Red leds I have seen do put out a lot of IR. Look at the thing with a web cam or digital camera and if it shows up as a white dot, it's putting out a lot of near-IR.
Here are transparent bulb (not filtered in visible wavelengths) phototransistors:
While these have their highest sensitivity at a little less than 900 nm, they are perhaps 20% as sensitive at 650 nm which is red. If the red led puts out red and IR, it should catch that.