The BPI's anti-piracy unit will be on good form this morning now that the man who was dubbed the "world's biggest bootlegger" was jailed for three and half years.
As previously reported, Mark Purseglove ran a bootleg CD operation from London for over ten years. He would gain illegal recordings of major artists performing live - either by paying an audience member to record it or through relationships with certain sound engineers. These recordings were then burned to CD and sold in professional looking packages through non-legit retail outfits across the world.
How much Purseglove made from the operations is unclear, and estimates range from £4 million to £15 million, with the prosecution estimating he made at least £6 million. One thing is for certain, the artists that featured on his CDs, which included Oasis, the Beatles, Eminem, Madonna and the Rolling Stones, received nothing.
In a London court yesterday Judge Timothy Pontius said that it was clear that Purseglove's "large-scale criminal enterprise" had "reaped very considerable financial rewards from the manufacture, importation and sale of illicit CDs".
He added: "This enterprise is by far the largest and therefore the most serious of its particular kind to come before the courts. Very large numbers of illicit CDs were produced and sold over the years with significant potential loss. Not only to recording companies but also to performers and composers." The judge said a lengthy custodial sentence was required to punish him, prevent further offending and send out a deterrent to others. An additional five years will be added if assets of £1,827,937 are not paid by the end of Mar next year.
Anti-piracy officials around the world had been involved in the case to catch and convict Purseglove, who had had a number of brushes with the law over the years. Outside the court David Martin of the BPI's anti-piracy unit said: "We have been after him for 13 years and he has been a thorn in our side throughout that time. "