BBC 'deceived viewers of TV conman show': Actors say they were hired to impersonate members of the public

By Ian Gallagher, Chris Hastings and Matt Sandy
 

The BBC has been accused of deceiving viewers after scenes in a popular reality TV show about confidence tricksters were allegedly faked.

Viewers are given the impression that victims of frauds featured on The Real Hustle are innocent members of the public who have been hoodwinked. But The Mail on Sunday can reveal that many of the ‘victims’ are actors and extras – and some have even been paid to take part by the independent production company that makes the show.

One extra, Lucas Yashere, who received £20 for pretending to be taken in by a cashpoint fraud, said: ‘It was complete rubbish – it was faked. I was shocked when I found out they were claiming everyone in the show was a member of the public.’

Embroiled in controversy: The Real Hustle's presenters Alexis Conran, Jessica-Jane Clement and Paul Wilson

The BBC last night promised to investigate the allegations, which follow a string of fakery scandals that a scathing independent inquiry said had ‘tarnished’ the Corporation’s reputation.

BBC1 controller Peter Fincham resigned in disgrace in 2007 over a trailer for a documentary that misrepresented the Queen. And the following year the broadcaster was fined a record £400,000 for ‘deliberately’ misleading audiences and running unfair competitions.

Last night, Tory MP John Whittingdale, chairman of the Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee, said: ‘The BBC is supposed to have new procedures to stamp out this sort of unacceptable practice. It’s not just a case of misleading the audience, it’s stating something that is untrue.’

Misleading: A noticed displayed at the start of the popular BBC show

Ironically, the BBC says one of the aims of The Real Hustle – a spin-off from the popular BBC1 drama Hustle – is to demonstrate to the public how to avoid being stung by fraudsters.

Filmed with hidden cameras, it features a team of ‘hustlers’ – Paul Wilson, Alexis Conran and Jessica-Jane Clement – who try out scams on supposedly unsuspecting members of the public, or ‘marks’. At the start of each episode, viewers are told: ‘All the people on this show have been hustled for real and after being given their money back, they agreed that the footage could be shown.’

But our enquiries reveal how:

• Producers advertise for actors to take part on a casting website.
• An actor who appeared in the spy film The Bourne Ultimatum was paid to hand over cash to a hustler posing as a stranded businessman.
• Another ‘mark’ shown losing £500 in a blackjack scam was actually given the money beforehand by producers.
• An actress knew she would be scammed as she received an email in advance detailing the ‘scenario’.

Suspicions that the show might be staged have previously been aired online.

But Paul Wilson, a writer on the series, dismissed them, insisting: ‘When you see those reactions on our show, they’re real. The only way we can insure [sic] a genuine reaction is to make the scam real for those people. The mark does not know they are being filmed by The Real Hustle and they have no idea it’s a scam.’

On his blog he wrote: ‘This is clearly stated at the top of every show but people still doubt it.

The cash machine con: The Real Hustle hired an actor - who was paid £20 and expenses - to play the role of a customer who was the victim of bank card fraud involving a cash machine at a newsagents

‘A few years ago, after the Queen was misrepresented by not-so-clever editing on a BBC promo, shows like ours were closely monitored to make sure we complied with the BBC’s strict rules.

'Our show seemed to enjoy special interest in this matter but our producers were able to clearly prove that everything complied with our opening statement. Had we been faking things, The Real Hustle would have been off the air years ago.’

The show is made for BBC3 by Objective Productions and is regarded as one of the channel’s success stories, having run for nine series. It is shown to millions of people in 30 countries, while seven others make their own versions. There is no reason to suggest the foreign versions are staged.

Mr Yashere, 36, from North London, told last night how a director instructed him as he played the role of a victim of bank card fraud at a cashpoint. The sequence was broadcast by the BBC on March 9, 2006.

The system scam: Actors Hugh Wootton and Rob O'Shea were shown pretending to be conned out of large sums of money in The System, an elaborate blackjack scam that took place in a casino

The unemployed accountant and regular TV and film extra said he listed himself on acting websites StarNow and the London Extra Agency.

