Richards Butler wins anti-piracy court victory

Richards Butler has won the UK's largest anti-piracy case, involving a fraudster who had been sought since the late 1980s.
The British Phonographic Industry, the body that represents the music industry, instructed the firm's specialist anti-piracy unit headed by Mike Northern. The scale of the case meant that local trading standards and police in Essex did not have the resources to cope with the prosecution singlehandedly.
The prosecution involved proving the link between Tim Smith, who has just been jailed for 21 months after Richards Butler's prosecution, a chicken farm in Essex and the import of silver compact disks from factories in Singapore. A police raid on the farm in June 1997 unearthed 60,000 bootleg disks and 200,000 disk sleeves.
A special Newton hearing before a judge and without a jury took place to determine Smith's involvement.
The International Federation of Phonographic Industries is chasing the Singapore end of the fraud.
Smith's co-conspirator, Alan Williams, was sentenced in early 2001, but Smith was not tracked down until spring this