West London man jailed for £1m fake vinyl operation
A 40-year-old man from Southall, west London, will serve three and a half years in prison for running a counterfeit vinyl operation valued at £1 million ($1.34 million).
Rehan Ahmed was found guilty at Inner London Crown Court on Sept. 19 of breaching artists' copyright and acquiring and using criminal property, the term for handling money or goods linked to crime. Judge Darren Reed sentenced him to two years and eight months for the copyright breaches and three and a half years for the criminal property charge, with the terms to run concurrently, or at the same time, according to Billboard.
Investigators estimated the operation generated £2,743,000 in profit between 2017 and 2024. Police put the value of the active counterfeit business at £1 million at the time it was uncovered.
The fakes were organised from a unit in Acton, west London, trading under the name Phoenix of Vinyl. Ahmed, who lived at Cranleigh Gardens in Southall, produced and distributed fraudulent pressings of albums by artists including Taylor Swift, Coldplay, Kendrick Lamar and Ed Sheeran.
The records were sold on eBay and Discogs, the online marketplace where collectors buy and sell physical music. Police said the catalogue infringed the copyrights of 108 artists.
Search warrants executed in February 2024 led to the seizure of 2,791 vinyl records, alongside lacquers, the coated discs used to stamp copies, and pressing equipment. Officers recovered 18 tonnes of evidence in total, including four vinyl pressing machines each about 70 years old, plus thousands of sleeves and centre labels.
The case was referred to the Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit at the City of London Police by the British Phonographic Industry, the UK recorded music trade body. The force described it as the largest seizure of counterfeit vinyl of its kind in the UK, in its official release.
What makes this stand out is the scale and the method. Vinyl is heavy, slow to make and easy to check. Four ageing presses still turned out thousands of copies. Those copies then moved through mainstream resale sites to buyers who likely thought they were carrying home the real thing.
