middle as possible.

Can you all do that with your cocktail sticks? Don't snap it completely in half.

Give me your cocktail sticks. I've got five here, I'll put them

together to make, like, a 10-point star.

Like that. Now, I am going to pick one of you to do this. I am going to pick you.

-Really?

-The challenge is, I have a 10-point star there. Without touching the cocktail sticks,

I want you to turn that 10-point star into a five-point star.

If you can do that, I will buy you a drink.

-If you can't do it, you have to get a round in for everyone. Deal?

-Yeah, deal.

-Excellent.

So, to win a drink, Jess's new friends need to turn

this 10-point star into a five-point star.

The only thing is, they can't actually touch the toothpicks.

-Go for it.

-Without touching them?

Yeah.

-Can you blow them?

-If that's what you want to do!

You can try, have a go.

You can do what you want without touching the cocktail sticks.

OK, I can't think of anything else to try.

OK, that's not a five-pointed star!

You have three cocktail sticks left. You just blew them off the table. That's fine.

-I'm going to set these up. That's roughly how they were before.

-Yeah.

OK. Now, I said you couldn't touch them,

I didn't say you couldn't use anything. I am going to use a little bit of water.

-Oh!

-No way!

HE LAUGHS Come on!

That's actually amazing.

It seems impossible, unless you know how.

A couple of drops of water make the wood in the toothpicks swell up,

straightening them out to form a five-pointed star.

Thank you very much.

Well, I'll have a Chardonnay.

OK. I'll have to go and get one.

A bar in a trendy suburb of London.

People are going about their business, enjoying drinks,

relaxing, and using the free Wi-Fi network.

But this customer is not off duty. It's new recruit Polly and it looks like she is here on business,

in Taking The Biscuit.

This lady has just become her first mark.

Hi there. I wonder if you could help me do a bit of market research

and do an online survey for me. It is just about what you buy when you shop and stuff.

You can put anything in your basket, you don't have to buy anything.

But just, you know, have fun. It's basically to see what people buy. It's all about that, really.

-Is that cool?

-I just have to get this out.

-Fantastic.

What's your e-mail?

So, Polly is carrying out some market research.

She sends the mark an e-mail, with details of an internet survey.

All the lady has to do is log in to a few online shopping and social networking sites,

then fill out the survey, rating how user-friendly they are.

Thanks. See you in a bit.

Other people with laptops are also asked to take part.

-It just requires an e-mail?

-Yeah, yeah.

-Just saying how you feel...

-That would be fantastic.

So, spend a few minutes browsing the internet,

then fill in a few questions.

What could possibly go wrong?

After leaving the bar, the marks were shown some computer printouts.

This is my Hotmail account,

which has all my private e-mails in there.

-Hang on a minute.

-That was on your Twitter, wasn't it?

That was on my Twitter.

Those printouts should look familiar.

They are of the web pages the marks had just logged in to,

using their confidential logins and passwords.

BLEEP!

I would like to know how you did that, that is quite scary.

So, what really just happened?

-Just reply to the e-mail and just say...

-Yeah, yeah.

Polly wasn't interested in market surveys.

The hustlers were just trying to get the marks to visit sites that required them

to login to private accounts. But even without the bogus survey,

this scam could happen to anyone using open Wi-Fi, anywhere.

What the marks didn't notice was another computer user on the other side of the room.

It was Jazz. And he was interested in just one thing.

Cookies.

A cookie is a computer file that is like a key for websites.

When a user logs in to an account,

they provide their username and password.

These details are often encrypted,

so they are very hard for criminals to intercept.

This is sent from their laptop to the Wi-Fi connection,

and then on to the website.

But then, the website sends back a cookie that is saved

onto the user's laptop. The cookie basically means the laptop has already logged in with

the correct password, and it doesn't need to log in again.

But the cookie is normally unencrypted.

Jazz was running a freely available piece of software that allowed him

to make a copy of the cookie as it was being sent to the mark's laptop.

