Feds bust biggest ever piracy operation

By Steve Malone

Posted on 14 Oct 2005 at 10:27

Three men from California have been charged with involvement in the biggest CD counterfeiting operation ever discovered in the US. The men - Ye Teng Wen, Hao He and Yaobin Zhai - have been indicted by a grand jury with conspiring to pirate some 325,000 CDs of music, films and software.

The indictments follows the arrests of five people and searches of thirteen locations in California and Texas on 6 October 2005 as part of 'Operation Remaster', which aimed to break up a huge piracy ring.

According to the Attorney of the District of Northern California, the men were planning piracy on a grand scale. In order to copy a disc, a piece of equipment known as a 'stamper' is used. One of these stamper machines can potentially manufacture 50,000 to 80,000 counterfeit CDs or DVDs. The defendants were discovered with 2,000 of these devices.

As part of Operation Remaster as a whole, more than 500,000 CDs and over one million CD inserts were seized, along with thousands of DVDs and 3,300 stampers. The Recording Industry Association of America estimates that a conservative value of one infringing music stamper is $25,000 and thus the people involved in the operation stood to make millions.

Affidavits filed as supporting evidence say that all three men were implicated in large-scale replication of pirated music from Latin artists popular in California. Wen and He were also involved in pirating anti-virus software manufactured by Symantec.

The three men were charged with conspiracy to commit criminal copyright infringement and traffic in counterfeit labels, criminal copyright infringement, trafficking in counterfeit labels and aiding and abetting. If found guilty, the trio face up to five years in jail and a $250,000 fine.

In 2004, the RIAA reported a 58 percent increase in US seizures of counterfeit CDs. Law enforcement agencies and RIAA investigators seized 1.2 million counterfeit discs.