14 DAY TRIAL // They never quit, do they? Recently, a market trader was caught selling PlayStation 2 original boxed copies of Shrek the Third for just ?10 each at a West Midlands market. The man was of course arrested and bailed pending further investigation.
The stall of the 50 year-old man at Tamworth market was raided on 18th December, in an intelligence-led operation involving Staffordshire County Council Trading Standards, Staffordshire Police and ELSPA (the Entertainment and Leisure Software Publishers Association) investigators. Prior to the raid, according to a recent press release, several test purchases were made by ELSPA investigators at the stall for three weeks to ascertain how the man ran his illegal operation.
Legal reasons prevented the disclosing of names, but that doesn't matter much right now. What we found most interesting was this:
According to the same report, some ninety-nine copies of Shrek the Third were seized at the stall itself and a further 190 units, together with 86,000 contraband cigarettes and various branded items that breach trademark, were later also discovered at his premises. But get this: further investigation uncovered that the PlayStation 2 copies of Shrek the Third being sold at the stall were a mere sample from a batch of 40,000 stolen copies, originating in a "secure" unit in Stourport on Severn back in August 2007.
How do you steal 40,000 copies of a video game...? With the help of friends, that's how.
Michael Rawlinson, managing director of ELSPA, said: "I congratulate Staffordshire Trading Standards and Staffordshire Police for successfully shutting down another criminal operation. ELSPA would like to thank the efforts of everyone concerned in their attempts to protect legitimate local traders and remove illegal products from the marketplace."
Following an interview, the man himself confirmed he had been making regular cross-border trips from his home in Halesowen, Birmingham to Tamworth, Staffordshire where he ran a stall to sell illegally gained goods.