Battling the bootleggers
West Country millionaire’s counterfeit records racket shut down
On 4 April, the BPI and Dorset Trading Standards closed down a vinyl counterfeiting and bootlegging operation, resulting in 55-year-old Richard Hutter, of Matchams Close, St Leonards, Dorset, being ordered by Bournemouth Crown Court to pay £373,000 plus compensation. He was given a suspended prison sentence for sale of illegal counterfeit and bootleg vinyl records. He pleaded guilty to 13 offences under the 1994 Trade Marks Act and 1988 Copyright, Design & Patents Act, along with one offence of money laundering under the 2002 Proceeds Of Crime Act.
The case began when a fan of The Clash paid for an album offered by the Vinylgroove UK website and was unhappy with its audio quality. He complained to Trading Standards when Hutter refused a refund and its officers purchased several more records, a BPI representative identifying them as counterfeits.
Trading Standards demonstrated that Hutter was selling counterfeits via his own website, and offering both fake LPS and bootlegs of unissued material through ebay and a US website. In July 2018, Hutter’s home was searched, and bootleg and counterfeit vinyl discs and sleeves seized, along with a phone and laptop.
When questioned about the counterfeits by Trading Standards, Hutter claimed that he’d bought them from record fairs across Europe and didn’t know that they were counterfeits. However, his phone indicated that he’d had conversations trying to arrange for counterfeits to be paired with sleeves from several sources, while images of him in an office surrounded by vinyl were found.
Among the LPS for which Hutter asked up to £35 were titles by AC/DC (four), Adele, Alice In Chains, Amy Winehouse, The Beatles, Black Sabbath, The Creatures, Bob Dylan, Danzig, David Bowie, Dead Kennedys, Ed Sheeran, Frank Ocean, Gorillaz, Guns N’ Roses (four), Iron Maiden (four), Jack White, Joy Division, Jurassic 5, KISS (two), Led Zeppelin, Mercuful Fate (two), Metallica (eight), Michael Jackson, Misfits, Mother Love Bone, Motörhead, Neil Young (six), Nirvana, Oasis, Pearl Jam, Pink Floyd, Redd Kross, The Rolling Stones, The Smiths, Soundgarden, Tool and Wishbone Ash. Some 1,100-plus albums were on ebay in just one year of his six-year operation. Ironically, among the fake LPS touted was Guns N’ Roses’ aptly named Appetite For Destruction, while among the most numerous bootlegs on sale were some by anti-piracy champions, Metallica, including Studio Shit, which hardly screams legitimate!
At the court, county Recorder Richard Tutt said that the matter was aggravated by Hutter involving his family by using his son’s and wife’s bank accounts to take payments, and that his offending occurred over a protracted period. He added that there was mitigation in that Hutter immediately took down his websites and stopped selling counterfeit and bootleg records once contacted
by Trading Standards and had not re-offended. However, Tutt concluded that Hutter benefitted to the tune of £1,274,222, of which he still retained £373,589. He was ordered to forfeit it under the Proceeds Of Crime Act and added that Hutter would face three years’ imprisonment if he didn’t pay within three months.
Hutter’s defence asked that he be credited for an early guilty plea, and stated that Hutter was both remorseful and unlikely to reoffend. Regarding sentencing on money laundering, the most serious offence, the Recorder noted that, while the custody threshold had been crossed, he’d sentence Hutter to four months’ imprisonment suspended for two years. There would be 250 hours’ unpaid work to be completed within 12 months, and an electronically monitored curfew effected between 8pm and 7am for three months.
Councillor Laura Beddow, Dorset Council’s Portfolio Holder For Culture, Communities & Customer Services, observed after the sentencing, “The sale of counterfeit goods damages legitimate business, including local retailers selling genuine products, and can confuse and mislead consumers. These items were being sold at the usual prices for genuine vinyl records, and consumers would have been misled when buying. Our Trading Standards team will act against sellers of counterfeit goods, including financial investigations to recover proceeds. The penalties can be substantial”.
Paola Monaldi, Head of the BPI’S Content Protection Unit, added, “[Vinyl’s] renaissance has been accompanied by a disturbing rise in bootlegging and sales of unauthorised [counterfeit] recordings. This is a serious crime that denies artists the rewards for their creativity, exploits fans, and impacts legitimate retail and the record labels that invest in music. Worse, it can feed other forms of criminality that impact us all. Over the last three years, the BPI has delisted over 100,000 fake items from marketplace platforms and seized over three million counterfeit units across the UK, which underlines the scale of the problem. We continue to work closely with online platforms and law enforcement agencies to uncover illicit operations and protect the interests of creators, consumers, and music outlets.”
“The sentence was four months’ prison, suspended for two years”