Printing Shop Raid Yields Bogus Record Labels
Record industry authorities joined police Monday in raiding a printing plant in Bell and arresting three men on suspicion of making bogus labels for counterfeit pop, jazz and Latin American records and cassettes.
Police said 160,000 labels for RCA, CBS, Capitol, Warner Bros., Luna and other firms were seized by agents who served search warrants at the PAL Printing Co. in the 6700 block of Salt Lake Avenue. The labels were for recordings by Air Supply, Kool and the Gang, and a number of Latin American artists and groups.
Hector Aviles, 47, of Bell, owner of the printing firm, and two employees identified as Daniel Rios, 37, of Venice and Alejandro Peneda, a Mexican citizen, were booked under a new state law that makes it illegal to counterfeit tapes and records, police said.
Bell police explained that the new laws make it possible for state authorities to investigate cases previously covered only by federal copyright statutes. While violations of the new law are only misdemeanors, fines may run as high as $50,000.
Information leading to the raid came from the Recording Industry Assn. of America and the Assn. of Latin American Record Manufacturers (ALARM), whose representatives said the confiscated labels represented albums and cassettes worth more than $1 million to bootleggers.
Earlier this month, El Monte police seized raw materials, audio equipment and counterfeit tapes--including the “We Are The World” song whose legitimate sales proceeds are going to Ethiopian famine relief--in a raid that resulted in a felony conspiracy charge against one Mexican national woman and an arrest warrant for her brother, police said.
El Monte Detective Butch Reyburn said investigators figured the tapes, slickly packaged to “look like the legitimate product,” cost counterfeiters 56 cents each to manufacture, and were worth more than $400,000 on the retail market.
Reyburn said he would look into the Bell arrests to see whether the label-making operation had any connection to the El Monte raid.
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