A man charged with producing the largest stash of counterfeit vinyl in UK history was sentenced on Monday to three years and six months in prison. Rehan Ahmed, 40, had been running the vinyl-pressing-and-selling scam for seven years before police raided his Phoenix of Vinyl warehouse in 2024, where authorities discovered a staggering 15,000 bootleg LPs spanning 108 different artists—including albums by Taylor Swift, Drake, Rihanna, Bad Bunny, the Beatles, Ed Sheeran, and more. Ahmed later pleaded guilty to two charges of breach of artists’ copyright, and acquiring and using criminal property.
According to The Guardian, when police raided the facility, they “found a squalid mess, with chemicals stored in fridges next to cans of lager” and LPs, receipts, and other documents “randomly scattered around.” Ahmed, who generated a total of £2,743,000 (or $3,667,921.39) in sales, had initially been issued a legal cease and desist order in 2017 but continued printing vinyl regardless.
In a statement, Peter Ratcliffe, the director of content protection at BPI (British Phonographic Institute), said, “With music on physical formats enjoying a resurgence, the market in counterfeit records has unfortunately also been growing as criminals cash in at the expense of creators and fans. This doesn’t just impact the legal music economy and everyone that works and invests in it — it also affects every one of us as citizens who fall victim to other forms of criminality that it funds.”