Police arrest Welsh counterfeit music threesome

That's not a ring, it's a triangle

By Kelly Fiveash • Get more from this author

Posted in Law, 22nd November 2007 09:02 GMT

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Three people have been arrested on suspicion of being involved in one of the UK's largest web-based music and film piracy rings.

In the latest in a flurry of anti-piracy crackdowns, police and officials from the Intellectual Property Office and the BPI raided several addresses in Cardiff where they seized computer equipment.

The BPI and Trading Standards officials said in a joint statement that two males - one aged 33, believed to be the ringleader of the gang, and another aged 28 - were arrested Tuesday morning, questioned under caution and released on bail.

A 22-year-old woman, said to be the partner of the 33-year-old man, was later arrested following further investigations into the supply of master discs to the UK's piracy trade.

It is alleged that the gang, said to be one of the biggest of its kind in the UK, sold a huge amount of counterfeit music and films from which the ringleader earned £3,000 a month.

In recent weeks police, with the help of FAST, have arrested software pirates in Wales and Cornwall, while Glasgow was fingered as the UK's second worst city outside of the Big Smoke for punting counterfeit software. ®

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