In January 2006, he took a call from a researcher at Objective. Mr Yashere said: ‘They told me they needed me to play a role in a new show. There was never any question of me being an unsuspecting member of the public – I was being recruited as an actor.’

An email, sent to Mr Yashere by Objective, began: ‘Congratulations on being -chosen to take part in our new BBC3 factual entertainment series!’

He was told to turn up at a South London newsagents at 9am for a two-hour shoot, for which he was paid £20 and expenses.

Over the next two hours he claims the director instructed him in precise detail as he played the role of victim. In the scam, the hustlers fit a device called a ‘skimmer’ to the shop’s cashpoint and clone the mark’s card when he enters his details. A secret camera films the PIN entered.

He said: ‘There were five extras there, too. I was told to go in the store and use the cash machine as I would normally. The shop was shut so they could do the filming – there were never any actual customers in there.

‘I had to act like a member of the public and was told to play gullible. Every last thing I did I was told to do by the director.’

The sob story: Actor John Snowden appeared as a member of the public in The Sob Story Scam, handing money to a Real Hustle presenter posing as a businessman whose wallet had been stolen

In the screened sequence, viewers hear the narrator explain the fraud, and asserting: ‘His details have been captured by the hustlers .  .  . and yet he doesn’t suspect a thing.’

Mr Yashere said: ‘I was shocked when I found out they were claiming every¬one in the show was a member of the public. I’m very disappointed. People deserve to know the truth – not be told lies. These were blatant lies.’

Another actor, Alexander Hathaway, told how he was hired to take part in a ‘scam’ broadcast on March 9, 2006, about conmen who take a deposit for a second-hand car, then vanish.

Mr Hathaway admitted that the sequence was directed and said the producers had given him £250 to hand over to the hustler. He said: ‘It was one of the first jobs that I did professionally. I was brought on to improvise a sketch. I got a £30 payment.

‘I think at the time they said that they were using actors because they were filming in quite a rough area. They were worried things could get a bit hairy. They had a cameraman parked across the road from the house and they would shout out instructions to me. They also gave me cash which I was told to hand over as the deposit.

‘But I wasn’t given the full details so the thing evolved as it went along. Throughout all the series, I have seen actor friends of mine playing marks.’

The Pigeon Drop: Actress Nerissa Cole and a friend appeared as people being conned in a scam called the Pigeon Drop, in which they seemed to lose hundreds of pounds after a bag switch in a pub

Actors Hugh Wootton, 43, and Rob O’Shea, 45, both appear as victims in one of the show’s most elaborate set-ups, The System, in which the hustlers convince members of the public to invest thousands of pounds in a blackjack scam.

In the October 2008 episode, Conran pretends to be a maths genius able to memorise the order of cards in several decks while Wilson tries to convince a group of marks – apparently unsuspecting members of the public – to invest their cash in the scheme.

After replying to the advert on StarNow, Mr Wootton was called to an audition at Objective’s South London headquarters. Actors were asked if they had friends or relatives they could bring to set up.

The ‘marks’ were shown on the programme agreeing to invest their own cash in the blackjack scheme.

Mr Wootton said: ‘We turned up at a pub opposite an anonymous office block in London Bridge. Eight of us met first. We were briefed by a production team leader. They handed out the money – we had to sign for it. They gave me £500, one of the other actors £300 and another one £200. They told us they wanted us to go along with it and look convinced.

Mr Wootton said four ‘real’ victims arrived shortly afterwards to join the actors. He was shown on TV nodding and looking as if he had been genuinely convinced. He said: ‘I didn’t think they’d focus on me.

I thought they’d focus on the real victims. Most people who saw the show thought I’d been conned. But us actors did what we were told to do.’

In the episode, two of the genuine victims are taken to a private casino where the experts’ ‘foolproof’ scheme was spotted by the casino’s security. The hustlers are then thrown out by casino security staff who were in on the con, leaving the marks to return with no money.

Mr Wootton added: ‘Obviously it’s all fake. It takes a lot of effort to con people and without us actors they would have been in trouble.’

