"At least 800,000 DVDs (among them games) worth an estimated £2 million have been seized and five people arrested at a raid on a West Midlands premises in what is the largest haul ever in the UK. In an intelligence led joint operation involving West Midlands Police, ELSPA investigators, Sandwell Trading Standards, the Federation Against Copyright Theft (FACT) and the British record industry's trade association (BPI), warrants were obtained to search the premises: two shops and two home addresses on Thursday 4th May. The pirate games and DVD operation gravitated around 'Ace Disks' - a shop situated in Dudley High Street, where a concealed entrance opened up into an upstairs floor. Here PCs and DVD burners were found and a fully operational counterfeit DVD 'wholesale business' in operation. The shop was also under the watchful gaze of several CCTV units" Full news here: http://gaming.hexus.net/content/item.php?item=8772 Anyone from the UK from Dudley? I thought some Midlands readers might find it interesting. Of all the places...Sunny Dudley lol. h: I thought this was particularly funny and rather stupid "...ELSPA and FACT (watched) the premises (for) what was believed to be criminal activity at the rear of the shop. This was all but confirmed when...the investigators followed a young woman from the shop to a local café where she purchased six cartons of coffee and six assorted sandwiches. She was then followed back afterwards and only one person was visible in the shop." LOL - one HUNGRY shopkeeper though eh!
well im not far from dudley, but round here in the midlands theres raids pretty much every week, most of them sell on the carboot sales, one i sometimes goto must have at least 50 or so stalls just selling pirate dvds, games and music etc. a friends of mine lives in dudley so when i speak to him in the week, ill find out more gossip, chances are he knows the guys who got arrested (or may be one of them!)
I loved the fact that the team of copiers got someone to get them food en mass. These people were clearly not thinking that anyone would be watching. How on earth did they get the people into & out of the shop un noticed. Customer goes in.....customer comes out 8hrs later having disappeared behind PS2 stand lol. The Barras in Glasgow is where they sell this stuff. It's not so bad now as the Police have a perminant base and staff checking every week now. There was a time you had someone on every corner with a pasting table, a large book and a young kid. You'd order the software from the code in the book and the little kid would disappear with a list. That kid brought the software back and you paid. Again, suffice to say I do not condone this sort of thing and I never ever actually got any software from them, mainly because I never needed it. I did watch them a few times. It was done very swiftly and with the minimum of fuss. Most of the stuff I am interested in at the Barras are the piles of 8bit computers and carts that sell from time to time.
I don`t know how suspicious you would really be of six people coming out of a shop unless you were watching and like you said they probably didnt expect to be. if they came in one at a time and left the same way would`ve been more inconspicuous. In harrow there are rows of ppl with dodgy dvd`s sat outside the shops with hundreds on the floor, they must have to move pretty fast when the police come. there must be at least ten of them spread out the high street. talk about making it easy for a sting operation.
Recently, locally at least I've seen a shift in Police / Trading Standards focus away from some geezer selling off a table load of copies to the massive hauls like the one in Dudley. They did however move a lot of people on and don't tolerate them. Fewer arrests though. There was a time that the Barras market was raided every few weeks. Anyway, just thought it was of interest to you Midlands guys. Though I had seen someone close to Dudley. ;-)
