West Midlands factory raid nets large illegal videogame haul

Industry

Published: Thursday 11th December, 2008 | Author: Steven Williamson

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A factory suspected of producing thousands of counterfeit video games, film and music - with an estimated street value of £1million - has been stopped following a raid in the West Midlands.

The raid, in which 30,000 illegally copied discs were seized, was carried out on Friday December 5th at commercial premises in Brierley Hill, West Midlands. Other raids were carried out on the same day in the Sandwell area, including a market stall and a residential property.

West Midlands Police officers and members of Sandwell Council's Trading Standards Department carried out the raids.

Huge quantities of illegally copied discs were found at the Brierley Hill premises. DVD duplicators were also found in an alcove behind a notice board.

Recovered from the premises were 10,000 blank discs and 30,000+ fraudulent software titles, including recent films and music such as High School Musical 3, Hancock and Mummy 3. That haul included at least 9,000 unlawfully copied discs containing videogame titles.

The majority of copied discs were housed in CD cases and it is believed that the purpose of the 'business' was independent sales and supplying discs for sale around the region. Seven computers attached to 35 DVD re-writers, three printers, 19 hard drives, 15 Xbox 360 consoles, two Wii consoles and a number of circumvention devices for 'chipping' games consoles were also recovered. All hardware is being forensically examined.

The raids in Cradley Heath and Halesowen were carried out simultaneously and resulted in the seizure of between 4,000-5,000 games and other digital media.

A number of suspects were arrested and released on Police bail pending further investigations.

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