Mr O’Shea, who has appeared in Casualty, agreed. ‘The extent to which it is staged is farcical really,’ he said. ‘I knew about the scam beforehand because the producers told me. I was given prompts all the way through about how to behave – nodding my head, for instance, and reacting with anger at the end.

‘They got me to bring a couple of friends along, and not tell them it was a con. But I had to tell them beforehand because they would never have believed it. They just went along with it as well.

‘We weren’t paid; they didn’t even give us our promised travelling expenses or a cup of tea. The whole thing was cheap.’

Actress Nerissa Cole, 42, said she appeared as the victim in a scam known as the Pigeon Drop, which aired in October 2008, after replying to an advert on StarNow.

She agreed to bring along her friend Carl to participate as another victim but she insisted on telling him all about it in advance, although Objective told her not to.

She said: ‘I was the one being scammed on screen. I knew that was going to happen in advance because I was given a breakdown of the scenario in an email, which outlined how it was going to play out. There was no dialogue, just the events that were going to happen.’

Nerissa has an email from Objective Productions dated Wednesday, July 16, saying: ‘Thank you for agreeing to take part in our filming tomorrow.

‘Once you arrive the scam will play out as follows with our hustlers Paul, Alex and Jess. Paul approaches, starts a conversation with you and Carl and shortly after this Jess will be nearby arguing with someone on the mobile. She will storm out of the pub leaving the bag.

‘You and Carl and Paul will pick up the bag and have a look inside and see that it contains thousands of pounds. Between the three of you, agree to split the money and then Paul hesitates and calls Alex’s friend who is a lawyer and who is sitting nearby. Paul and Alex won’t let you leave with the bag because they want a guarantee that you will come back and ask you to put down some money. We will lend you £100. The bags will be switched and you both leave with a bag full of papers.’

Nerissa had assumed that all the marks on the show were innocent members of the public caught out in the scam.

But she said: ‘When I saw my friends on it, then I knew it was actors. I didn’t know until then.’

Nerissa – who includes her appearance on The Real Hustle on her CV on her StarNow website – says Objective asked her to keep Carl in the dark about what was happening. But she insisted on telling him.

Bit-part actor John Snowden featured in the first series. He is stopped by one of the presenters, posing as a businessman whose wallet has been stolen, on a bridge near Waterloo station. After hearing his story, Mr Snowden, who has appeared in The Bourne Ultimatum, is filmed handing over £4.

He said yesterday: ‘Yes, I was a mark and I got paid for it, but I can’t remember how much.’

Before Mr Snowden appears in view, the narrator says: ‘Alex, Paul and Jess have hit the streets each armed with a sob story to test the public’s generosity and gullibility.’

As the actor is approached, the voiceover states: ‘Alex tries one more hit.’ And when Mr Snowden hands over £4 the narrator says ‘result’.

Another extra, Isil Ramadan, 22, said she was asked to play the mark in a scam called The Mystery Shopper, which aired in February 2010, as she had worked with Objective on another show, Don’t Get Screwed.

In the scam, the hustlers hire people as secret shoppers to buy expensive goods, but reimburse them with fake cheques. ‘I was there to convince someone else to go along with it,’ she said. ‘But I suppose viewers would think I’d been taken in too.’

Objective Productions last night categorically denied that The Real Hustle had ever briefed the victims of the hustles about the true nature of the scam before the event.

‘All the people on the show have been hustled for real and their reactions are genuine,’ the company said in a statement issued by lawyers Schillings. ‘We have never employed an actor as a “mark”, briefed them in advance and asked them to fake their initial reaction to the scam.

‘Occasionally, because of, for example, equipment problems, we have had to reshoot short elements of the set up after the hustle has been completed and that can involve giving some direction to the “marks” to ensure that the footage matches, however it is completely untrue to say that any “mark” was an actor who was fully briefed in advance and paid to act as though they had been hustled.’

The BBC said: ‘It is of paramount importance to the BBC that our audiences are not misled by the programmes we broadcast. We will examine any alleged breaches of our editorial standards relating to this programme as a matter of urgency and will take appropriate action if required.’

Additional reporting: Stephanie Darrall