And once it was saved onto his computer,

he could just visit the same site as the mark and was allowed straight into their account.

No login and no password required.

I feel quite... What's the right word?

What's the right word? Violated, almost.

You know? Not brilliant!

The hustlers just added items to the marks' Amazon checkout baskets

and used their Twitter accounts to post bogus tweets.

I have just been scammed by The Real Hustle!

THEY LAUGH

But if this had been a genuine criminal attack,

the results could have been devastating.

Criminals with access to your logged-in accounts

could potentially hijack your shopping session,

add stuff to your shopping cart.

Worst case scenario, the criminal gets hold of your e-mail account, for example,

they could send any e-mail in your name, they could

instruct people to change your delivery address, set up bank accounts in your name.

You think of your worst nightmare, they could at least get the ball rolling on that with your e-mail.

If you own a Wi-Fi device, you're probably always looking for a free hotspot.

Remember, you could be sharing that hotspot with anyone.

In this case, we accessed a couple of low-risk websites,

but real criminals could be eavesdropping on your most private conversations.

Can you give us one look, please?

Earlier in the day, a mark arrived at a PR company to buy a second-hand laptop.

But his luck was out.

Sorry, I'm afraid that hasn't arrived yet.

Instead, guest hustler Rav offered the mark the chance to join him

in buying some gold at a rock-bottom price.

If you melt it, you will make about four grand.

But if you sell it wholesale, you could get about five for it.

The mark agreed to get the gold tested by a genuine jeweller.

If it turns out to be high quality, he stands to make a nice profit.

In: All That Glitters Part Two.

It's early evening when the mark and his mate return to the PR company offices.

Paul brings them back upstairs and gets out the gold chains, ready for inspection.

And right on time, here comes Rav, along with the jeweller.

-Hi. All right, fellas?

-Have a seat.

So this is what we've got.

She's brought along a professional gold testing kit.

It contains bottles of acid that are used to determine how many carats, or how pure, the gold really is.

Are you able to tell us whether it's 18 or...

Fake would be bad.

Rather than check them all, which you're welcome to do,

I'd just pick which ones you want to test.

If these chains are really 22 carat gold as Paul has promised,

they'll be worth thousands of pounds.

Lads, if you just want to pick a couple at random.

I'm picking this one. It's quite thick.

Thick and chunky, isn't it?

If this is cheap gold, the acid should make it change colour,

but it stays the same. That means it's higher than nine carat.

But that's still a long way from the 22 carats Paul has promised.

That's even better.

So what's the value of that?

The gold is worth even more than expected.

No colour change means this isn't 22, but 24 carats.

That's 99.9 % pure gold.

-Can I look at that one to make sure? Is that all right?

-Yeah, yeah.

Rav wants to test another chain, just to be sure.

Do you have anything to compare the tests with, by the way?

The mark's still being cautious.

-A nine carat gold.

-Likely we're not going to see it.

THEY LAUGH

I don't want to see one. I'm happy with those 24s.

-You guys have a gold chain or anything?

-Don't wear jewellery.

They'll have to rely on the jeweller's word.

If there's no colour change again, this whole batch must be 24 carats.

Nothing. I can't see anything.

-What about the...

-Can you see anything, mate? I can't.

-So that's the same grade of gold?

-Yeah.

24 is as high as it goes, right?

Definitely.

He takes a closer look to reassure himself.

Careful, careful.

Job done. The jeweller packs away the kit and says goodbye.

-Pleasure meeting you.

-Bye-bye. Thanks for coming over.

So what's really going on?

Are the hustlers going to sell the mark pure gold at a fraction of the market price?

That's yours, that's yours.

Not a chance. Because those chains are anything but 24 carat gold.

So how did they fool not just the mark but also the gold tester?

That's where the other hustlers came in.

Their roles didn't end with the paparazzi scramble earlier on.

As the mark was getting the hard sell from Paul...

