Will you fall for Santa frauds? Britain flooded by 'designer' Christmas gifts that are actually dangerous fakes

One wonders how many Christmases Peter Herron might have ruined this year. But, as far as he’s concerned, the more the merrier.

A senior officer in the Border Agency counterfeit team at Heathrow, he has spent the past month intercepting box upon box of luxury gifts bound for UK homes.

Along the way, he has come across something for all the family

For her? Trendy friendship bracelets from Links of London, Mont Blanc fountain pens, Cath Kidston handbags, Ugg boots, make-up from fashionable brands such as Mac and Bobbi Brown and Jo Malone scented candles. For him: everything from Rolex watches to all the latest gizmos such as the iPad 2 and iPhone 4.

Then there are the children — Hello Kitty jewellery boxes, the latest Nintendo DS, soft toys from TV show In The Night Garden, Smurfs and familiar faces from Thomas the Tank Engine, to name but a few.

All are copies of the real thing and were destined to nestle beneath any number of British Christmas trees if they hadn’t been stopped by Peter and his team.

‘This has been our busiest year yet,’ he says. ‘We are making seizures every day and across a huge range of goods.

The majority are coming from China, where 70 per cent of counterfeit products are made. They’re also coming from India, Turkey, Indonesia and Thailand, which is especially known for its fake football shirts.’

With money tight and shoppers on the hunt for a bargain, 2011 is clearly proving to be the worst counterfeit Christmas so far with millions of pounds worth of goods seized.

In the past few days alone, the Heathrow team has stopped two consignments of fake Dr Dre headphones, which retail at £250 and are one of this year’s must-buy presents for designer-crazy teenagers — a haul with a street value of more than £38,000.

But this is small fry compared with some of the other recent seizures. Fake goods have been flooding into all the major airports and ports in the lead-up to December 25.

One of the biggest hauls was found at Southampton docks — 45,000 pairs of fake UGG boots, the largest such seizure in Europe with a street value of several million pounds.

Staff at the port of Dover, meanwhile, rumbled a consignment of fake toys back in October — all purporting to be top-selling brands such as Disney, Hello Kitty and Thomas the Tank Engine. They were worth £50,000.

The team at Heathrow has also been far busier than last year, when they uncovered 5.9 million items in 22,125 seizures. The total value of goods seized in the past 12 months already exceeds 2010’s figure of £10 million.

Some of this would inevitably have been sold online to unsuspecting members of the public, keen to make savings on High Street prices.

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