Police Confiscate 3,000 Pirated Videotapes in Raids on 3 Stores

In one of the largest seizures of its kind, nearly 3,000 counterfeit videotapes have been confiscated by Los Angeles police--including movies that have not yet been released to the home-rental market, authorities said Thursday.

Police armed with search warrants and accompanied by investigators from the Motion Picture Assn. of America raided three videotape rental stores on Wednesday and carted away the pirated tapes in about 40 cardboard boxes, said Sgt. Ken Johnson, a vice officer with the Los Angeles Police Department’s Northeast Division.

“We put quite a dent in their inventory,” Johnson said. “Almost all of their current movies were counterfeit.”

Two men who own the stores were arrested on a felony charge and released on bail.

In addition to the volume of tapes seized, the bust was unusual because about 100 cassettes were movies such as “Pretty Woman,” “The Hunt for Red October” and “Peter Pan” that have not been released on video to the public, police said.

The titles are not scheduled to reach the home rental market until later this year.

“The fact that about 100 pre-released titles (were confiscated) makes it extraordinary,” Mark Harrad, a spokesman for the motion picture association, said of the raids.

“You don’t usually find (counterfeit) pre-released tapes in stores. It’s like putting up a red flag and saying, ‘I’m a pirate.’ ”

As home to the film industry, Los Angeles is considered a hotbed of videotape piracy, Harrad said. Fifty-eight stores in metropolitan Los Angeles have been raided this year by police working with the association, which estimates that 10% of the nation’s videotape rental stores deal in counterfeit cassettes.

The record single crackdown turned up nearly 10,000 pirated tapes in South Gate last year.

In this week’s raids, police arrested Jose Chin, 39, and George Valdecantos, 52, both of Los Angeles. Chin was identified as the owner of a store on York Boulevard, and Valdecantos was listed as the owner of stores on Colorado Boulevard and North Figueroa Street.

Chin did not return telephone calls to his store. Valdecantos said in an interview that he did not know the tapes were counterfeit. He said the tapes were purchased from independent salespeople who visited the store and offered low prices.

“It’s not as expensive as going to the distributors,” Valdecantos said.

Chin and Valdecantos were booked on a single felony count of possession of counterfeit video recordings and released after posting a bail of $15,000 each, police said. Johnson said the men had been partners but the partnership apparently dissolved last year.

Tapes can be counterfeited a number of ways, according to the motion picture association, which runs a worldwide anti-piracy investigative network employing 70 agents.

The owner of a video store may legitimately purchase one tape from the distributor, then make his own bootleg copies which he sells or rents.

To obtain tapes of movies that have not yet been released on video, counterfeiters are known to tape films off cable television, then reproduce copies for the home-rental market. Harrad said there have even been cases of tapes being made off copies of films used at private screenings.

The Motion Picture Assn. of America, a trade organization representing the country’s movie studios, estimates that videotape piracy costs the film industry $100 million annually in lost revenue.