18 carat or better which means it's good gold.

..Jess and Jazz were waiting for their cue in a nearby hotel room.

Listen, I'm absolutely fine. You guys want to bring somebody in?

The mark really did choose a genuine jeweller from the phone book,

but the hustlers made a second appointment with the same company for mid-afternoon.

-Hi.

-Nice to meet you. I'm Suzy. Come in. Thanks for coming.

Jess and Jazz also had some gold they wanted testing in their room.

Yeah.

But the hustlers weren't interested in getting a proper valuation.

It was all an excuse for Jazz to get close enough to film the exact

make and model of testing kit with a concealed camera.

All right, I've got it, Polly.

-Yes?

-Right. This is the gold kit she's using.

Armed with this footage, the hustlers were able to pick out

an identical test kit with exactly the same plastic bottles.

It's this one?

Empty this acid.

They emptied out the acid and replaced it with water

and a touch of food colouring to make it match.

Even the cheapest gold won't change colour

if you test it with water instead of acid.

But how did those bottles get into the jeweller's hands?

When she arrived at the office building that evening, she had to go through security.

The security guard just happened to be another hustler.

I'm going to have to take you through security and have a quick look in your bag.

It gave Alex an excuse to go through her bags.

All he needed then was a little distraction.

-What is this?

-It's a gold testing kit.

That's where Rav came in.

Are you here to assess the gold?

Brilliant, I'm Jack, how are you doing?

Whilst he distracted the jeweller,

Alex replaced the acid bottles with ones containing water.

I'm one of the ones that's called you today.

You're going to do us a to make sure everything's OK.

-Is that all right?

-Yes.

-Brilliant.

That seems to be in order, I'll put that back in.

-There you go.

-Brilliant, thanks a lot.

-Thank you.

Rav took her upstairs.

Despite all the trickery,

the hustlers still weren't sure they'd be able to fool the jeweller.

So Paul asked her to test the chains in private before the mark arrived.

We're told it was 18 and above.

It hasn't changed colour at all, which means it's 24 carat.

-Right.

-Once he was sure he would get the result he needed,

he asked her to wait until his potential customer returned

and then repeat the test for his benefit.

So now it's down to business.

Paul weighs out the chains to work out how much gold they're dealing with.

What do we have there? We have 167...

55.

He checks the current market rate on the internet.

That works out as 4,043... and 45.

The chains are worth more than four grand at the scrap metal rate,

but they'll be able to sell them for much more than that.

If you want to go ahead, what I'll do is split that into two halves,

you guys get first choice.

If the mark buys half of the gold for 1,500 quid,

he's guaranteed to make a very nice profit when he sells it on.

Rav leads the way by getting his money out.

If it's off, you know you won't be back.

But will the mark also buy the jewellery from someone he's only just met?

Yep.

The hustlers have a sale.

Perfect.

The mark leaves, thinking he's made an excellent investment.

In fact, those chains are worth tens, not thousands of pounds.

He's about to find out that all that glitters is not 24-carat gold.

In the test, all of the sudden it just, there we go.

It never clicked to think, oh, could just be water.

Yes.

Don't know really, now.

After witnessing both sides, I think I'll stick exactly where I was,

on the right side of the law and that is where I intend to stay.

When I saw them handing over their own cash, it was awful.

It wasn't 20 quid, we're talking a lot of money. I felt awful.

When this scam first happened in America, it totally baffled the authorities.

The only possible explanation was that the jeweller was in on it

but that wasn't the case.

This is what makes this scam work so well.

The mark themselves can pick a jeweller

that they trust and know to be genuine and they will still lose their money.

Just as in our case the jeweller was real, the test was real,

but the gold certainly wasn't.

People should say to themselves, when I got up this morning, did I mean to go out

and buy gold chains or jewellery from a complete stranger?

This was a really professional con,

but underlying it was a deal that looks too good to be true

and it wasn't true.

If you want to know more about how the show is made...

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd