26/02/2013 Spotlight

Electricity theft is on the increase. The meter was tampered

with. The lights were on burning on here and burning on. There didn't

care, like. It is putting lives at risk. You are putting a �30 price

tag on the life of your family for some cheap electric. It's big

business for the meter cheater we track down. Five, six maybe 10 a

week. Is it adds �8 million a year to our bills. I think it's morally

Apology for the loss of subtitles for 49 seconds

wrong. I don't think it's something A growing number of people are

stealing it. It's happening in every community across Northern

Ireland. Where ever you live, there will be someone willing to bypass

your meter. They are just a phone call away. I wanted to see how

difficult it would be to get cheap electricity. We have heard that

some of these people actually advertise online. I will do a

search to see what I can find. An ad has popped up on the screen

offering to help to reduce electricity bills. There is a

number here, there is also a name. Are you able to help me out at all?

Are you able to Who was the friend who recommended me? They seemed

cautious at first. He said the cost would be around �30 or �40

depending on the area. He had an answer ready when I asked about

safety. It's 110% safe. I've done quite a few over the last while

back. I've never had one problem. That is not the case. Tampering is

never safe. We asked what if the meter man calls round? I'll explain

to you. There is nothing out of place. Everything is as you have

seen it. If you look at your electric box now, that is how you

will see it. It sounded too good to be true. With contact now

established, the first part of our undercover sting was in place.

Electricity transformed life when it first arrived in Northern

Ireland. It was so precious in the 40's that the Government had to

warn people not to waste it. NEWSREEL: He see there is is no

light. He sees there is no tea. He see there is is no breakfast. He is

late for work. Loses his job because the clock has stopped. This

is why. It's a power cut. There are few problems with electricity today,

except for people like John McCarter. Until recently, this was

how he got his power. Even the most basic of tasks like switching on a

light involved a trip to his sthod fire up his generator. It -- shed

to fire up his generator. It wasn't cheap. To charge up my mobile phone

took a couple of hours. You look at �4 or �5 to charge up a mobile

phone. John got power three months ago. It's still very basic. Cable

ties on the pipe down there. Eventually, ends up down underneath

here, at what they call the distribution board. What was it

like, John, being able to flick a switch, to turn on your light to

have power for the first time in 29 years? Absolutely, amazele couldn't

believe it. After missing out for most of his life, John McCarter is

happy to electricity, regardless of cost. I find it very hard to

believe that people go to the extent of stealing their

electricity to bypass meters etc. Because, at the end of the day, you

know, they're getting something that I would consider an essential

for very little money, why steal it? The rest of us take our

electricity for granted, but more and more people just want to take

it. I set out to discover what sort of people are using the meter

cheaters. This house near Enniskillen was rented out and

without the owner's knowledge, was using as much electricity as a

small hotel. This is why. It was being used as a cannabis factory. A

criminal gang had bypassed the meter to run the heat lamps and

saved themselves around �40,000 in free electricity. This was one of

30 uncovered in Northern Ireland last year. That cost in total �1.4

million. We all paid for it. The electricity we use is generated

from coal, oil or gas. From the power station, it passes along a

massive network of overheadlines run by Northern Ireland Electricity.

Once it reaches your home, the supplier takes over and bills the

customer. The market was opened in 2007 and there are four main

suppliers, Power NI, Airtricity, Budget Energy and Electric Ireland.

The industry might have changed, but one key problem remains - how

to cover the cost of electricity fraud? For anyone who think it is's

a victimless crime, think again. Everyone of us who pays for our

electricity is footing the bill for fraud. That's the hidden cost. The

suppliers don't want you to know about. The Consumer Council says

the system needs to change. Clearly, it's not fair that consumers

continualy bear the majority of the risk in relation to fraud. Or

indeed other electricity risk issues because they are always

passed on to the consumer. That is an issue that the Consumer Council

has in the past, and will continue to raise within the regulatory

framework. You think the structure could be changed so as those who

steal electricity, their bills are not passed on? I think it is

certainly worth exploring because we don't believe it's fair that

consumers bear all of the risk in relation to these matters. Eleanor

McEvoy moved into the electricity market after selling her mobile

phone business, which had a turnover of 50 million euro. She

runs Budget Energy, the smallest of the suppliers, with just 4% of the

market. Unlike the other suppliers, she was willing to speak out.

sure there are people who are experiencing a loft bad debt

because of the way the economy is and would be horrified at the idea

that the number of customers should somehow also pay for all the people

who are not being paid for. I think it's morally wrong. I don't think

it's something that should be a common practice. We were interested

in another common practice, how the meter cheaters operate. To get our

sting in place, we rented a house and got experts to install a fake

meter box. Posing as a couple, who had just moved to Belfast, we

around our meter cheater to come round. We were about to get a rare

insight into the criminal world of electricity thieves. For the first

time in the UK one was about to be captured on camera. With hidden

equipment in place, we secretly filmed him at work. His methods

might have been basic, but the illegal service he was providing

seemed to be in big demand. He has a well-rehearsed line for

tricky questions about the Every house has a meter. Pay-as-

you-go, where you top-up your electricity as it is needed, is

fast becoming the most popular. Tom Doran is the NIE manager in charge

of Northern Ireland's meters. He has come across all types of

tampering. There are various methods from the down right stupid

tor the more technically advanced. It doesn't matter how technically

they are, the end result will be the same. Word wrd cheating is a

menace for both sides of the community, in housing estates,

rural areas and upmarket streets -- electricity. Our own meter cheater,

who claims he has bypassed 300 houses, say it is's not just people

Retired meter reader, George McFarland, has come across many

people cheating. People have got greedy. He put back his meter 100

unions this quarter. He put it back 200 the next quarter. He kept going

on until he owed virtually nothing. En one case I came across where one

guy got so greedy he put it back past his previous reading which

meant we owed him money. So it was flagged up right away. In one case

a man who lived in a massive house accused of stealing around �34,000

worth of electricity. He's being prosecuted. We can't tell you who

they are. They both got off with a warning. If it's your first offence

and you have the noun pay back, you can avoid the shame of going to

court. How would you like free electricity for two years? That is

what the owner of this takaway Gavin Vallely enjoyed after he

pulled what he thoughts with a clever stroke. He plugged into the

empty house next door which had been cut off from power but then

mysteriously reconnected. Nobody told the meter men. They never

called to check. He was caught and fined �300 and ordered to repay the

electricity company. We were helping to pay for his electricity.

He could well afford to pay his own bills as he once had a property

portfolio which stretched all the way to Bulgaria. Our meter cheater

was so confident he wouldn't be caught, he wasn't worried about

We are not aware of any cases where the meter cheat verse been

convicted. It's the person who pays the bill who usually takes the rap.

Raymond Magee from Limavady was one of them. To look at it, would you

know it was tampered with? would know by the security tag

there. You can see that wee tag there. There's actually a sign

there warning spwenches with Northern Ireland electricity

equipment is both dangerous and illegal -- spwefrence. He claims

visitors to his home bypassed his meter without his knowledge. He

took full advantage. When it was going free I was thinking, well I

was burning lights here and electric fires and what not because

I thought, well, I don't want to get caught. If I saw the

electricity van out there I Champs Elyseesed the blinds and ignored.

It the boy came in to read the meter the first time. Then I

realised then more or less the game was up. He was brought to court and

fined. Because he couldn't pay, he was disco nexted. He says he lived

for two years without power. Christmases came and went. I was

saying to myself, "if my meter wasn't rigged and I didn't have

this problem I could have the house nicely lit with Christmas lights

and not sitting here in the dark." What about those who would say it

was your own fault? I would agree. It was my own fault. Raymond Magee

wasn't the only one caught in Limavady. 14 others were also found

with tampered meters. All were convicted and fined. The number of

prosecutions for electricity theft has been rising dramatically. In

the past five years, the figures have gone up by a massive 900% from

19 to just under 200 last year. This woman asked not to be

identified. Her mother is one of those people who was prosecuted.

She went to court that day and she thought she was going to just get

off with a fine or something like that Instead, her 46-year-old

mother got six months because it was her second offence. Like others,

she was shocked electricity theft left her with a criminal record.

The whole family was devastated. Couldn't believe it. She could have

avoided jail if she'd repaid the �4,000 she owed her electricity

supplier. Where are you going to get it? Nobody has it like to give

it to ye. She went to the benefits office. They couldn't help her.

They couldn't give her that kind of money. Some people out there

mightn't have a lot of sympathy for your mum because she was caught

twice? You shouldn't tamper with the electric and whatever. There

are things that people shouldn't do, but they do it. She didn't it

deserve to be sent up to jail. everyone who gets caught stealing

electricity ends up in court. Even though 200 people were prosecuted

last year, that's only a fraction of the 2,000 people who were caught.

Most of them got off with warning if they paid for the stolen

electricity. Among them, people who had paid for more elaborate scams.

This is where some of the more sophisticated operations were

carried out, here in South Armagh along the border. We know of one

case where a developer built a number of new homes. He installed a

special device which allowed the householder to switch on and off

their meter. They could get free electricity at the flick of a

switch. It's known in the business as a switch neutral. It can be very

hard to detect. In this case, all the devices were found and the

householders were ordered to pay the money back to the electricity

company. They too escaped prosecution, elsewhere, elaborate

bypasses costing up to �3500 have been found by inspectors. We're

looking at a property with manicured gardens, the electric

gates, the walls, everything. We did our tests and the tests

indicated to us that something was amiss. The owner didn't take too

kindly to NIE's questions about a bypass. He put his hands in the air

said, "absolutely no way, my meter there. I'm paying my electricity

bill." I he gave the instruction to start at the back door with a kango

hammer and follow the cable from the back door to the meter. Once

the hammer was produced all of a sudden he jumped and said, "no, no

it's there." He got a child's crayon and he marked the floor.

After three hours of digging, they found the bypass underneath the

cement floor. He was caught and he held his hands up to it, which was

good because, you know we don't want to go into a property and dig

from one end to the other. Unusually, this man was taken to

court, despite paying the money back. Meanwhile, back at our rented

house, our meter cheater is pleased He tells us how to outsmart the

meter readers. You don't actually The job of catching the cheats

falls to the Revenue Protection Officers. They're employed by

Northern Ireland Electricity and are called in to investigate cases

which have been spotted by meter readers or picked up through tip-

offs. You want to make sure you don't fall out with your wife or

your spouse or have an affair because they tend to take unkindly

to it and can let us know. The four suppliers have a key role to play

in detecting fraud. It's part of their licence. Only one of them,

Budget Energy, was willing to talk about it. If we have a customer who

we know they have, you know, two children and they have a three

bedroomed house, that, in general, we know what their spend will be on

a weekly, monthly basis. You can watch and see if somebody for

instance is putting in �5 for a month, you know there is something

wrong. In most instances people own up and that is case closed. Eleanor

McEvoy admits they prefer to talk to them and get the money owed

rather than prosecute. Nine times out of ten we have come out of it

where we have come to an agreement with the customer. They have paid

over their money. Since then they have been operating in the proper

legal manner. Electricity theft is also a big problem in the Republic.

It's doubled in the past three years, costing 10 million euro a

year. They've invested in a special camera and demonstrated how they

search behind meter boxes for suspect wires. It's a quick and

easy way to catch those who pay for more elaborate scams. We are

sending a camera down to the duct, to the duct coming into the house.

We are checking for tampering along the cable itself. We have a good

picture. We'd look for a sophisticated type of tampering

here. They have also come across unsophisticated devices. You can

see, at the side of the meter here, there is an object protrudeing from

the meter. I think, from this picture, it looks like a biro that

was stuck in and, basically, the customer is trying to jam this here

from going around and recording the electricity reading. You would find

a lot of those in domestic situations. Not always. Sometimes

you would find them in businesses as well. These botched efforts were

found in homes in the Republic, the same crude methods are beinged here.

This is a very strong magnet. Basically, it's been put onto the

side of the meter. It prevents the disk from going around. As you can

see, this magnet is so strong that it has actually moved the face

plate on the meter. When businesss in the Republic get caught, they

will be prosecuted. We do believe that there are more businesses now

getting involved in this. We take a very strong line. When we do, we

will prosecute cases and bring people to court. Among them this

Donegal hotel. The Holyrood in Bundoran was found have used 30,000

euro worth of stolen electricity when it was brought to court.

Things aren't so clear here. We have discovered that a hotel in

Northern Ireland got caught stealing electricity towards the

end of last year. The owner hasn't been prosecuted. The big problem is

getting into homes to find the tampered meters in the first place.

That's why the majority of electricity thieves are never

caught. Some areas are off limits without the police. This was once a

no go area for meter readers, the Drumbeg and Meadow Brook estates in

Craigavon. In the space of 10 months, eight of them were attacked

or threatened and five vehicles were damaged. It has to be said

that the vast majority of people living here weren't involved in the

trouble, but it did result in meter readers being pulled from the area.

When they did finally get access to the homes, they found a small

number of tampered meters. It's not just a problem here. Police were

also on hand when meter readers earlier this month visited a number

of housing estates in Derry. They have to go into areas and, after

they go with police warrants, to get into homes to disco next meters.

As I say, their primary motivation is to do with safety. It is a real

danger. I can't actually reiterate that enough. So why is it that the

electricity industry is slow to pursue people who cheat? We

couldn't get answers here, so we went to London to ask an

independent analyst. David Cox worked in the energy sector for

more than 30 years and understands how the companies deal with fraud.

They're looking at the cost of their teams to do all that and then

do the prosecution and try and get the money back from somebody that's

maybe stolen because they're poor, it's often not necessarily very

easy either. The temptation, I think, is to be... Is to... Is to

not be so rigorous in the investigation in going after every

theft. It's not always in their financial interest to chase down

these electricity thieves? might spend �10 to recover �1. That

is obviously not worth it. Ofgem is planning to set theft targets and

offer greater financial incentives to supplyers to tackle electricity

fraud. There is no sign of such targets being set here. One of

those licence obligations on the supplier is to detect theft and

deal with it and recover the money. The regulator has a duty to try and

make sure that's done and make sure the supplier does it. The regulator

should be monitoring it and making sure the suppliers are doing the

best they can. It's one of those problems that isn't very sexy. It

tends to go down the priority order in dealing with bigger issues.

Northern Ireland, the man who has the final say is the regulator,

Shane Lynch. How much of a priority is electricity fraud for him? The

answer to that is, we don't know. He has refused to talk to us on the

programme. His office did tell us that they offer some incentives to

tackle fraud. He decides what is spent on chasing electricity

thieves here. As it stands, we spend much less than other parts of

the UK. We wanted to talk to him about that and what's he doing

about a fraud, which is not only costing �8 million a year, but is

also putting lives at risk? We can't. So we are all in the dark.

We know one man in the electricity business who was happy to talk. He

even had advice on how to spend the Tom Doran has seen the damage

people rigging meters can do. cables, as you see, have melted

totally encrusted. These will catch flame, ignite. The next stage after

this here is when you lose the property and possible life. This is

the first time the authorities have seen a meter cheater at work. We

showed the pictures to Tom Doran. Actually seeing, it it makes me

cringe. This guy has absolutely no worry or concern for him, the risk

is that he might be seen as opposed to the risk is that you are putting

a �3 0prietion tag on the life of your family and your property --

�30 price tag on the life of your family and your property for some

cheap electric. This man has told us he has done 100s of meters. What

would your message be to those people out there who employed him.

If you are one of those hundreds you need to come through to

ourselves and give us your name and address and we will go out and help

you and work with you. My concern, having looked at that there, what

he has done, you have a potential time bomb at your meter position

because of what this guy has done. It had taken our meter cheater just

30 minutes to bypass our fake electricity board. Outside, we had

We'd wanted to ask him why he was putting lives at risk, but he was

so quick we didn't get a chance. There you have it. He's gone now

with his bag of tricks with him. I'm sure there are a lot of things

going through his mind at the minute as he heads up that road.

I'm sure one of the thoughts is, whenever you are doing something

illegal it doesn't do to advertise online. As for those who have

experienced the other side of electricity theft, they've learnt a

hard lesson. I wouldn't even dream now of tampering with my

electricity. Wouldn't think about it. I would sit here in the dark

before I would even do that again. I would say, don't even tamper with.

If they are going to send them to jail for, it it's not worth it.

Especially losing out on a couple of months of your life, being

locked away. That woman is due to get out of prison next week and